Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Grown to giant stature, Orion went to Chios and cleared the island of wild beasts for King Oenopion; drunk, he assaulted Merope, Oenopion’s daughter. Oenopion blinded him and cast him out. Orion followed the sound of a forge to Lemnos (or to Hephaestus), received a guide (Cedalion), and walking east toward the sunrise recovered his sight when Helios healed him. He then sought revenge on Oenopion, who hid in an underground chamber fashioned by Hephaestus; failing to find him, Orion left for Crete (or Delos) to hunt with Artemis. Death stories diverge. Homer says Eos took Orion, and the gods were jealous; Artemis slew him with her arrows on Ortygia. Apollodorus and later astral writers add that Artemis (or Gaia, angered by his boast that he would kill every beast) sent a giant scorpion against him; both were placed among the stars—Orion the hunter, Scorpius his killer—so that as one rises the other sets. Another strand has Apollo trick Artemis into shooting a distant swimmer who was Orion, then grieving. A further insult-tradition (Opis / Side) has him killed for challenging Artemis or for assaulting her attendants. Homeric shade-Orion still hunts beasts in the underworld meadow. The classical dossier thus stacks blinding and healing, Dawn’s love, Artemis’s arrow or the scorpion, and catasterism—separate version-lines for one hunter’s end.