Alcyone or Halcyone

1. Alcyone was a Greek demi-goddess, a Pleiad, a daughter of Atlas and Pleione, by whom Poseidon begot Aethusa, Hyrieus and Hyperenor. To these children Pausanias (ii. 30. § 7) adds two others, Hyperes and Anthas.

2. A daughter of Aeolus and Enarete or Aegiale. She was married to Ceyx, and lived so happy with him, that they were presumptuous enough to call each other Zeus arid Hera, for which Zeus metamorphosed them into birds. (Apollod. i. 7. § 3, £c.; Hygin. Fab. 65.) Hyginus relates that Ceyx perished in a shipwreck, that Alcyone for grief threw herself into the sea, and that the gods, out of compassion, changed the two into birds. It was fabled, that during the seven days before, and as many after, the shortest day of the year, while the bird was breeding, there always prevailed calms at sea. An. embellished form of the same story is given by Ovid, (Met. xi)

3. A surname of Cleopatra, the wife of Melea-ger, who died with grief at her husband bein£ killed by Apollo. (Horn.//, ix. 562 ; Eustath. ad Horn. p. 776 ; Hygin. Fab. 174.) [L. S.]