Orion (mythology)

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In Greek mythology, Orion was a gigantic huntsman who was set amongst the stars as the constellation of the same name. If his myth was ever drawn up in a coherent form, as the myth of Heracles was, it has not survived. The remaining fragments of legend, recorded in different sources, and reflecting local stories from several places, have provided a fertile field for speculation about the prehistory of Greek myth.

Contents 1 Modern interpretations 2 Ancestry, origins, birth 3 Orion and Merope 3.1 Blinded Orion 3.1.1 Orion and the Pleiades 4 Orion at Lemnos 5 Orion and Eos 6 Death 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References

[edit] Modern interpretations

The gigantic^[1] figure of Orion (Greek Ὠρίων) of Greek mythology, provided the archetype of the primordial hunter in Greek culture.^[2] Orion was beloved of Eos, the Dawn, and was slain by Artemis, who set him in the sky.

In modern interpretations Orion ("mountain man" if the name is truly Greek) exists on three mythic planes. On the Neolithic level he is a shaman, the "master of the animals," an Aegean counterpart to Enkidu, the wild companion of Sumerian/Babylonian Gilgamesh. Walter Burkert notes that the hunter figure on cylinder seals, a precursor also, he notes, of Heracles, "is generally identified as Ninurta or Ningirsu, the son of the storm god Enlil (Burkert 1985:209) On the Minoan level, he has been dedicated to the Great Goddess of Crete. On the Classical level, he has become a threat to the reformed and Olympian Artemis and must be destroyed. His myth survives only in fragmentary episodes and references.

[edit] Ancestry, origins, birth

According to Hesiod,^[3] Orion was a son of Poseidon and the beautiful and awful Gorgon Euryale, in this context said to be one of the daughters of King Minos of Crete. Her name means the "wide-ranging" one, she of the "wide salt sea", eureia halys.^[4].

Boeotians said^[5] that Orion was born instead in Boeotia, the fertile heart of civilized Hellas, whose folk the Boeotian poet Hesiod described as farmers in the winter and sailors in the summer season. (Did the Boeotians sail but not swim, that they disputed whether Orion waded the Aegean from island to island or merely strode through the waves?). Though some said Orion sprang directly from Gaia, the Earth Mother,^[6] others make his father Gaia's grandson, the Titan Atlas, who equally has his great feet planted in the sea.

Orion's Boeotian birth took place at Hyrai. There a childless king "Hyreus", who had prayed to the gods for a son. Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes who were visitors in disguise responded by urinating on a bull's hide and burying it in the earth which produced a child. He was named Orion—as if "of the urine"— after the unusual event.^[7]

[edit] Orion and Merope

When he came ashore, Orion found that he was once again in a place called Hyrai, another bee-swarm, but in the island of Chios. The two Hyrai may have functioned as two entrances to the netherworld, which would have enabled Orion to pass between Boeotia and Chios in a chthonic journey. In later Classical times, the "tomb" of Orion that was shown to visitors in Boeotia may have been the cave-entrance.

Main article: Merope.

Logically, the episode that resulted in Orion's blinding would have to be the next episode, though no connected string of episodes for Orion survives in Greek literature. This transpired in the island of Chios, where Orion sought Merope, whose Greek name seems to mean "honey-faced" in Greek, thus "eloquent," but surely at an earlier level her "face" was a bee-mask^{[citation needed]}. The variety of "Meropes" in isolated mythic fragments suggests that a "merope" denotes a position, a priestess rather than an individual.

Such Bronze Age Aegean cult centers guided by priestesses dedicated to the Great Goddess were deeply threatening to the Hellene invaders and warranted close patriarchal supervision. Placed in charge of this Merope and her hive on Chios was Oinopion, the "wine-man," a son of Dionysus. Some say he came from Crete, others specify Lemnos or Naxos. Wine mixed with fermented honey, as at Chios, mediated between the sacred intoxicants of the old order and the new patriarchal Olympian one, and honey mixed with wine remained a suitable libation to propitiate both levels of divinity, as Jason and the Argonauts wisely showed when they first set foot ashore in the chthonic and dangerous land of Colchis.

Under the old regime that Orion embodies, Oinopion would have been the annual consort of the Merope, but at the time level of the Orion myths, he had become a guardian-sponsor represented as her "father" instead, though Oinopion betrayed a most unfatherlike jealousy and determination to preserve his position. When Orion offered himself as a candidate for the role of consort to Merope, Oinopion set Orion a challenging contest to justify his right. Since he was so famed as a hunter, Orion had to rid the island of all its dangerous wild beasts. There was a shift in roles here, for the animal-master of the Neolithic had originally been the spirit-protector of the animals, similar to the untamed Enkidu, who released them from the hunters' traps and springes. At the Neolithic level, the Master of the Animals was their protector; the hunter had to propitiate him, so that he would release the animals from his care; only then could the hunt be successful. Orion, like primal Enkidu also the "offspring of the mountains," had been at one with the wild creatures until he achieved self-consciousness. Now the "awakened" Animal Master hunted them himself. There was further irony in Oinopion's demand, if the "bee-eater" were herself a bear. And in his heart the usurping Oinopion was unwilling to be bested, to resign, though no longer to be sacrificed in the archaic way, even though Orion might successfully master the ritual contests.

Thus it was that, though evening after evening Orion brought in pelts of bear and lion, lynx and wolf, and piled them in the Hyrian palace-hive, it was never enough. Even though the island was rendered secure from marauding beasts, wily Oinopion always claimed that there were still rumors of a wolf or a bear heard to be roaming the island's farthest mountain districts.

In the evenings Oinopion plied Orion with his wine. Wine, the civilized gift of Dionysus, has a wild other nature, as the toxic barren ivy. Wine worked potently on Orion's own wild and earthy nature, and one night in darkness, after the household had all gone to their chambers, Orion, inflamed by wine, took the perhaps not-unwilling Merope, there in her palace-hive. Then, overcome, he slept.

While Orion lay in a stupor, Oinopion stole upon him and he put out Orion's eyes. With a shout, Oinopion called up the guards, and just as a hive of bees will cast out a giant hornet intruder, they cast Orion, blinded, down onto the seashore, where ocean and land come together.

[edit] Blinded Orion

In myth, when a figure has been outwardly blinded, he may receive in compensation a gift of inner sight. So Orion may have needed no oracle to know that he must seek out the first light of Helios, just when his chariot rises from the easternmost rim of Oceanus, that the place to achieve this was the eastern edge of the possible world, which is also known as the land of Colchis. There the sun's first rays would restore his sight. Orion was left on a seashore to fend for himself because Oenopion blinded him and left him there when he took his daughter Merope by force. He became aquainted with Cedalion when he was left on the shore, who led him East to Eos (goddess of dawn) She restored his vision.

[edit] Orion and the Pleiades

Meanwhile, how had Merope fared? In such mythic contests, the "prize" often favors the heroic contender, as Ariadne was to favor Theseus. Now this Merope of Chios was at the same time one of the seven Pleiades, the "sailing sisters." They were named in the old matriarchal way for their mother Pleione. Sometimes Atlas is said to be their father, and then they are called the "Atlantides." If Atlas is indeed the father of Orion too, then his daughters the Pleiades are Orion's half-sisters. No wonder then that Orion longed to cleave to this Merope, if they had indeed sprung from the same stock.

All Aegean sailors knew that the Pleiades mark out the season that is safe for venturing upon the sea. The season opens "when from the Bull, the Sun enters into the Twins at the rising of the Pleiades." Nowadays this falls in late May. The safe sailing is over "when the Sun enters the Scorpion, at the setting of the Pleiades," all according to the Roman writer-architect Vitruvius, who was quoting the Greek astronomer Democritus. By a witty invention, Pindar made them the "Peleiades"- the flock of doves- but this was just a momentary trope.

But was this Merope at the same time one of the Heliades, the sisters of Phaeton and daughters of Helios, as Hyginus tells? That would have made her a doubly-fit guide to lead the sightless Orion through the seas to the house of the Sun.

[edit] Orion at Lemnos

Northwards from Chios Orion made his way, whether guided by his inner sight or led by the rising Merope and her sisters, once the late spring weather had safely settled. Within a day or so he came to the volcano isle of Lemnos, where Hephaistos maintains his forge. Orion descended to the underworld smithy in the island's fiery heart. Later the Lemnian cave would become famous for its mysteries, in which each initiate was united with his chthonic brother counterpart. Like them, Orion himself sought no product of Hephaistos' forge, neither armor nor cauldron nor tripod. Instead, from among the many apprentices in the cavernous smithy of Lady Hera's son, Orion took up one, Cedalion, for a guide and set the youth upon his shoulders. So together they sailed north and east, with Merope in her sailing aspect to guide them, through the narrows and the Propontis, into the wide Euxine Sea.

[edit] Orion and Eos

Far to the eastern shore, in Colchis at the uttermost end of the world, Helios, whose bright eye misses nothing on the earth nor in the sea, sleeps by night in the golden house of Aietes, until he is waked by Eos, the Dawn. There, when Dawn came lighting the east with rosy fingers, the first rays of sunlight struck Orion's face and look! his sight was restored. But at the first flush of dawn, Merope faded and failed. Thus of seven Pleiades who still guide Orion across the vault of night, only six are to be seen, if there should be even the least hint of rosy-fingered Dawn. Alexandrian poets liked to imagine that Merope hides her face in shame, for having married the mere mortal Sisyphus, king of Corinth, while all her Pleiad sisters were given to Olympic gods. But that worldly snobbery speaks more of the Hellenistic Age of Monarchies than of the age of myth.

Eos is of the Titan lineage, and she was immediately smitten by the handsome Orion.^[8] There in the house of Helios Orion tarried all summer. Yet at each approach of Dawn, Orion paled and grew faint, his flesh growing transparent under her very touch.

Next, Orion returned to the island of Chios, burning for revenge on Oinopion. But it appears that he arrived in the winter season, when the Chians had pruned their vines to stubs. For we are told that the "wine-man" Oinopion lay secretly in an underground chamber prepared for him by Hephaistos, awaiting his annual renewal we can be sure, and Orion sought him up and down, but in vain.

Then, at the end of winter, Orion passed under the horizon to Crete. Crete was still the homeland of archaic pre-Greek goddess-centered cult.

Catasterismi, a compilation of constellation origins, explains how the constellation Scorpius rises just after Orion begins to set -- the scorpion still chases him, and they never appear in the sky at the same time. Orion's dogs became Sirius, the dog-star. The constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor follow Orion across the sky.

[edit] Death

Orion left Eos to hunt with Artemis, who shot him with an arrow in the sea off Delos:

So when Dawn with her rose-red fingers took Orion

you gods in your everlasting ease were horrified

till chaste Artemis throned in gold attacked him,

out on Delos, shot him to death with gentle shafts." (Odyssey 5, 121ff, tr. by Robert Fagles)

Apollo, Artemis's brother, highly disapproved of such a relationship because of Orion's treatment with Eos. Orion was already offending the Immortals, but he finally crossed the line when he claimed to be able to kill all beast and animal of the Earth [1]. In response, Mother Earth sent a gigantic scorpion to kill him. Artemis was at her island of Delos with Apollo, who bet she could not hit a small bobbing shape in the sea with her arrow, which Apollo knew was actually Orion, swimming from Crete. Artemis accepted the challenge, and shot Orion accurately, killing him quickly.

When she learned the truth, however, she snatched him from the depths of the sea and made him immortal. Artemis then placed him in the vault of the heavens, where he could continue to follow his favorite pursuits among the stars. The constellation Sirius, a dog, hunts with him, as Scorpion crawls far behind, vainly snipping at the hunter's heels.

There are variations, however, about how Artemis killed Orion: see Artemis for more details.

Some commentators suggest that Orion had two daughters, Menippe and Metioche.

[edit] See also

• Orion (constellation)
• "Orion", a narrative poem by Michael J. Farrand.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Main sources for aspects of Orion's history are pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke i. 4.3; Parthenius of Nicaea, Erotica Pathemata 20; Hyginus, Poetic Astronomy ii. 34; Hesiod, The Astronomy (a fragment quoted in Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi).
• Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths 1955.
• Kerenyi, Karl, Gods of the Greeks 1951.
• Kerenyi, Karl, Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life 1976.
• Theoi.com: Orion Excerpts from Greek and Roman texts, the sources for most of the statements in this article.