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And Artemis slew Orion in Delos.[*](See Hom. Od. 5.121-124; Hor. Carm. 3.4.70ff. ) They say that he was of gigantic stature and born of the earth; but Pherecydes says that he was a son of Poseidon and Euryale.[*](The same account of Orion's parentage was given by Hesiod, whom Pherecydes probably followed. See Eratosthenes, Cat. 32; Hyginus, Ast. ii.34.) Poseidon bestowed on him the power of striding across the sea.[*](Some thought that Orion waded through the sea (so Verg. A. 10.763ff.), others that he walked on the top of it (so Eratosthenes, Cat. 32; Scholiast on Nicander, Ther. 15; Hyginus, Ast. ii.34).) He first married Side,[*](As Side means “pomegranate” in Greek, it has been supposed that the marriage of Orion to Side is a mythical expression for the ripening of the pomegranate at the season when the constellation Orion is visible in the nightly sky. See W. Pape, Worterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen (Brunswick, 1884), ii.1383.) whom Hera cast into Hades because she rivalled herself in beauty. Afterwards he went to Chios and

But for him Poseidon had made ready a house under the earth constructed by Hephaestus.[*](This quaint story of Orion and Oenopion is told also by Eratosthenes, Cat. 32; the Old Scholiast on Aratus, Phaenomena 322, quoted in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 89; the Scholiast on Nicander, Ther. 15; Hyginus, Ast. ii.34; Serv. Verg. A. 10.763; and the Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 12 (First Vatican Mythographer 33), except that this last writer substitutes Minos, king of Crete, for Oenopion. The name of the guide whom Orion took on his back to guide him to the sunrise was Cedalion (Lucian, De domo 28; Eratosthenes, Cat.; and Hyginus, Ast. ii.34.). Sophocles made the story the theme of a satyric drama called Cedalion, of which a few fragments have come down to us. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 202ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 8ff. Euripides represents the blinded Polymestor praying to the Sun to restore his sight (Eur. Hec. 1067ff.).) And Dawn fell in love with Orion and carried him off and brought him to Delos; for Aphrodite caused Dawn to be perpetually in love, because she had bedded with Ares.

But Orion was killed, as some say, for challenging Artemis to a match at quoits, but some say he was shot by Artemis for offering violence to Opis, one of the maidens who had come from the Hyperboreans.[*](Compare Scholiast on Hom. Od. 5.121, who calls the maiden Upis. According to another, and more generally received, account, Orion died of the bite of a scorpion, which Artemis sent against him because he had attempted her chastity. For this service the scorpion was raised to the rank of a constellation in the sky, and Orion attained to a like dignity. That is why the constellation Orion flies for ever from the constellation Scorpion round the sky. See Aratus, Phaenomena 634ff.; Nicander, Ther. 13ff.; Eratosthenes, Cat. 32; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xviii.486; Scholiast on Hom. Od. v.121; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iii.27; Scholiast on Caesar Germanicus, Aratea, p. 386, ed. Eyssenhardt, in his edition of Martianus Capella. The Scholiast on Hom. Il. xviii.486, cites as his authority Euphorion, a grammarian and poet of the fourth century B.C.)