Peleiades

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Peleiades (Greek: Πελειάδες) ("doves") were the sacred women of Zeus and the Mother Goddess, Dione, at the Oracle at Dodona. Pindar made a reference to the Pleiades as the "peleiades" a flock of doves, but the connection seems witty and poetical, rather than mythic. The chariot of Aphrodite was drawn by a flock of doves, however.

A mythic element of a black dove that initiated the oracle at Dodona, which Herodotus was told in the 5th century BC may be an attempt to account for a folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense (an aitiological myth). Maybe the pel- element in their name was originally connected with "black" or "muddy" root elements in names like Peleus or Pelops and peliganes (Epirotan, Macedonian senators) , Attic polios , Doric peleios grey,old , PIE *pel-, "gray".

Peleiades are oftenly confused with the nymphs Pleiades.

References

Greek myth Index
Herodotus 2.54.1
The Deipnosophists, Or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Page 783by Athenaeus, Charles Duke Yonge
The Journal of Indo-European Studies Page 473 By SGA - International association Terra antiqua balcanica, Institute for the Study of Man
Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces Page 90 By G. O. Hutchinson ISBN 0199240175

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Peleiades

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References