In Greek mythology, Orion (; : The Latin transliteration Oarion of is found, but is quite rare.) was a giant huntsman whom Zeus or Artemis placed among the stars as a constellation. He was venerated as a hero in the region of Boeotia, and there is one etiological passage which says that Orion was responsible for the present shape of the Strait of Sicily.
Ancient sources tell several, often conflicting, stories about Orion. Two major versions describe his birth, and several accounts relate his death. Other key episodes in his life include his visits to Chios and Lemnos and his relationship to Artemis.Scholia on Homer, Iliad 18.486 citing Pherecydes Most stories about him are recorded in incidental allusions and in fairly obscure later writings. No great poet standardized the myth.Rose, A Handbook, p.116–117
Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature. In Homer's Iliad he is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog.Il., on the shield of Achilles, and , respectively. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals. He is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of Eos, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn.λ 572–577 (as a hunter); ε 273–275, as a constellation (= Σ 487–489); ε 121–124; λ 572–77; λ 309–310; Rose (A Handbook, p.117) notes that Homer never identifies the hunter and the constellation, and suggests that they were not originally the same. In the Works and Days of Hesiod, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year, and chases the Pleiades.ll. 598, 623
Mythology
Early life and family The most common version of Orion's parentage presents him as the son of Poseidon. Orion's mother is usually identified as a daughter of Minos, either named Euryale, Brylle, or Hyeles.Mulryan and Brown, trans. of Natalis Comes, Vol II, p. 752. n 98. Cites Scholia in Aratum Vetera 322 (ed. Martin, Stuttgart, 1974); sch. to Hesiod, Op. Fr. 63. Gaisford, PMG 1:194, respectivelyGantz, p. 271; Hard, p. 101; Hesiod fr. 244 Most [= fr. 148a MW]. He was a giant in stature and, from his father, he inherited the ability to walk on water.Aeneis Ovid and Pseudo-Apollodorus state Orion's first wife was Side, whom Hera threw into Hades for rivalling her in beauty.Apollodorus 1.4.3, and n. 4.Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.731
Another version of Orion's birth, preserved in scholiaEuphorion of Chalcis, who wrote in the 2nd century BC. The MS is Allen's Venetus A, scholion to Σ 486 Dindorf Scholia in Iliadem II, 171, l.7–20; Erbse's Scholia at line cited (Vol.4). and later mythographersIn the Astronomia; the Fabulae have Poseidon.Fontenrose, Orion."Hyginus", de Astronomia 2.34; a shorter recension in his Fabulae 195. Paragraphing according to Ghislane Viré's 1992 Teubner edition. Modern scholarship holds that these are not the original work of Hyginus either, but latter condensations: a teacher's, possibly a student's, notes.Aristomachus of Soli wrote on bee-keeping (Oxford Classical Dictionary: "Bee-keeping")., credits him as autochthonous. Here the gods Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidon come to visit Hyrieus of Tanagra, who roasts a whole bull for them.The ancient sources for this story all phrase it so that this could be either a bull or a cow; translations vary, although "bull" may be more common. A bull would be an appropriate sacrifice to male gods. When they offer him a favor, he asks for a son. The gods take the bull's hide and urinate into it and bury it in the earth. Ten lunations later, Hyrieus digs up the hole and finds the infant Orion.Both are represented by the same Greek participle, ourion, thus explaining Orion's name; the version that has come down to us as [Pseudo]-Palaephatus, On Unbelievable Tales §51 uses apespermenan ("to spread seed") and ourēsai (the infinitive of ourion) in different sentences. The Latin translations by Hyginus are ambiguous. Ejaculation of semen is the more obvious interpretation here, and Kerenyi assumes it; but John Peter Oleson argued, in the note to p.28 of "A Possible Physiological Basis for the Term urinator, 'diver (The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 97, No. 1. (Spring, 1976), pp. 22–29) that urination is intended here; Robert Graves compares this to an African raincharm including urination, as mentioned below. There are several references to Hyrieus as the father of Orion that connect him to various places in Boeotia, including Hyria; this may well be the original story (although not the first attested), since Hyrieus is presumably the eponym of Hyria. He is also called Oeneus, although he is not the Calydonian Oeneus.Pack, p.200; giving Hyginus's etymology for Urion, but describing it as "fantastic". Oeneus from Kerenyi, Gods, citing Servius's note to Aeneid 10.763; which actually reads Oenopion; but this may be corruption.
Giovanni Boccaccio, citing a lost Latin writer, describes Orion as the son of Oenopion, king of Sicily, and writes that he was seduced by Venus as a youth. He also states that, by his sister Candiope, he fathered a son, Hippologus. Oenopion, learning of the incestuous union, banished the family to Thrace, where Orion and Candiope had a second son, Dryas, who is mentioned in Statius' Thebaid.Boccaccio, Genealogie, Book 11 §19–21. Vol XI, page 559 line 22 to page 560 line 25, citing Theodontius, who is known almost entirely from this work of Boccaccio. He may be the Roman author of this name once mentioned by Servius, he may be a 9th-century Campagnian, or Boccaccio may have made him up.
Chios Once Orion arrived in Chios, he got drunk and raped Merope, daughter of King Oenopion. In retaliation, Oenopion blinded and exiled the hunter. Orion stumbled to Hephaestus' forge in Lemnos, who ordered his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion. On the giant's shoulders, Cedalion guided him eastmost, where he was healed by Helios or Asclepius.In a scholion to Pindar Pyth 3, as cited by Fontenrose, Orion, p. 26–27, note 9. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground to escape Orion's wrath.
Merope's identity varies in other stories. One source refers to her as Oenopion's wife, another as the daughter of Minos, not Oenopion.Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks, pp. 201–204; for Merope as the wife of Oenopion, he cites the scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca 15. Frazer's notes to Apollodorus. Parthenius adds more to the marriage of Orion, with him slaying the wild beasts of Chios and looting the other inhabitants to make a bride-price for Oenopion's daughter, who is called Aëro or Leiro. The king remains reluctant to marry his daughter to the likes of Orion, and, eventually, the frustrated hunter breaks into the princess' bedchamber to rape her. The text implies that Oenopion blinds Orion on the spot afterward.Both are emendations of Parthenius's text, which is Haero; Aëro is from Stephen Gaselee's Loeb edition; Leiro "lily" is from J. L. Lightfoot's 1999 edition of Parthenius, p.495, which records the several emendations suggested by other editors, which include Maero and Merope. "Leiro" is supported by a Hellenistic inscription from Chios, which mentions a Liro as a companion of Oenopion.Parthenius, Love Romances XX; LCL, with Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Unlike most of Parthenius' stories, no source is noted in the MS.
Lucian includes a picture with Orion in a rhetorical description of an ideal building, in which Orion is walking into the rising sun with Lemnos nearby, Cedalion on his shoulder. He recovers his sight there with Hephaestus still watching in the background.Lucian, De domo 28; Poussin followed this description, and A. B. Cook interprets all the mentions of Orion being healed by the Sun in this sense. Zeus I, 290 note 3. Fontenrose sees a combination of two stories: the lands of Dawn in the far east; and Hephaestus' smithy, the source of fire.
Latin sources add that Oenopion was the son of Dionysus, who sent satyrs to put Orion into a deep sleep so he could be blinded. One source tells the same story but converts Oenopion into Minos of Crete. It adds that an oracle told Orion that his sight could be restored by walking eastward and that he found his way by hearing the Cyclops' hammer, placing a Cyclops as a guide on his shoulder.Fontenrose, Orion, p.9–10; citing Servius and the First Vatican Mythographer, who is responsible for Minos. The comparison is Fontenrose's judgment One scholion, on a Latin poem, explains that Hephaestus gave Orion a horse.Fontenrose, Orion, p. 26–27, note 9, citing the scholion to Germanicus' translation of Aratus, line 331 (page 93, line 2, Breysig's edition). It is so late that it uses caballus for "horse".
Death
Orion's next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Gaia objected and sent a giant scorpion to fight and kill Orion.prope nimia conjunctum amicitia vixisse. Hyginus, Ast., 2.26Scorpion is here a type of creature, Greek , not a proper name. The constellation is called Scorpius in astronomy; colloquially, Scorpio, like the related astrological sign – both are Latin forms of the Greek word. Cicero used Nepa, the older Latin word for "scorpion". See Kubiak's paper in the bibliography. Although Orion does not defeat the scorpion in any version, several variants have it die from its wounds. Nicander, in his Theriaca, has the scorpion of ordinary size and hiding under a small stone.Nicander, Theriaca, lines 15–20.
Artemis is credited as Orion's killer in several variations. A common version, in Hyginus' De astronomia, has it done accidentally. Apollo, jealous of Orion's relationship with Artemis, sees Orion swimming in the ocean, a long way off. He remarks that Artemis could not possibly hit that thing floating in the water. Accepting the challenge, she unknowingly shot Orion; when his body washed up on shore, she wept copiously.Hyginus, Ast. 2.34, quoting Istrus. Robert Graves divides The Greek Myths into his own retelling of the myths and his explanations; in retelling Hyginus, Graves adds that Apollo challenged Artemis to hit "that rascal Candaon"; this is for narrative smoothness. It is not in his source.
Other versions credit Artemis as a direct killer. Homer's Iliad states Eos fell in love with Orion and took him to Delos where Artemis killed him.The Bibliotheke . This book has come down to us with the name of Apollodorus of Athens, but this is almost certainly wrong. Pherecydes fr. 52 Jacoby, from Fontenrose, Orion, p. 6. Another has Orion challenge Artemis to a contest with the discus, and attempts to rape her or one of her attendants, Upis.Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, and Frazer's notes. Artemis is called Upis in Callimachus Hymn 3.204f and elsewhere (Fontenrose, Orion, p. 13). Aratus' Phaenomena conflates the elements of the myth: Orion attacks Artemis while hunting on Chios, and the scorpion kills him there.Aratus, Phaenomena I, 634–646. quoted in Kubiak, p. 14.
Telesarchus is quoted as saying in a scholion that Asclepius resurrected Orion, resulting in the healer's death.Pherecydes of Athens Testimonianze i frammenti ed. Paola Dolcetti 2004; frag. 160 = 35a Frag. Hist. Gr = 35 Fowler. She quotes the complete scholion (to Euripides, Alcestis 1); the statement of Telesarchus may or may not be cited from Pherecydes.Zeus slew Aesculapius for his presumption in raising the dead, so there was only one subject.
Ascension