Orion- Greek DemigodDemigod"The Hunter"

Born from the Earth

A Boeotian tradition gives Orion a strange birth. The elderly farmer Hyrieus, childless and widowed, hosted three travelers at his table without knowing they were Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes. When they revealed themselves and offered him any wish, he asked for a son. The gods urinated on the hide of the ox he had sacrificed and told him to bury it in the earth. Months later, Orion rose from the ground. His name may derive from ouron, the Greek word for urine, a connection the Greeks preferred not to dwell on.

Apollodorus gives him different parents: Poseidon and Euryale, one of the Gorgons. From his father he inherited his enormous size and the ability to walk on water, wading through the deepest ocean with his head above the waves. He carried a bronze club and wore a lion's skin, and no creature on land could escape him.

The Blinding on Chios

Apollodorus tells of Orion's time on the island of Chios, ruled by Oenopion, a son of Dionysus. Wild beasts overran the island, and Orion cleared it of every dangerous creature. He brought the hides to Oenopion as a bride-price for Merope, the king's daughter. But Oenopion delayed the marriage again and again. One night, drunk on wine, Orion forced himself on Merope. Oenopion blinded him and cast him out on the shore.

Orion stumbled sightless along the coast until he heard the ring of hammers from Hephaestus's forges on Lemnos. He crossed the water to the island and found Cedalion, one of the smith god's apprentices. He lifted the boy onto his shoulders and followed his directions east, toward the place where Helios rose each morning. The rays of the rising sun struck his face and restored his sight.

He returned to Chios to kill Oenopion, but the king had hidden in an underground bronze chamber that Hephaestus had built for him. Orion searched the island and found nothing. He left for Crete.

The Huntress and the Hunter

On Crete, Orion hunted alongside Artemis. The goddess who shunned all men found in him someone who could keep pace with her in the chase. They ranged together across the wild places of the island. She had sworn never to love, but with Orion she came close.

Eos, the Dawn, desired Orion too. Aphrodite had cursed Eos to desire mortal men, punishment for a love affair with Ares. In the Odyssey, Calypso cites Orion's fate as proof of divine cruelty: when Eos lay with Orion on the island of Ortygia, Artemis killed him there with her gentle arrows. Calypso sees the pattern: whenever a goddess loves a mortal, the gods destroy him.

But this account conflicts with the tradition that Artemis herself loved the hunter. In that telling, it was Apollo, her twin, who watched their companionship with alarm and resolved to end it.

The Arrow and the Sting

Apollo waited for a day when Orion had waded far out to sea, walking on the water his father Poseidon ruled. His head was a dark speck on the bright water, too distant to recognize. Apollo found Artemis and pointed to the mark. Could she hit it? He knew his sister never missed. Artemis drew her silver bow and put the arrow through it. The speck vanished beneath the waves. When Orion's body washed ashore, she understood what her brother had done. Her grief was absolute. She set him among the stars, where the belt of three stars at his waist shines for every part of the earth to see, and where he could hunt forever across the winter sky.

In Eratosthenes' telling, Orion died by a scorpion's sting. He boasted that he would kill every beast on earth, and Gaia, offended, sent a monstrous scorpion from the ground. It stung him and he died. Zeus set both in the sky on opposite sides, so that Scorpius rises as Orion sets. They are never visible at the same time.

The Stars

Orion's constellation pursues the Pleiades across the winter sky. The seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione, encountered him in Boeotia, and he chased them for years until Zeus transformed them first into doves, then into stars. But the constellation of Orion still follows: each night the Pleiades rise first and Orion rises after them, forever chasing, never catching. Hesiod ties both to the farmer's calendar in the Works and Days: the rising and setting of Orion and the Pleiades mark when to plow and when to set sail. When the Pleiades sink below the horizon in November, the sea is closed and the storms begin.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus descends to the world of the dead and sees Orion's shade on the meadows of asphodel, wielding a bronze club, driving wild beasts across the grey fields. He hunts the same creatures he killed in life. Death changed nothing for Orion.