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Mythographia

    Maia

    Maia is the eldest daughter of Atlas and the mother of Hermes by Zeus. She lives apart from the gods in a deep cave on Mount Kyllene, where Zeus comes to her at night and where Hermes is born. Her role in the myth is almost entirely that birth, and she appears again mainly to be lied to by her newborn son.

    Bronze medallion portrait of Maia crowned with a cluster of seven bronze stars.
    Illustration, not a source

    Maia, eldest of the Pleiades and mother of Hermes

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    By Reviewed by Mythographia Editorial Team

    Core Myth

    Hesiod gives Maia two lines: Atlas's daughter bore Hermes to Zeus, the herald of the immortals, after going up into his holy bed. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes expands the setting rather than the character. Maia is a shy nymph who avoids the company of the blessed gods and lives in a shadowy cave, and Zeus comes to her there at night while Hera sleeps, unseen by gods and men alike. Hermes is born in that cave and leaves it within a day. The Hymn's comedy depends on his mother being an ordinary, worried parent: when he returns at night after stealing Apollo's cattle she tells him she fears he will be nothing but trouble to the immortals, and he answers her with a speech about not intending to remain the only god without offerings. She is the first person he lies to and the first he ignores. As one of the Pleiades, Maia belongs to a group of seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione who were placed among the stars. The catasterism is told separately from the Hermes material and the two strands are rarely joined in the same text, which is why her genealogy and her narrative feel like they belong to different figures.

    Who was Maia in Greek mythology?

    The eldest of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and the mother of Hermes by Zeus. The Homeric Hymn describes her as a shy nymph who kept away from the company of the gods and lived in a deep cave on Mount Kyllene in Arcadia. She has almost no independent narrative: her appearances are the conception of Hermes, his birth, and one scene where she warns him about his behaviour.

    Homeric Hymn to Hermes 1-19

    Where was Hermes born?

    In a cave on Mount Kyllene in Arcadia, where Maia lived apart from the other gods. The Homeric Hymn is specific about the setting because it matters to the story: Hermes is born far from Olympos, invents the lyre and steals Apollo's cattle within his first day, and has to argue his way into the company of gods he was not born among. Hesiod names the parentage without the place.

    Homeric Hymn to Hermes 1-19

    Is the month of May named after Maia?

    Ancient writers thought it might be, and modern scholarship is unconvinced. Ovid lists several explanations in the Fasti without choosing between them, including a derivation from maiores, the elders. The Roman Maia to whom the month was linked is a goddess of growth with her own cult, and her identification with the Greek Pleiad is itself a later equation rather than an old one, so the chain has two uncertain links in it.

    Later Traditions

    Roman writers identify her with an Italian goddess Maia associated with growth, and the month of May was connected to her by ancient etymologists, though the connection is disputed and probably late. Ovid records several competing explanations for the name of the month in the Fasti and does not settle between them. Where she appears in later art it is almost always as the mother in a Hermes scene rather than in her own right.

    Lineage

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    2 recorded relations, each with the ancient line behind it.

    Where Accounts Differ

    • origin of the month name
    • Greek and Roman Maia
    • The Greek Pleiad and the Roman goddess Maia are distinct figures joined by a later identification; the naming of the month rests on that equation and on an etymology Ovid himself leaves open.
    • Maia's placement among the Pleiades and her role as the mother of Hermes come from separate strands of tradition and are rarely told together.

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    Mythology

    Related Terms

    Sources

    Primary sources
    • Hesiod, Theogony 938-939
    • Homeric Hymn to Hermes 1-19
    • Apollodorus, Library 3.10.2