Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When the shepherds of Attica killed Icarius and hid his body, the dog Maera stayed faithful to the household. She led Erigone to the corpse—by howling over the grave, or by standing at the well where the body had been thrown—so that the daughter could find what human search had missed. After Erigone hanged herself in grief, Maera’s end is told in variants: she leaps into the same well, wastes away on the grave, or is translated with her master and mistress to the stars. Astral handbooks make Maera the Dog Star (Sirius) or a lesser dog beside Icarius as Boötes (or the wagon-driver) and Erigone as Virgo. The burning of Sirius in the Attic summer then carries a double memory: the heat that ripens the vine Dionysus taught Icarius, and the contagion or madness that struck Athens until the dead were honored. Catalogue Maera apart from the fuller Icarius narrative so the hound’s discovery-role and catasterism stand clear as the canine hinge of the cycle.