Orion was a giant huntsman of extraordinary size, beauty and skill — a mortal so mighty he could walk across the sea and through the deepest waters with his head above the waves, whose tangled loves and violent death ended with his being set among the stars as the most magnificent constellation in the winter sky. His tale weaves together the hunt, blindness and healing, divine love and divine jealousy.
The Giant Hunter
Orion was a son of Poseidon (who gave him the power to stride across the sea) and was renowned as the greatest hunter of his age, a giant of beauty and strength who roamed the wild with his hunting dogs. He loved the goddess Artemis, mistress of the hunt, and was perhaps the only mortal she ever cared for in return — for in him she found a companion who shared her passion for the chase. His prowess was such that he boasted he could slay every beast on earth.
Blinding and Healing
One of the most famous episodes of his story tells how Orion, in love with the princess Merope, was blinded by her father Oenopion as punishment for an offense against her. Sightless, the giant was guided by a boy he set upon his shoulders and walked east toward the rising sun; and when he came to the place where Helios the sun-god rose from the Ocean, the sun's healing rays restored his sight. The image of the blinded giant walking toward the dawn to be healed became one of the most haunting in Greek myth.
Death and the Stars
Orion's death is told in several ways, each tied to his fate among the stars. In one, his boast that he would kill all the beasts of the earth so alarmed Gaia that she sent a giant Scorpion to sting him to death — and the gods set both hunter and scorpion in the sky as constellations, placed so that Orion forever sets below the horizon as the Scorpion (Scorpio) rises, the hunter eternally fleeing his slayer. In another, the goddess Artemis was tricked by her jealous brother Apollo into shooting Orion herself with an arrow, and the grieving goddess placed her beloved hunter among the stars. Either way, the giant was raised to the heavens as the brilliant constellation that bears his name, with his belt of three bright stars, his sword, and his hunting dogs (Canis Major and Minor) at his heels.
The Hunter in the Sky
Orion endures as one of the most recognisable figures in the night sky — the great winter constellation whose belt and sword have guided and awed humanity for millennia. He embodies the Greek love of the heroic hunter, the bittersweet theme of love crossed by jealousy and death, and the consoling belief that the greatest of mortals are not lost at death but lifted into the stars, to stride the heavens forever.
The mightiest hunter who ever lived walks the winter sky still, his belt ablaze, forever fleeing the scorpion that brought him down.