<P> Orion served several roles in ancient Greek 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 hero, in the Greek sense, in the region of Boeotia; and there is one etiological passage which says that Orion was responsible for the present shape of the Strait of Sicily . </P> <P> Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC, but which are the products of an oral tradition with origins several centuries earlier . In Homer's Iliad Orion is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog . In the Odyssey, 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 Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn . In the Works and Days of Hesiod, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year . </P> <P> The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the Astronomia (simple references to' Hesiod', below will refer to the lost text from Astronomia, unless otherwise stated). This version is known through the work of Eratosthenes on the constellations, who gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod's episode on Orion . According to this version, Orion was likely the son of the sea - god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete . Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there . In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away . Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus--the lame smith - god--had his forge . Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, 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 Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth . Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion . The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations . Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero's death, added the Scorpion to the heavens as well . </P> <P> 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, Eratosthenes, or Gaius Julius Hyginus, 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 . </P>

Orion was killed by a massive scorpion sent by gaea after he