In Greek mythology, Orion (Ancient Greek Ὠρίων or Ὠαρίων) was a giant huntsman whom Zeus or Artemis set among the stars as the constellation that still bears his name. He was venerated as a hero in Boeotia; ancient authors preserve conflicting stories of his birth, his blinding on Chios, his death, and his catasterism. This entry is the mythic hunter (not the unrelated musician Arion, and not a separate modern namesake): Homer already knows both the hunter in the underworld and the constellation that reckons the year.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Orion (mythology)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Early life and family
Ancient sources tell several, often conflicting, stories; no single great poet standardized the myth. The most common parentage makes Orion son of Poseidon by a daughter of Minos (Euryale, Brylle, or Hyeles). A giant who could walk on water, he married Side in some accounts — Hera cast Side into Hades for rivalling her beauty.
Another tradition, tied to Boeotian Hyria, makes him autochthonous: Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidon visit Hyrieus of Tanagra, who asks for a son; the gods urinate into a bull's hide, bury it, and ten months later Hyrieus unearths the infant Orion. (A namesake hazard: this Hyriean father is sometimes called Oeneus, but he is not the Calydonian Oeneus of the Meleager saga.) Later Latin lore also links Orion to Oenopion of Sicily and to sons such as Dryas of Tanagra.
II.Chios, Lemnos, and the sunrise
On Chios Orion got drunk and raped Merope, daughter of King Oenopion (variants make her Oenopion's wife, or Minos's daughter, or name her Aëro / Leiro). Oenopion blinded and exiled him. Orion reached Hephaestus's forge on Lemnos; the smith's servant Cedalion rode on the giant's shoulders and guided him eastward until Helios or Asclepius restored his sight. Orion returned to punish Oenopion, who hid underground. Latin sources add that Dionysus sent satyrs to put Orion to sleep for the blinding; one version substitutes Minos of Crete and a Cyclops as guide.
III.Death and catasterism
In Crete Orion hunted with Artemis and Leto and threatened to kill every beast on earth; Gaia sent a giant scorpion that killed him (Nicander shrinks the scorpion to ordinary size). Other versions credit Artemis: Hyginus has Apollo trick her into shooting a distant swimmer who proves to be Orion; Homer has Eos take Orion to Delos where Artemis slays him; still others have him assault Artemis or her attendant Upis, or conflate the Chian attack with the scorpion.
Hyginus gives three paths to the stars. After the scorpion-kill, Artemis and Leto ask Zeus to place Orion in the sky and add Scorpius as memorial; after the accidental shot, Artemis herself catasterizes him; a third tale has Orion chase Pleione and the Pleiades for seven years until Zeus raises them all — with Canis Major, Canis Minor (Procyon), and Lepus (or Taurus) as related figures. Homer's Odyssey already shows Orion hunting in the underworld with an unbreakable bronze club; Hesiod's Works and Days uses his rising and setting to reckon the year.
IV.Cult and interpretation
Orion had a hero cult in Boeotia — especially Hyria in Tanagra's territory — with a feast still attested under the Roman Empire and a tomb near Mount Cerycius. Corinna gives him fifty sons, including the oracular Acraephen; daughters such as Menodice, Menippe, Metioche, and Mecionice appear in later mythographers. Diodorus links him to Sicilian earthworks at Zancle (Messina) and the Punta del Faro, after which he was "numbered among the stars."
Scholars generally hold that the hunter myth existed before the constellation was named for him; Homer distinguishes the two. Renaissance allegory read the oxhide birth as conception or a storm cloud; modern interpreters (Kerényi, Fontenrose, Graves, and others) have treated him as a Boeotian national hero, a shamanic or "grotesque" hunter type parallel to Actaeon and Gilgamesh, or a solar / year-king figure. Clear classical portraits are rare; Poussin's Landscape with Blind Orion Seeking the Sun and later operas and poems keep the Chios–sunrise episode alive in the arts.