Orion (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Orion was a giant huntsman whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion. Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC. He is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn.
About Orion (mythology) in brief
In Greek mythology, Orion was a giant huntsman whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion. Ancient sources told several different stories about Orion; there are two major versions of his birth. Most ancient sources omit some of these episodes and several tell only one. Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC. He is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn. The surviving fragments of legend have provided a fertile field for speculation about Greek prehistory and myth. The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the Astronomia. This version is known through the work of Eratosthenes on the constellations, who gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod’s episode on Orion. The story of the adventures of Orion, the hunter, is the one for which there is the most evidence ; he is also the personification of the constellation of the same name. He was venerated as a hero in the region of Boeotia; he was responsible for the present shape of the Strait of Sicily; and there is one etiological passage which says that Orion was responsible, in some way, for the creation of the sun. Although Homer has a few lines in his Iliad about Orion, most of the stories about him are recorded in incidental allusions and allusions in fairly obscure later writings and compilations of modern encyclopedias.
No great poet standardized the legend; even one such as Hesiod’s Astronomy survives in both Homer’s Astronomy and Ovid’s Fasti. The most important recorded episodes are his visit to Chios where he met Merope and after he raped her, was blinded by her father, Oenopion, the recovery of his sight at Lemnos, his hunting with Artemis on Crete, his death by the bow of Artemis or the sting of the giant scorpion which became Scorpio, and his elevation to the heavens. In the Odyssey, Orion is essentially the godfather of hunting, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals; In some legends Orion claims to be able to hunt any animal in existence. According to this version, Orion was likely the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios. Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him; Orion carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. Orion returned to chios to punish OenOPion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion’s wrath.
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