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Maia, in Greek mythology, is the eldest of the
Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. She and her sisters, born on Mount
Cyllene in Arcadia, are sometimes called
mountain goddesses. Maia was the oldest, most beautiful and shyest.
In a cave of Cyllene Maia became by Zeus the mother of the god Hermes. The story is told in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.
After giving birth to the baby, Maia wrapped him in blankets and went to sleep. The rapidly-maturing infant Hermes crawled
away to Thessaly, where by nightfall of his first day he stole some of Apollo's cattle and invented a lyre. Maia
refused to believe Apollo when he claimed Hermes was the thief and Zeus then sided with Apollo. Finally, Apollo exchanged the
cattle for the lyre.
Maia also raised the infant Arcas to protect him from Hera, who had turned his mother, Callisto
into a bear.
In astronomy, Maia (20 Tauri) is the third brightest of the seven bright stars in
the Pleiades open star
cluster. It is a blue giant of spectral class B7, and has a visual magnitude of 3.86, thus requiring darker skies to be seen.
Maia was identified in Roman mythology with Maia
Maiestas (also called Fauna, Bona Dea (the 'Good Goddess') and Ops), a goddess who may be equivalent to an old Italic
goddess of spring. The month of May was named for her; the 1st and 15th of May were sacred to
her. Maia was associated with Vulcan, and on the first of May the flamen of that god sacrificed to her a pregnant sow, an
appropriate sacrifice also for an earth goddess such as Bona Dea: a sow-shaped wafer might be substituted. The goddess was
accessible only to women; men were excluded from her precincts.
Reference
- Harry Thurston Peck, Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1898
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911.
Maia is a city in Portugal.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's mythos, a Maia is one from the lesser kind of Ainur, beings of power
which pre-date the creation of existence.
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