Orion (Greek: or ,
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in...
:
Orion) was a giant
huntsmanHunting is the practice of pursuing living animals for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...
of
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
whom
ZeusZeus is the King of the Gods in Greek mythology. Zeus was viewed as a king who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony, he assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods...
placed among the stars as the
constellation of OrionOrion, often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the largest, most conspicuous, and most recognizable constellations in the night sky...
.
Ancient sources tell several different stories about Orion. There are two major versions of his birth and several versions of his death. The most important recorded episodes are his birth somewhere in
BoeotiaBoeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the...
, his visit to
ChiosChios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
where he met
MeropeMerope was the name of several, probably unrelated, characters in Greek mythology.* Merope , one of the Heliades, daughter of Helios and Clymene* Merope , foster mother of Oedipus, wife of Polybus...
and was blinded by her father,
OenopionIn Greek mythology, Oenopion , son of Dionysus and Ariadne,
, the recovery of his sight at
LemnosLemnos is an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. It is part of the Greek prefecture of Lesbos and has a considerable area, about 477 km². Lemnos is mostly flat , but the west, and especially the northwest part, is rough and mountainous...
, his hunting with
ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron < Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
on
CreteCrete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at . Crete is one of the 13 peripheries of Greece and covers the same area as the Greek region of Crete from before the 1987 administrative reform...
, his death by the bow of Artemis or of the giant scorpion which became
ScorpioScorpius, formerly sometimes Scorpio, is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for scorpion, and its symbol is . It lies between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east...
, and his elevation to the heavens. Most ancient sources omit some of these episodes and several tell only one. These various incidents may originally have been independent, unrelated stories and it is impossible to tell whether omissions are simple brevity or represent a real disagreement.
In Greek literature he first appears as a great hunter in
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
's epic the
OdysseyThe Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon. Indeed it is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of...
, where
OdysseusOdysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey...
sees his shade in the
underworldUnderworld is a place in religion and mythology where the souls of the recently departed go. It is the realm of death.-Crime:Underworld is also a generic term which describes mafia or terrorist groups, which pressurise the government of a certain country or state by means of money, terror or...
. The bare bones of his story are told by the
HellenisticHellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BC to about 146 BC ; note, however that Koine Greek language and Hellenistic philosophy and religion are also indisputably elements of the Roman era until Late Antiquity...
and Roman collectors of myths, but there is no extant literary version of his adventures comparable, for example, to that of
JasonJason was a late ancient Greek mythological hero, famous as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus...
in
Apollonius of RhodesApollonius Rhodius, also known as Apollonius of Rhodes , early 3rd century BCE - after 246 BCE, was a librarian at the Library of Alexandria...
'
Argonautica or
EuripidesEuripides was the lastof the three great tragedians of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias. Eighteen or nineteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete...
'
MedeaMedea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children: Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
; the entry in
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's
FastiThe Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8...
for May 11 is a poem on the birth of Orion, but that is one version of a single story. The surviving fragments of legend have provided a fertile field for speculation about Greek prehistory and myth.
Orion served several roles in
ancient GreekAncient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth...
culture. The story of the adventures of Orion, the hunter, is the one on which we have the most evidence (and even on that not very much); he is also the personification of the constellation of the same name; he was venerated as a
heroHero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" refers to a man who was fighting on either side during the Trojan War...
, in the Greek sense, in the region of Boeotia; and there is one
etiologicalEtiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....
passage which says that Orion was responsible for the present shape of the Straits of
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, comprising an autonomous region of Italy. Minor islands around it, such as the Aeolian Islands, are part of Sicily...
.
Homer and Hesiod
Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC. In
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
's
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
Orion is described as a constellation, and the star
SiriusSirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...
is mentioned as his dog. In the
OdysseyThe Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon. Indeed it is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of...
, 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 the
Goddess DawnEos is, in Greek mythology, the Titan goddess of the dawn, who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanus, the Ocean that surrounds the world, to herald her brother Helios, the sun....
, as slain by
ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron < Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
, and as the most handsome of the earthborn. In the
Works and DaysWorks and Days is a didactic poem of some 800 verses written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts...
of
HesiodHesiod was a Greek oral poet and is often identified as the first economist. The time period in which he lived is uncertain, but leading scholars favor the eighth century BC for when Hesiod lived...
, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year.
The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the
Astronomy; simple references to Hesiod will refer to this, unless otherwise stated. This version is known through the work of a Hellenistic author on the constellations; he gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod's discourse on Orion. According to this version, Orion was the son of the sea-god
PoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, storms, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and Euryale, daughter of
MinosIn Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of pre-Hellene Crete has been named after him...
, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of
ChiosChios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of
OenopionIn Greek mythology, Oenopion , son of Dionysus and Ariadne,
, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to
LemnosLemnos is an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. It is part of the Greek prefecture of Lesbos and has a considerable area, about 477 km². Lemnos is mostly flat , but the west, and especially the northwest part, is rough and mountainous...
where
HephaestusHephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
— the lame smith-god — had his forge. Hephaestus told his servant,
CedalionIn Greek mythology, Cedalion or Kedalion was a servant of Hephaestus in Lemnos. According to one tradition, he was Hephaestus's tutor, with whom Hera fostered her son on Naxos to teach him smithcraft...
, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where
HeliosIn Greek mythology, the sun was personified as Helios . Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...
, 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. Orion's next journey took him to
CreteCrete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at . Crete is one of the 13 peripheries of Greece and covers the same area as the Greek region of Crete from before the 1987 administrative reform...
where he hunted with the goddess
ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron < Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
and her mother
LetoIn Greek mythology, Lĕtṓ is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe:. Leto was the titan goddess of being unseen. Kos claimed her birthplace...
, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother
EarthGaia is the primal Greek titan personifying the Earth, the Greek version of "Mother Nature", of which the earliest refer to the term is the Mycenaean Greek ma-ka , "Mother Gaia", written in Linear B syllabic script.Gaia...
objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked
ZeusZeus is the King of the Gods in Greek mythology. Zeus was viewed as a king who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony, he assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods...
to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero's death, added the
ScorpionScorpius, formerly sometimes Scorpio, is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for scorpion, and its symbol is . It lies between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east...
to the heavens as well.
Other sources
Although Orion has a few lines in both Homeric poems and in the
Works and Days, most of the stories about him are recorded in incidental allusions and in fairly obscure later writings. No great poet standardized the legend. The ancient sources for Orion's legend are mostly notes in the margins of ancient poets (scholia) or compilations by later scholars, the equivalent of modern reference works or encyclopedias; even the legend from Hesiod's
Astronomy survives only in one such compilation. In several cases, including the summary of the
Astronomy, although the surviving work bears the name of a famous scholar, such as Apollodorus of Athens,
EratosthenesEratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, elegiac poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist....
, or
Gaius Julius HyginusGaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...
, what survives is either an ancient forgery or an abridgement of the original compilation by a later writer of dubious competence; editors of these texts suggest that they may have borne the names of great scholars because they were abridgments, or even pupil's notes, based on the works of the scholars.
The margin of the Empress
EudociaAelia Eudocia Augusta , wife of Theodosius II, East Roman emperor, was born in Athens.She was the daughter of the sophist Leontius, from whom she received a thorough training in literature and rhetoric...
's copy of the Iliad has a note summarizing a Hellenistic poet who tells a different story of Orion's birth. Here the gods
ZeusZeus is the King of the Gods in Greek mythology. Zeus was viewed as a king who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony, he assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods...
,
HermesHermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and additionally as a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia...
and
PoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, storms, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
come to visit
Hyrieus*In Greek mythology, Hyrieus was the father of Nycteus and Lycus, and the son of Alcyone, one of the Pleiades, and Poseidon.*Another mythological Hyrieus, the eponym of Hyria in Boeotia, was childless and a widower when he became the father of Orion....
of
TanagraTanagra is a community north of Athens in Boeotia, not far from Thebes, that was noted in antiquity for its mass-produced mold-cast and fired terracotta figurines: see Tanagra figurine. Pausanias mentions in its location the ancient city of Graea, eponymous of the Graikoi, a Boeotian tribe whose...
, who roasts a whole bull for them. When they offer him a favor, he asks for the birth of sons. The gods take the bull's hide and ejaculate or urinate into it and bury it in the earth, then tell him to dig it up ten months later. When he does, he finds Orion; this explains why Orion is earthborn.
A second full telling (even shorter than the summary of Hesiod) is in a Roman-era collection of myths; the account of Orion is based largely on the mythologist and poet
Pherecydes of LerosPherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...
. Here Orion is described as earthborn and enormous in stature. This version also mentions Poseidon and Euryale as his parents. It adds a first marriage to
SideSide was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...
before his marriage to Merope. All that is known about Side is that
HeraHera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of classical Greek Mythology. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. In Roman mythology, Juno was the equivalent mythical character. The cow, and later, the peacock were sacred to her. Argos was her...
threw her into
HadesHades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades"...
for rivalling her in beauty. It also gives a different version of Orion's death than the
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
:
EosEos is, in Greek mythology, the Titan goddess of the dawn, who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanus, the Ocean that surrounds the world, to herald her brother Helios, the sun....
, the Dawn, fell in love with Orion and took him to
DelosThe island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
where Artemis killed him.
Another narrative on the constellations, three paragraphs long, is from a Latin writer whose brief notes have come down to us under the name of Hyginus. It begins with the oxhide story of Orion's birth, which this source ascribes to
CallimachusCallimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar of the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of ancient Egyptian Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
and Aristomachus, and sets the location at
ThebesThebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...
or Chios. Hyginus has two versions. In one of them he omits Poseidon; a modern critic suggests this is the original version.
The same source tells two stories of the death of Orion. The first says that because of his "living joined in too great a friendship" with Oenopion, he boasted to Artemis and
LetoIn Greek mythology, Lĕtṓ is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe:. Leto was the titan goddess of being unseen. Kos claimed her birthplace...
that he could kill anything which came from Earth. Earth objected and created the Scorpion. In the second story,
ApolloIn Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine, healing and plague; music, poetry, and the arts; and more...
objected to his sister Artemis's love for Orion, and, seeing Orion swimming with just his head visible, challenged her to shoot at that mark, which she hit, killing him. He connects Orion with several constellations, not just Scorpio. Orion chased
PleionePleione may refer to*Pleione , a figure in Greek mythology*Pleione , a star belonging to the Pleiades star cluster*Pleione , a genus mainly of ground orchids. Prefer to grow on tree-trunks and in rock crevices...
, the mother of the
PleiadesThe Pleiades , companions of Artemis, were the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione born on Mount Cyllene. They are the sisters of Calypso, Hyas, the Hyades, and the Hesperides...
, for seven years, until Zeus intervened and raised all of them to the stars. In
Works and Days, Orion chases the Pleiades themselves.
Canis MinorCanis Minor is a small constellation. It was included in the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and is still included among the 88 modern constellations...
and
Canis MajorCanis Major is a constellation, included in the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and still included among the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin for 'greater dog', and is commonly represented as one of the dogs following Orion the hunter...
are his dogs, the one in front is called
ProcyonProcyon is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor. To the naked eye, it appears to be a single star, the seventh brightest in the night sky with a visual apparent magnitude of 0.34...
. They chase
LepusLepus is a constellation lying just south of the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for hare. Lepus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations; although the hare does not represent any particular figure in...
, the hare, although Hyginus says some critics thought this too base a prey for the noble Orion and have him pursuing
TaurusTaurus is one of the constellations of the zodiac. The name of the constellation is from the word "taurus" which is the Latin word for a "bull". The astrological symbol for the constellation is , a stylized bull's head...
, the bull, instead. A Renaissance mythographer adds other names for Orion's dogs: Leucomelaena,
Maera-Mythology and religion:*The name Maera is used by several beings in Greek mythology:**Maera was hound of Icarius, and was turned into the dog star.**Maera was the daughter of Proetus, mother of Locrus by Zeus, Maera was a friend of Artemis'...
, Dromis, Cisseta, Lampuris, Lycoctonus, Ptoophagus, Arctophonus.
Variants
There are numerous variants in other authors. Most of these are incidental references in poems and scholiasts. The Roman poet Vergil shows Orion as a giant wading through the
Aegean SeaThe Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
with the waves breaking against his shoulders; rather than, as the mythographers have it, walking on the water. There are several references to Hyrieus as the father of Orion that connect him to various places in
BoeotiaBoeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the...
, including Hyria; this may well be the original story (although not the first attested), since Hyrieus is presumably the
eponymAn eponym is the name of a person, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named. One who is referred to as eponymous is someone who gives his or her name to something, e.g...
of Hyria. He is also called Oeneus, although he is not the
Calydonian OeneusIn Greek mythology, Oeneus, or Oineus was a Calydonian king, son of Porthaon, husband of Althaea and father of Deianira, Meleager and Melanippe. He introduced winemaking to Aetolia, which he learned from Dionysus. The sons of his brother Agrius deposed him but Diomedes put Oeneus back on the...
. Other ancient scholia say, as Hesiod does, that Orion was the son of Poseidon and his mother was a daughter of Minos; but they call the daughter Brylle or Hyeles. There are two versions where Artemis killed Orion, either with her arrows or by producing the Scorpion. In the second variant, Orion died of the Scorpion's sting as he does in Hesiod. Although Orion does not defeat the Scorpion in any version, several variants have it die from its wounds. Artemis is given various motives. One is that Orion boasted of his beast-killing and challenged her to a contest with the
discusDiscus may refer to:*Distilled Spirits Council of the United States , the national trade association representing producers and marketers of distilled spirits sold in the United States*Discus , a genus of snails in the family Discidae...
. Another is that he assaulted either Artemis or the Hyperborean maiden
OpisOpis was an ancient Babylonian city on the Tigris, not far from modern Baghdad. The precise location of Opis has not been established, but from the Akkadian and Greek texts, it was located on the east bank of the Tigris, near the Diyala River.-History:Opis is mentioned for the first time at the...
in her band of huntresses.
AratusAratus was a Greek didactic poet. His major extant work is his hexameter poem Phaenomena , the first half of which is a verse setting of a lost work of the same name by Eudoxus of Cnidus. It describes the constellations and other celestial phenomena...
's brief description, in his
Astronomy, conflates the elements of the myth: according to Aratus, Orion attacks Artemis while hunting on
Chios, and the Scorpion kills him there.
NicanderNicander of Colophon , Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, , near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. He flourished under Attalus III of Pergamum.He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete...
, in his
Theriaca, has the scorpion of ordinary size and hiding under a small (
oligos) stone. Most versions of the story that continue after Orion's death tell of the gods raising Orion and the Scorpion to the stars, but even here a variant exists: Ancient poets differed greatly as to who Aesculapius brought back from the dead; the Argive epic poet
TelesarchusTelesarchus or Telesarch is a little-attested Greek author who wrote a work on the early history of Argolis, called the Argolicum or Argolica. He is mentioned by Sextus Empiricus and scholia on Homer and on Euripides' Alcestis. The availability of his writings was limited even among the Romans....
is quoted as saying in a scholion that Aesculapius resurrected Orion. Other ancient authorities are quoted anonymously that Aesculapius healed Orion after he was blinded by Oenopion.
The story of Orion and Oenopion also varies. One source refers to Merope as the wife of Oenopion and not his daughter. Another refers to Merope as the daughter of Minos and not of Oenopion. The longest version (a page in the Loeb) is from a collection of melodramatic plots drawn up by an Alexandrian poet for the Roman
Cornelius GallusGaius Cornelius Gallus , Roman poet, orator and politician, was born of humble parents at Forum Livii in Italy.At an early age he moved to Rome, where he was taught by the same master as Virgil and Varius Rufus. Virgil, who dedicated one of his eclogues to him, was in great measure indebted to...
to make into Latin verse. It describes Orion as 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. Oenopion does not want to marry her to someone like Orion, and eventually Orion, in frustration, breaks into her bedchamber and rapes her. The text implies that Oenopion blinds him on the spot.
LucianLucian of Samosata was an Assyrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.-Biography:...
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.
Latin sources add that Oenopion was the son of Dionysus. Dionysus sent
satyrIn Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In mythology they are often associated with pipe playing....
s to put Orion into a deep sleep so he could be blinded. One source tells the same story but converts Oenopion into
MinosIn Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of pre-Hellene Crete has been named after him...
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
CyclopsIn Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops , is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is cyclopes , though the conventional plural cyclopses is also used in English...
' hammer, placing a Cyclops as a guide on his shoulder; it does not mention Cabeiri or Lemnos—this is presumably the story of Cedalion recast. Both Hephaestus and the Cyclopes were said to make thunderbolts; they are combined in other sources. One scholion, on a Latin poem, explains that Hephaestus gave Orion a horse.
Giovanni BoccaccioGiovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
cites a lost Latin writer for the story that Orion and Candiope were son and daughter of Oenopion, king of Sicily. While the virgin huntsman Orion was sleeping in a cave, Venus seduced him; as he left the cave, he saw his sister shining as she crossed in front of it. He ravished her; when his father heard of this, he banished Orion. Orion consulted an oracle, which told him that if he went east, he would regain the glory of kingship. Orion, Candiope, and their son Hippologus sailed to Thrace, "a province eastward from Sicily". There he conquered the inhabitants, and became known as the son of Neptune. His son begat the
DryasDryas is the name of nine characters in Greek mythology1. Dryas was the father of King Lycurgus, king of the Edoni in Thrace; "Shepherd of the People", Nestor calls him...
mentioned in
StatiusPublius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE, , born in Naples, Italy. Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major...
.
Cult and popular appreciation
In Ancient Greece, Orion had a
hero cultHero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" refers to a man who was fighting on either side during the Trojan War...
in the region of
BoeotiaBoeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the...
. The number of places associated with his birth suggest that it was widespread. Hyria, the most frequently mentioned, was in the territory of
TanagraTanagra is a community north of Athens in Boeotia, not far from Thebes, that was noted in antiquity for its mass-produced mold-cast and fired terracotta figurines: see Tanagra figurine. Pausanias mentions in its location the ancient city of Graea, eponymous of the Graikoi, a Boeotian tribe whose...
. A feast of Orion was held at Tanagra as late as the Roman Empire. They had a tomb of Orion most likely at the foot of Mount Cerycius (now Mount Tanagra).
Maurice BowraSir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954....
argues that Orion was a national hero of the Boeotians, much as
Castor and PolluxCastor and Pollux or Polydeuces were twin brothers in Greek and Roman mythology and collectively known as the Dioskouroi...
were for the Dorians. He bases this claim on the Athenian epigram on the
Battle of CoroneaThe Battle of Coronea can refer to:*Battle of Coronea *Battle of Coronea...
in which a hero gave the Boeotian army an oracle, then fought on their side and defeated the Athenians.
The
BoeotiaBoeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the...
n school of epic poetry was chiefly concerned with the genealogies of the gods and heroes; later writers elaborated this web. Several other myths are attached to Orion in this way: A papyrus fragment of the Boeotian poet
CorinnaCorinna or Korinna was an Ancient Greek poet, traditionally attributed to the 6th century BC. According to ancient sources such as Plutarch and Pausanias, she came from Tanagra in Boeotia, where she was a teacher and rival to the better-known Theban poet Pindar...
gives Orion fifty sons (a traditional number). This included the
oracularAn oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinion. It may also be a revealed prediction or precognition of the future, from deities, that is spoken through another object or life-form ....
hero Acraephen, who, she sings, gave a response to
AsopusAsopus or Asôpos is the name of five different rivers in Greece and Turkey and also in Greek mythology the name of the gods of those rivers.-The rivers:...
regarding Asopus' daughters who were abducted by the gods.
CorinnaCorinna or Korinna was an Ancient Greek poet, traditionally attributed to the 6th century BC. According to ancient sources such as Plutarch and Pausanias, she came from Tanagra in Boeotia, where she was a teacher and rival to the better-known Theban poet Pindar...
sang of Orion conquering and naming all the land of the dawn. Bowra argues that Orion was believed to have delivered oracles as well, probably at a different shrine. Hyginus says that
HylasIn Greek mythology, Hylas was the son of King Theiodamas of the Dryopians. Other sources such as Ovid state that Hylas' father was Heracles and his mother was the nymph Melite, or that his mother was the wife of Theiodamus, whose adulterous affair with Heracles caused the war between him and her...
's mother was Menodice, daughter of Orion. Another mythographer, Liberalis, tells of
Menippe and MetiocheIn Greek mythology, Menippe and Metioche were daughters of Orion. After Orion was killed they were brought up by their mother, and Athena taught them the art of weaving and Aphrodite gave them beauty. Once their homeland Aonia at the base of Mt...
, daughters of Orion, who sacrificed themselves for their country's good and were transformed into comets.
Orion also has
etiologicalEtiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....
connection to the city of
MessinaMessina is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, Italy and the capital of the province of Messina. It has a population of c. 240,000 inhabitants in the city proper and about 500,000 in the metropolitan area...
in Sicily.
Diodorus of SicilyDiodorus Siculus , was a Greek historian who lived in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca historica...
wrote a history of the world up to his own time (the beginning of the reign of
AugustusGaius Julius Caesar Augustus was the sole ruler of the Roman Empire from January 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
[The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian after 45 BC...]
). He starts with the gods and the heroes. At the end of this part of the work, he tells the story of Orion and two wonder-stories of his mighty earth-works in
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, comprising an autonomous region of Italy. Minor islands around it, such as the Aeolian Islands, are part of Sicily...
. One tells how he aided
ZanclusZanclus is the legendary first king of the Sicilian city of Messina. He is mentioned in an etiological passage by Diodorus of Sicily, and has become a symbol of Messina. In modern Italian, the form is given as Zanclo....
, the founder of Zancle (the former name for Messina), by building the promontory which forms the harbor. The other, which Diodorus ascribes to Hesiod, relates that there was once a broad sea between Sicily and the mainland. Orion built the whole Peloris, the
Punta del Faro-Historical significance:As the ancient Pelorus, Punta del Faro is one of the most celebrated promontories of Sicily, forming the northeastern extremity of the whole island, and one of the three promontories which were considered to give to it the triangular form from which it derived the name of...
, and the temple to Poseidon at the tip, after which he settled in
EuboeaFor the mythological figure, see Euboea Euboea is the second largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. It is separated from the mainland of Greece by the narrow Euripus Strait. In general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island; it is about long, and varies in...
. He was then "numbered among the stars of heaven and thus won for himself immortal remembrance". The Renaissance historian and mathematician
Francesco MaurolicoFrancesco Maurolico was an Italian mathematician and astronomer...
, who came from Messina, identified the remains of a temple of Orion near the present Messina Cathedral. Maurolico also designed an ornate fountain, built by the sculptor
Giovanni Angelo MontorsoliGiovanni Antonio Montorsoli , also known as Fra Montorsoli, as Michele Agnolo and as Angelo di Michele d' Angelo da Poggibonsi, was an Italian sculptor.-Biography:...
in 1547, in which Orion is a central figure, symbolizing the Emperor Charles V, also a master of the sea and restorer of Messina; Orion is still a popular symbol of the city.
Images of Orion in classical art are difficult to recognize, and clear examples are rare. There are several ancient Greek images of club-carrying hunters that could represent Orion, but such generic examples could equally represent an archetypal "hunter", or indeed
HeraclesHeracles , born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
. Some claims have been made that other Greek art represents specific aspects of the Orion myth. A tradition of this type has been discerned in 5th century BC
Greek potteryAs the result of its relative durability, pottery is a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and because there is so much of it it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society...
—
John BeazleyJohn Davidson Beazley was an English classical scholar.Beazley attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a close friend of the poet James Elroy Flecker. After graduating in 1907, Beazley was a student and tutor in Classics at Christ Church, and in 1925 he became Lincoln Professor of...
identified a scene of Apollo,
Delian palmA palm branch , usually refers to the leaves of the Arecaceae ....
in hand, revenging Orion for the attempted rape of Artemis, while another scholar has identified a scene of Orion attacking Artemis as she is revenged by a snake (a counterpart to the scorpion) in a funerary group—supposedly symbolizing the hope that even the criminal Orion could be made immortal, as well as an astronomical scene in which
CephalusCephalus is an Ancient Greek name, used both for the hero-figure in Greek mythology and carried as a theophoric name by historical persons. The word kephalos is Greek for "head", perhaps used here because Cephalus was the founding "head" of a great family that includes Odysseus...
is thought to stand in for Orion and his constellation, also reflecting this system of iconography. Also, a tomb frieze in
TarantoTaranto is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy...
(ca. 300 BC) may show Orion attacking Opis. But the earliest surviving clear depiction of Orion in classical art is Roman, from the depictions of the Underworld scenes of the Odyssey discovered at the
Esquiline HillThe Esquiline Hill is one of the celebrated Seven Hills of Rome. Its southern-most cusp is the Oppius .-Etymology:The origin of the name Esquilino is still under much debate. One view is that the Hill was named after the abundance of holm-oaks, exculi, that resided there...
(50–40 BC). Orion is also seen on a 4th century bas-relief, currently affixed to a wall in the
PortoPorto is the neighborhood of Naples, southern Italy, that includes the area adjacent to the main passenger terminals of the port of Naples, but does not extend much farther than that to the eastern freight facilities of the port...
neighborhood of Naples. The constellation Orion rises in November, the end of the sailing season, and was associated with stormy weather, and this characterization extended to the mythical Orion—the bas-relief may be associated with the sailors of the city.
Renaissance
Mythographers have discussed Orion at least since the
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
of classical learning; the Renaissance interpretations were allegorical. In the 14th century, Boccaccio interpreted the oxhide story as representing human conception; the hide is the womb, Neptune the moisture of semen, Jupiter its heat, and Mercury the female coldness; he also explained Orion's death at the hands of the moon-goddess as the Moon producing winter storms. The 16th-century Italian mythographer
Natalis ComesNatale Conti or Latin Natalis Comes, also Natalis de Comitibus and French Noël le Comte was an Italian mythographer, poet, humanist and historian. His major work Mythologiae, ten books written in Latin, was first published in Venice in 1567 and became a standard source for classical mythology in...
interpreted the whole story of Orion as an
allegoryAllegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
of the evolution of a storm cloud: Begotten by air (Zeus), water (Poseidon), and the sun (Apollo), a storm cloud is diffused (Chios, which Comes derives from χέω, "pour out"), rises though the upper air (
Aëropeis a skyscraper in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Rising 31 stories to a height of 145.5 m, Aer is tallest building in the Tohoku region and was partially constructed by robots.-Overview:...
, as Comes spells Merope), chills (is blinded), and is turned into rain by the moon (Artemis). He also explains how Orion walked on the sea: "Since the subtler part of the water which is rarefied rests on the surface, it is said that Orion learned from his father how to walk on water." Similarly, Orion's conception made him a symbol of the
philosophical childThe filius philosophorum is a symbol in alchemy. In some texts it is equated with the philosopher's stone , but in others it assumes its own symbolic meanings...
, an allegory of philosophy springing from multiple sources, in the Renaissance as in alchemical works, with some variations. The 16th-century German alchemist
Michael MaierMichael Maier was a German physician and counsellor to Rudolf II Habsburg and a learned alchemist.- Biography :Maier was born in Rendsburg, Holstein, in 1568. He studied philosophy and medicine at Rostock , Frankfurt , and Padua. He attained in 1596 a doctorate in medicine at Basel, and returned...
lists the fathers as Apollo, Vulcan and Mercury, and the 18th-century French alchemist
Antoine-Joseph PernetyAntoine-Joseph Pernety, known as Dom Pernety was a French writer. At various times he was a Benedictine, and librarian of Frederic the Great of Prussia...
gave them as Jupiter, Neptune and Mercury.
Modern
Modern mythographers have seen the story of Orion as a way to access local folk tales and
culticIn traditional usage, the cult of a religion, quite apart from its sacred writings , its theology or myths, or the personal faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety. Cult in this primary sense is...
practices directly without the interference of ancient high culture; several of them have explained Orion, each through his own interpretation of
GreekAncient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth...
prehistory and of how
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
represents it. There are some points of general agreement between them: for example, that the attack on Opis is an attack on Artemis, for Opis is one of the names of Artemis.
There was a movement in the late nineteenth century to interpret all the Boeotian heroes as merely personifications of the constellations; there has since come to be wide agreement since that the myth of Orion existed before there was a constellation named for him. Homer, for example, mentions Orion, the Hunter, and Orion, the constellation, but never confuses the two. Once Orion was recognized as a constellation, astronomy in turn affected the myth. The story of Side may well be a piece of astronomical mythology. The Greek word
side means
pomegranateA pomegranate is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing to between five and eight meters tall. The pomegranate is native to the Iranian Plateau, and has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times...
, which bears fruit while Orion, the constellation, can be seen in the night sky. Rose suggests she is connected with Sidae in Boeotia, and that the pomegranate, as a sign of the Underworld, is connected with her descent there.
The 19th-century German classical scholar
Erwin RohdeErwin Rohde was one of the great German classical scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries.Rohde was born in Hamburg and was the son of a doctor. Outside of antiquarian circles, Rohde is known today chiefly for his friendship and correspondence with fellow-philologist Friedrich Nietzsche...
viewed Orion as an example of the Greeks erasing the line between the gods and mankind. That is, if Orion was in the heavens, other mortals could hope to be also.
The Hungarian mythographer
Karl KerényiOne of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology, Károly Kerényi was born in Temesvár, Austria-Hungary , and then lived in Hungary...
, one of the founders of the modern study of Greek mythology, wrote about Orion in
Gods of the Greeks (1951). Kerényi portrays Orion as a giant of
TitanicIn Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....
vigor and criminality, born outside his mother as were
TityosTityos was a giant from Greek mythology. He was the son of Elara; his father was Zeus. Zeus hid Elara from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. This was where she gave birth to Tityos, who is also sometimes said to be the son of Gaia, the earth goddess, for this reason...
or
DionysusDionysus or Dionysos is the ancient Greek god of wine, wine cups, wineskin, grapes, theater, and fertility. The god who inspires ritual madness, joyful worship, and ecstasy, carnivals, celebration and a major figure of Greek mythology. He is included as one of the twelve Olympians in some lists...
. Kerényi places great stress on the variant in which Merope is the wife of Oenopion. He sees this as the remnant of a lost form of the myth in which Merope was Orion's mother (converted by later generations to his stepmother and then to the present forms). Orion's blinding is therefore parallel to that of Aegypius and
OedipusOedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
.
In
Dionysus (1976), Kerényi portrays Orion as a shamanic hunting hero, surviving from Minoan times (hence his association with Crete). Kerényi derives Hyrieus (and Hyria) from the Cretan dialect word
ὕρον - hyron, meaning "beehive", which survives only in ancient dictionaries. From this association he turns Orion into a representative of the old
meadMead or honey wine is an alcoholic beverage, made from honey and water via fermentation with yeast. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild ale to that of a strong wine. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling; it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.Depending on local traditions and...
-drinking cultures, overcome by the wine masters Oenopion and Oeneus. (The Greek for "wine" is
oinos.) Fontenrose cites a source stating that Oenopion taught the Chians how to make wine before anybody else knew how.
Joseph FontenroseJoseph Eddy Fontenrose was an American classical scholar. He was centrally interested in Greek religion and Greek mythology; he was also an expert on John Steinbeck, commenting on the mythology in Steinbeck's work....
wrote
Orion : the Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress (1981) to show Orion as the type specimen of a variety of grotesque hero. Fontenrose views him as similar to
CúchulainnCú Chulainn , also spelled Cúchulainn, Cúchulain, Cúchullain or Cú Chulaind, is an Irish mythological hero who appears in the stories of the Ulster Cycle, as well as in Scottish and Manx folklore...
, that is, stronger, larger, and more
potent*Vair#Potent for the heraldic fur*Warren Potent for the Australian Olympic medalist in shootingSee also:*Potency...
than ordinary men and the violent lover of the Divine Huntress. Orion has also been identified with
ActaeonIn Greek mythology, Actaeon , son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. He was trained by the centaur Cheiron like Achilles....
,
LeucippusIn Greek mythology, Leucippus, son of Gorgophone and Perieres, was the father of Phoebe and Hilaeira, and also of Arsinoe, mother of Asclepius, by his wife Philodice, daughter of Inachus....
(son of
OenomausIn Greek mythology, King Oenomaus of Pisa, the father of Hippodamia, was the son of Ares, either by the naiad Harpina or by Sterope, one of the Pleiades, whom some identify as his consort instead...
),
CephalusCephalus is an Ancient Greek name, used both for the hero-figure in Greek mythology and carried as a theophoric name by historical persons. The word kephalos is Greek for "head", perhaps used here because Cephalus was the founding "head" of a great family that includes Odysseus...
, Teiresias, and
ZeusZeus is the King of the Gods in Greek mythology. Zeus was viewed as a king who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony, he assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods...
as the lover of
CallistoIn Greek mythology, Callisto was a nymph of Artemis. Transformed into a bear and set among the stars, she was the bear-mother of the Arcadians, through her son Arcas.-Myth:...
. Fontenrose also sees Eastern parallels in the figures of Aqhat,
AttisAttis was the consort of Cybele in Phrygian, Lydian and Greek mythology. His priests were eunuchs, as explained by origin myths pertaining to Attis and castration...
, Dumuzi,
GilgameshGilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk , ruling circa 2700 BC, according to the Sumerian king list...
,
DushyantaDushyant or Dushyanta was a great king in classical Indian literature and mythology. He is the husband of Shakuntala and the father of the Emperor Bharat. He appears in the Mahabarata and in Kalidasa's play The Recognition of Sakuntala .-Historical king:According to the Mahābhārata, Dushyanta is...
, and
PrajapatiIn Hinduism, Prajapati is a Hindu deity presiding over procreation, and protector of life. He appears as a creator deity or supreme God Viswakarma Vedic deities in RV 10 and in Brahmana literature...
(as pursuer of
UshasUshas , Sanskrit for "dawn", is a Vedic deity, and consequently a Hindu deity as well.Ushas is an exalted divinity in the Rig Veda, sometimes spoken of in the plural, "the Dawns." She is portrayed as welcoming birds and warding off evil spirits, and as a beautifully adorned young woman riding in a...
).
In
The Greek Myths (1955),
Robert GravesRobert Ranke Graves was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of historian Leopold von Ranke...
views Oenopion as his perennial Year-King, at the stage where the king pretends to die at the end of his term and appoints a substitute, in this case Orion, who actually dies in his place. His blindness is iconotropy from a picture of Odysseus blinding the
CyclopsIn Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops , is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is cyclopes , though the conventional plural cyclopses is also used in English...
, mixed with a purely Hellenic solar legend: the Sun-hero is captured and blinded by his enemies at dusk, but escapes and regains his sight at dawn, when all beasts flee him. Graves sees the rest of the myth as a syncretism of diverse stories. These include Gilgamesh and the Scorpion-Men, Set becoming a scorpion to kill Horus and the story of Aqhat and Yatpan from Ras Shamra, as well as a conjectural story of how the priestesses of Artemis Opis killed a visitor to their island of Ortygia. He compares Orion's birth from the bull's hide to a West African rainmaking charm and claims that the son of Poseidon should be a rainmaker.
Cultural references
The ancient Greek and Roman sources which tell more about Orion than his being a gigantic huntsman are mostly both dry and obscure, but poets do write of him: The brief passages in Aratus and Vergil are mentioned above.
PindarPindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved...
celebrates the
pancratistPancratium may be:* Pankration, a sport or martial art introduced in the Olympic games in 648 BC, and its modern version* Pancratium , a genus of flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae...
Melissus of Thebes "who was not granted the build of an Orion", but whose strength was still great.
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist...
translated Aratus in his youth; he made the Orion episode half again longer than it was in the Greek, adding the traditional Latin
toposTopos , in Latin locus , referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument...
of madness to Aratus's text. Cicero's
Aratea is one of the oldest Latin poems to come down to us as more than isolated lines; this episode may have established the technique of including
epylliaAn epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
in non-epic poems.
Orion is used by
HoraceQuintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
, who tells of his death at the hands of
DianaDiana was the goddess of the hunt, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and also of the moon in Roman mythology. In literature she was the equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis, though in cult beliefs she was Italic, not Greek, in origin...
/
ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron < Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
, and by
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, in his
FastiThe Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8...
for May 11, the middle day of the
LemuriaThe Lemuralia or Lemuria was a feast in the religion of ancient Rome during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes. The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae were propitiated with offerings of beans...
, when (in Ovid's time) the constellation Orion set with the sun. Ovid's episode tells the story of Hyrieus and the three gods, although Ovid is bashful about the climax; Ovid makes Hyrieus a poor man, which means the sacrifice of an entire ox is more generous. There is also a single mention of Orion in his
Art of LoveThe Ars amatoria is a poem in three books by the Roman poet Ovid. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Publication history:After a first publication of two of...
, as a sufferer from unrequited love: "Pale Orion wandered in the forest for Side."
StatiusPublius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE, , born in Naples, Italy. Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major...
mentions Orion four times in his
Thebaïd; twice as the constellation, a personification of storm, but twice as the ancestor of
DryasDryas is the name of nine characters in Greek mythology1. Dryas was the father of King Lycurgus, king of the Edoni in Thrace; "Shepherd of the People", Nestor calls him...
of Tanagra, one of the defenders of Thebes. The very late Greek epic poet
NonnusNonnus of Panopolis , was a Greek epic poet. He was a native of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, and probably lived at the end of the 4th or early 5th century....
mentions the oxhide story in brief, while listing the Hyrians in his Catalogue of the Boeotian army of Dionysius.
References since antiquity are fairly rare. At the beginning of the 17th century, French sculptor
Barthélemy PrieurBarthélemy Prieur was a French sculptor.Prieur was born to a Huguenot family in Berzieux, Champagne . He traveled to Italy, where he worked from 1564 to 1568 for Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy in Turin...
cast a bronze statue
Orion et Cédalion, some time between 1600 and 1611. This featured Orion with
CedalionIn Greek mythology, Cedalion or Kedalion was a servant of Hephaestus in Lemnos. According to one tradition, he was Hephaestus's tutor, with whom Hera fostered her son on Naxos to teach him smithcraft...
on his shoulder, in a depiction of the ancient legend of Orion recovering his sight; the sculpture is now displayed at the
LouvreThe Musée du Louvre , or officially the Grand Louvre — in English, the Louvre Museum or Great Louvre, or simply the Louvre — is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited museum in the world, and a historic monument. It is a central landmark of Paris, France and is located on the Right...
.
Nicolas PoussinNicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
painted
Paysage avec Orion aveugle cherchant le soleil (1658) ("Landscape with blind Orion seeking the sun"), after learning of the description by the 2nd-century Greek author
LucianLucian of Samosata was an Assyrian rhetorician, and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.-Biography:...
, of a picture of Orion recovering his sight. In the painting, he combined this description with Natalis Comes's 16th century interpretation of the same scene. Poussin need not have consulted Lucian directly; the passage is in the notes of the illustrated French translation of
PhilostratusPhilostratus, was the name of four Greek sophists of the Roman imperial period:# "Philostratus I": Very minor author, known only for a dialogue Nero, possibly written by Philostratus II....
'
Imagines which Poussin is known to have consulted. The Austrian
Daniel SeiterDaniel Seiter, Saiter, or Seyter was a Viennese born painter of the Baroque, who trained and worked in Italy.-Biography:According to Houbraken, he was born on the border of Switzerland and brought up in Vienna...
(active in Turin, Italy), painted
Diane auprès du cadavre d'Orion (c.1685) ("Diana next to Orion's corpse"), pictured above.
In
EndymionEndymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. Beginning famously with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", Endymion, like many epic poems in English , is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter...
(1818),
John KeatsJohn Keats was the last born of the English Romantic poets and, at 25, the youngest to die. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years...
includes the line
"Or blind Orion hungry for the morn", thought to be inspired by Poussin.
William HazlittWilliam Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is...
may have introduced Keats to the painting—he later wrote the essay "On Landscape of Nicholas Poussin", published in
Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners (1822).
Richard Henry HorneRichard Hengist Horne was and English poet and critic most famous for his poem Orion.-Early life:...
, writing in the generation after Keats and Hazlitt, penned the three volume epic poem
Orion in 1843. It went into at least ten editions and was reprinted by the
Scholartis PressScholartis Press is a small, private press in London, England, founded by Eric Partridge in 1927. The press closed in 1931, when the Great Depression began in Britain.-Writers published:...
in 1928. Science fiction author
Ben BovaBenjamin William Bova is an American science-fiction author and editor.-Personal life:Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University in Philadelphia, he married Rosa Cucinotta; they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce...
re-invented Orion as a time-traveling servant of various gods in a series of five novels.
Italian composer
Francesco CavalliFrancesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
wrote the opera, "L'Orione", in 1653. The story is set on the Greek island of
DelosThe island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
and focuses on Diana's love for Orion as well as on her rival, Aurora. Diana shoots Orion only after being tricked by Apollo into thinking him a sea monster—she then laments his death and searches for Orion in the underworld until he is elevated to the heavens.
Johann Christian BachJohann Christian Bach was a composer of the Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is sometimes referred to as 'the London Bach' or 'the English Bach', due to his time spent living in the British capital...
('the English Bach') wrote an opera, "Orion, or Diana Reveng'd", first presented at London's
Haymarket TheatreThe Theatre Royal Haymarket or Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre is a West End theatre in The Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
in 1763. Orion, sung by a
castratoA castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
, is in love with Candiope, the daughter of Oenopion, King of Arcadia but his arrogance has offended Diana. Diana's oracle forbids him to marry Candiope and foretells his glory and death. He bids a touching farewell to Candiope and marches off to his destiny. Diana allows him his victory and then kills him, offstage, with her arrow. In another aria, his mother, Retrea (Queen of Thebes), laments his death but ultimately sees his elevation to the heavens. The 2002 opera
Galileo GalileiGalileo Galilei is an opera based on excerpts from the life of Galileo Galilei which premiered in 2002 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Music by Philip Glass, libretto by Mary Zimmerman and Arnold Weinstein. The piece is presented in one act consisting of ten scenes without break.-Production Notes:All...
by American composer
Philip GlassPhilip Morris Glass is an American music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .Although his music is often, though controversially, described as...
includes an
opera within an operaA story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device or conceit in which one story is told during the action of another story. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
piece between Orion and Merope. The sunlight, which heals Orion's blindness, is an allegory of modern science. Philip Glass has also written a shorter work on Orion, as have
Tōru Takemitsuwas a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre...
,
Kaija SaariahoKaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by...
, and
John CaskenJohn Casken is an English composer, born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England.Casken read music at the University of Birmingham, studying composition and contemporary music with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. He then went on to study in Poland with Andrzej Dobrowolski on a Polish government...
.
David BedfordDavid Vickerman Bedford , is a British composer and musician. He has written and played popular as well as classical music....
's late-twentieth-century works are about the constellation rather than the mythical figure as he is an amateur astronomer.
The twentieth-century French poet
René CharRené Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
found the blind, lustful huntsman, both pursuer and pursued, a central symbol, as James Lawler has explained at some length in his 1978 work
René Char: the Myth and the Poem. French novelist
Claude SimonClaude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France.- Style and influences :...
likewise found Orion an apt symbol, in this case of the writer, as he explained in his
Orion aveugle of 1970. Marion Perret argues that Orion is a silent link in
T. S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot OM was an American-born poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J...
's
The Waste LandThe Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922...
(1922), connecting the lustful
ActaeonIn Greek mythology, Actaeon , son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. He was trained by the centaur Cheiron like Achilles....
/Sweeney to the blind Teiresias and, through Sirius, to the Dog "that's friend to men".
External links
- Theoi.com: Orion Excerpts from translations from Greek and Roman texts.
- Star Tales – Orion Constellation mythology.
- Natalis Comes
Natale Conti or Latin Natalis Comes, also Natalis de Comitibus and French Noël le Comte was an Italian mythographer, poet, humanist and historian. His major work Mythologiae, ten books written in Latin, was first published in Venice in 1567 and became a standard source for classical mythology in...
Mythologiae siue explicationis fabularum libri decem Scan of 1616 Padua edition, ed M. Antonius Tritonius, pr. Petropaulus Tozzius. of Boccaccio's Genealogiae; apparently scan of edition cited. .