Epitome 32. Orion
HESIOD says* that he was the son of Euryale, daughter of Minos, and of Poseidon, and that he was granted the gift of being able to walk over the waves just as though he were on dry land. He came to Chios and raped Merope, daughter of Oinopion,* while drunk; Oinopion learned of this, and in his fury at the outrage, he blinded Orion and expelled him from the land. In the course of his wanderings, Orion arrived at Lemnos, where he made friends with Hephaistos,* who took pity on him and gave him his own servant, Cedalion, as a guide. Orion took him on to his shoulders for him to point the way. Travelling to the east, he made friends with Helios, and was apparently cured by him.* He then returned to Oinopion to take revenge on him, but Oinopion had been hidden beneath the ground by the people of the land; abandoning all hope of being able to find him, Orion went off to Crete, where he devoted himself to the hunt, pursuing wild beasts in the company of Artemis and Leto.* It seems that he threatened to kill every wild beast that appeared on the earth, so angering Earth that she sent out an enormous scorpion, which struck him with its sting, causing his death. And so Zeus set him among the constellations out of regard for his bravery, at the request of Artemis and Leto, also placing the scorpion there to commemorate this episode.
Others say that when Orion grew up, he conceived a passion for Artemis, and that it was she who sent the scorpion against him which stung him and caused his death. The gods, taking pity on him, represented him in the sky as a constellation along with the scorpion, in commemoration of the episode.
Hyginus
The Constellation
Orion. His belt and the rest of his body are separated [from the upper part of him] by the equator. He is placed as though in confrontation with the Bull, holding a club in his right hand, and with a sword at his waist; he is looking toward the west. He sets at the rising of the hind part of the Scorpion, and rises with his whole body at the same time as the Crab. He has three bright stars on his head, one star on each shoulder, a faint star on his right elbow, a similar star on his hand, three stars on his belt, three faint ones where his sword is depicted, and one bright one on each knee. In all, seventeen.
The Mythology
According to Hesiod, this is the son who was borne to Poseidon by Euryale, daughter of Minos; he was granted the power to run over the waves as though he were on dry land, just as Iphiclos* is supposed to have been able to run over ears of corn without breaking them.
Aristomachos says for his part that there was a certain Hyrieus* who lived at Thebes (although Pindar places him on the island of Chios), who asked Zeus and Hermes, when they were once visiting him, that he might have a child. So that his request might have more prospect of success, he sacrificed an ox and served it up to them at table. Afterwards, Zeus and Hermes asked that the hide should be removed from the ox, and they shed their semen* on the hide, and ordered that it should be buried beneath the ground. And from it there was later born a child, whom Hyrieus named Urion because of his origin; but euphony and custom have brought it to pass that he is called Orion.
He went from Thebes to Chios, so the story goes, where he raped Merope, daughter of Oinopion, while his passions were inflamed by wine. As a result of that action he was blinded by Oinopion and expelled from the island. He is then supposed to have visited Hephaistos on Lemnos, and from him he received a guide named Cedalion. Carrying this Cedalion on his shoulders, he made his way to Helios, so the story goes, who cured him [of his blindness]; and he then returned to Chios to seek revenge. But Oinopion was kept safe underground by the citizens of his land. Giving up hope of being able to find him, Orion went off to the island of Crete, where he went hunting with Artemis, and he made the boast that we mentioned above and thus came to be transferred to the stars. According to other accounts, however, Orion lived with Oinopion on all too friendly terms, and wanting to prove to him what a great passion he had for hunting, he made the boast to Artemis that we mentioned above, and so met his death. Others, including Callimachus, say that he tried to rape Artemis, who transfixed him with her arrows, and he was depicted in the sky because of the passion that they shared for hunting.
According to Istros,* Artemis loved Orion and is supposed to have come close to marrying him. But Apollo was annoyed by this, and reproached the goddess repeatedly but to no effect. On noticing Orion swimming so far out one day that only his head could be seen, he bet Artemis that she would be unable to shoot an arrow into the dark object that could be seen in the sea. Since she was anxious to be regarded as a most skilful archer, she shot off an arrow and pierced Orion’s head. When the waves washed his body ashore, Artemis felt great remorse at having shot him, and shedding many a tear over his death, she placed him among the constellations, so it is thought. As to what Artemis did after his death, we will speak of that when recounting her stories.
Commentary
This imposing figure in the sky is already identified as Orion in the Homeric epics. ‘Mighty Orion’ is mentioned among the constellations on the shield of Achilles (Il. 18.486), and the neighbouring star Sirius is described as his dog (Il. 22.27–9). Both then and later, he was renowned above all as a hunter. Odysseus sees him in the Underworld driving ghostly beasts over the asphodel, with a bronze cudgel in his hands (Od. 11.572 ff.), and the Bear in the heavens is said to be keeping a wary eye on him (Od. 5.273–4). Starting with the dog-star and then the constellation of which it came to form part, a hunting-scene was constructed in which he can be seen continuing his favourite activity in the sky too, as he chases after admittedly modest prey, the Hare.
During his life on earth, Orion was associated primarily with Boeotia in east-central Greece, but he was also said to have gone hunting on the Greek islands, and indeed to have benefited the inhabitants of many places by clearing them of wild beasts (Corinna 673 PMG). In the course of time, his main stories were ordered into a biographical narrative, as summarized in similar terms by Hyginus and Apollodorus (1.4.3–4): he starts his life in Boeotia, and then travels to the island of Chios and further abroad, before becoming a hunting-companion of Artemis on Crete, where he finally meets his death. His myths centre around his activities as a hunter, and around the most notable features of his character, a tendency to violence and lack of self-control, for he always continued to be pictured as a rather crude and primitive figure, by comparison to more sophisticated heroes like Perseus and Theseus. On Chios, he thus clears the island of wild beasts and snakes, but goes on to rape the king’s daughter; in the version that may well come closest to the earliest tradition, she is promised to him in marriage as a reward for his services, and he finally turns to violence when the king shrinks from fulfilling his side of the bargain, being revolted at the thought of having such a man as his son-in-law (Parthenius 30).
This tendency to excess is also a central factor in the stories relating to his death, which are our main concern in the present context. For he provokes his own death, either by taking his ambitions as a slayer of wild beasts to such an extreme that he boasts that he will slay every one of them, or because he dares to lay hands on the goddess Artemis. Although the Odyssey (5.121–4) states that she killed him with her arrows because the gods disapproved of his love affair with the goddess Eos, he becomes a hunting-companion of Artemis in the subsequent tradition, and that is a vital element in the accounts of his death, which fall into three categories.
(i) While he is hunting on Crete with Artemis and her mother Leto, he threatens to kill every wild beast on the earth, provoking Earth to cause his death by sending a huge scorpion against him; but he is then placed in the sky by Zeus at the request of Artemis and Leto. Such was the account offered by Eratosthenes, who apparently used the Hesiodic Astronomy (a work written after Hesiod’s lifetime) as the source for his narrative, although we cannot be certain that the catasterism was already included in that work. This remained the dominant tradition thereafter. The idea that Orion was killed by a scorpion was not derived from anything in his standard mythology, but was suggested by the position that his constellation occupies in relation to the Scorpion in the sky, which rises as Orion sets, and thus seems to pursue him through the sky. In Ovid’s version (Fasti 5.537 ff.), the scorpion attacks Leto, and Orion meets his death when he stands in the way to protect her; and it is Leto who places him in the heavens. There were also versions in which Artemis and Leto share Earth’s anger at Orion’s boast (schol. Germ.), or even send the scorpion themselves (schol. Nicander Ther. 15).
(ii) Or else Orion provoked his death by trying to rape Artemis. Hyginus mentions that Callimachus described her as having shot him with her arrows for that reason, but does not make clear whether that poet went on to explain how he came to be placed in the sky. Aratus (635 ff.) recounts that Artemis punished him by splitting open a hill to send the scorpion against him, just as Earth was supposed to have done, but he was apparently not the inventor of this hybrid version of the myth, if the mythographer Palaiphatos, who also reports it (Incredible Stories 51), can be rightly dated to the fourth century. Although Aratus remarks that Orion can be seen fleeing from the scorpion in the sky, he does not explain how Orion came to be placed there. Eratosthenes cited Aratus’s story as an alternative account of the death of Orion, adding that the gods had commemorated the episode by placing him and the scorpion in the sky.
(iii) Hyginus also records an exceptional account in which Orion commits no offence, at least in the conventional sense of the word, and the scorpion makes no appearance. In this deliberately unconventional version, invented by the poet Istros (mid third century), Artemis is said to have fallen in love with Orion, much to the disapproval of her brother Apollo, who incited her to shoot him without realizing what she is aiming at; and filled with remorse afterwards, she placed him in the sky.