Originally posted to Shrubbery, 18 Sept 2003
Artemis (Diana) was the goddess of the moon as well as being the virgin goddess of the hunt. One night as she was driving the moon chariot across the sky she spied the great hunter Orion striding through the forest and she fell for him hard. The next morning she caught up with him and the two of them proceeded to have a lovely little romance... if you consider shooting innocent animals for fun as a lovely romance, that is.
Anyway, Artemis was soon spending all of her time with Orion and neglecting her duties in the sky. After all, who wants to spend a cold night up in a chariot when they can hang out by the campfire? Her brother Apollo (the sun god) soon noticed that her chariot wasn't following his any more and came down to earth to see what she was up to.
Well, when he found out she was hanging around Orion he was doubly worried. Orion didn't have the best reputation around the ladies, you see. Apollo waited until Artemis was alone and tried to convince her to go back to the sky, but she'd have none of it and told her brother to stop interfering. With that, he headed back to drive the sun across the sky, but you can imagine he wasn't going to give up that easily.
A few days later Orion decided to go for a swim in the ocean. He was a big man and a good swimmer, and pretty soon he was so far out that he could hardly be seen. Apollo saw that as his chance and went down once more to visit his sister.
"Artemis," he said, "I can understand not wanting to drive the moon chariot, but I can't understand how you'd let a man keep you from practicing your hunting skills." "What do you mean," she replied, "I'm still the best shot in existence. Orion hasn't changed that." "Oh yeah," her brother said with a smile, "suppose you prove it."
He pointed out to sea at the little speck that was Orion (who was even harder to see since Apollo had shone the sun down on him juuuuust right) and dared his sister to hit it with an arrow. By now she had her back up and took the dare without a second thought. She grabbed an arrow, nocked it, aimed... and hit Orion straight on. Apollo agreed she was still an excellent shot and headed back up to the sky, leaving poor Artemis to discover Orion's body when it floated back to land. Even she couldn't bring him back to life, so she put him in the sky where he could live forever.
Now, most people end the story here but that's only half of it. Orion was a real sports nut (today he'd have all the premium cable channels) and up in the sky he had nothing to do. Every time Artemis drove the moon chariot past him, he'd whine out his sarcastic thanks to the goddess for putting him up in the sky where he could be bored for eternity. She felt rather bad about the whole thing, so she brought up his hunting dogs to keep him company.
This kept him satisfied for a while, but soon he AND the dogs were bored with running around the sky. Orion started complaining to the moon goddess again, and she (although thoroughly bored of him by now) relented and sent Taurus the bull to the hunter. Neither can kill the other, but they spend eternity hunting and chasing.
You'd think this would be the happy ending, but you'd be wrong. It wasn't terribly happy for someone who had been in the sky long before Orion got there. Little Lepus the hare was dismayed to see the giant hunter appear above him, and when the dogs and bull were added he grew so scared of being attacked that he dimmed his stars down as much as he could to hide himself from the violent group. He's still there at the feet of Orion to this day, but unless you know where to look for him he's pretty hard to spot.
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