 | This myth is about the giant Orion and two of his adventures. In the first adventure, Orion is promised a princess by a king, but the King changed his mind. What will the king do? Will Orion survive? Find out in the first adventure. In the second adventure, Orion goes hunting with Artemis, but Apollo gets jealous. What will Apollo do? Will Orion get out of this one? Find out in the second story. One day Orion, the giant son of Poseidon and a great hunter who could walk on water, came to the island of Chios. The King of Chios couldn't sleep at night because the island was infested with wolves, boars, and lions that wouldn't stop howling. So, the king offered his beautiful daughter to Orion if he killed all the beasts. Orion hunted hard and after a short time period, all the beasts were slayed. But the king didn't want his daughter to leave. Orion was furious and threatened to take her. The king then gave Orion a lot of wine and he fell asleep. While he was asleep, the king blinded him. Orion knew the sun's rays could heal his eyes. Since, he couldn't see, he followed the sound of hammers to the island of Lemnos, where Hephaestus worked with his cyclops assistants. Hephaestus took pity on Orion, and he gave him a cyclops boy to be his guide to the sun. When he reached the sun, his eyes healed after a matter of seconds. Orion then ran off to get revenge on the king. When he had arrived at the castle, he found it abandoned. The king had seen his giant outline and fled with his daughter. Orion soon forgot about them and went off and continued to hunt. |
After his ordeal with the king of Chios, Orion set off for Crete. There he met Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Orion was the first man Artemis enjoyed to spend time with besides her brother, Apollo. She also liked him because he hunted as well as she did, and he was very modest about it. They went hunting for days and enjoyed eachother's company. But, Artemis's brother, Apollo, grew very jealous. When Artemis was gone for a bit, Apollo sent a giant scorpian to kill Orion. Orion knew he could not defeat this venemous scorpion, so he turned to run. But, when he turned, the scorpion stung him in the heel with its tail, and Orion died. Artemis was not happy when she returned and found Orion dead. She was very angry with Apollo. But, she couldn't stay mad at him forever, and together, Artemis and Apollo hung Orion's image in the sky as a constellation. The constellation of Orion is big, but when the constellation of the scorpion appears, the constallation of Orion slips beneath the horizon. |  |
