Pleias

• One of the Seven Stars, a Pleiad; usually in plur.: Pleiades (Pliades) = Πλειάδες, the constellation of the Seven Stars, the Pleiades or Pleiads (pure Lat. Vergiliae), acc. to the myth, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione (Electra, Halcyone, Celaeno, Maia, Sterope, Taygete, and Merope): Pleïas enixa est, Ov. M. 1, 670: Plias, Stat. S. 1, 6, 22; Ov. F. 3, 105: Plĭadum nivosum Sidus, Stat. S. 1, 3, 95.—
• II Poet., transf., a storm or rain, Val. Fl. 4, 268; 2, 405: Pliada movere, to cause the Pleiads to rise, id. 2, 357.

• , Πληϊάςor Πλειάς, a Pleiad, one of the seven stars, O.— Plur, the Pleiades, Pleiads, V., H., O.

(πλειάς, “a group of seven stars”). The name given by the Alexandrian critics to a group of seven tragic poets, who wrote at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus in the first half of the third century B.C. Their names were: Alexander Aetolus, Philiscus, Sositheus, Homerus, Aeantides, Sosiphanes, and Lycophron. See Canon Alexandrinus.