CHAP. II
dalion as his guide. On his return he vainly tries to seize and punish
the man who had bUnded him, and then wandering onwards meets
and is loved by Artemis. Of his death many stories were told. In
the Odyssey he is slain in Ortygia, the dawn land, by Artemis, who is
jealous of her rival Eos. In another version Artemis slays him un-
wittingly, having aimed at a mark on the sea which Phoibos had
declared that she could not hit. This mark was the head of Orion,
who had been swimming in the waters. Asklepios, we are further
told, seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own
doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus.
Like Andromeda, Ariadne, and other mythical beings, Orion was Seinos, after his death placed among the constellations, and his hound became the dog-star Seirios,^ who marks the time of yearly drought. He is thus the deadly star ^ who burns up the fields of Aristaios and destroys his bees, and is stayed from his ravages only by the moisten- ing heaven.^ The word Seirios itself springs from the same root with the Sanskrit Surya and the Greek Helios, Here, and Herakles ; and with Archilochos and Suidas it was still a name for the sun.* Orion, then, and Seirios, if not altogether Semitic, are at least only super- ficially coloured by Aryan thought. Like Dionysos, these are rather Kosmical gods than beings who owe their origin to phrases describing the phenomena of the summer and winter, light and darkness. They are conspicuous members of that mysterious band which moves in march or dance across the heavens, and whose names were for the most part uncouth sounds in Hellenic ears. Some of these names have been so far softened down as to wear an Aryan look ; others, like the Kouretes, Telchines, and Kabeiroi, are scarcely hidden by the thin disguise. These creatures have no legitimate title to be ranked amongst the mythical creations of the Aryan world ; and we can do no more than take some notice of them, as they come before us in the several parts of the Hellenic mythology into which they have been introduced.
- Mr. Brown regards this name as
merely a transliteration of the Egyptian Osiris. It may be so ; but 1 cannot venture to speak positively on this point. As to Aristaios, he regards him as springing from the Horned-sun, the general account being that he is the child of ApoUon and the Libyan nymph Kyrcne (Ku-re-ne, or Horn). — Great Dioiiysia/c Myth, 402.
0CA.105 acrrrip.
- Zeuj iKfialiis. Prellcr, G'r. Myth.
i. 35S. ■* In support of his assertion that Seirios was a name for any glittering orb or star, Preller quotes Hesychios : Seipi'ou Kvvbs SiKr]v '2,0(pOKKrji rbv affrpwov Kx/va, b 5e 'Apx'^<'X°S^'i^""'> "^^vkos 5e TravTa rbi acnpa, and adds "Suidas kennt die Form Soir fiir Sonne. Arat. Phoin. 331 : os payuaAi(rTo'0|€a (Tf/ptaet, KoS. /xtu KaKfovcr' ivOpairoi 'Xeipioy," — Gr. Myth. i. 355.
