By some accounts she was the one star among seven of the constellation not easily seen because, since she could not bear to look upon the destruction of Troy, she hid her eyes, or turned away; or in her grief, she abandoned her sisters and became a comet.

[5] Hyginus' De astronomia says that Electra and her six sisters were called the Pleiades because, according to the 1st-century BC Greek scholar and historian Alexander Polyhistor, they were the daughters of Pleione.

[6] De astronomia also says that, according to Musaeus, their mother was instead an Oceanid named Aithra, explaining that they were called the Pleiades because there were more (pleion in Greek) of them than their sisters the Hyades.

[16] A constellation called the Pleiades is mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod's Works and Days, however none of the stars are named.

[17] Hesiod calls the stars the Atlageneis, possibly meaning "born from Atlas", although linguistic considerations suggests that the epithet refers to some geographic location.

A scholion to the Iliad mentions the Pleiades escape from Orion by catasterism and says the following about Electra:[24] De astronomia is a Latin astronomical guide, attributed to Hyginus (died AD 17), containing the most complete surviving ancient compendium of astral mythology.

[26] It gives the following account of why only six of the seven Pleiades can be seen: The Latin poet Ovid, in his poem the Fasti (c. AD 8), gives a similar account, but with a different explanation regarding Electra: The mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD), discussing the "legend" of the Palladium", says that "Electra, at the time of her violation, took refuge at the image, and Zeus threw the Palladium along with Ate into the Ilian country; and Ilus built a temple for it, and honored it.

"[28] Nonnus, in the third book of his Dionysiaca (c. fifth century AD), has the wandering Cadmus land on Samothrace where he will find his bride to be, Electra's foster-daughter Harmonia.