Orion is not specially mentioned, but Orion, Lepus, and the Dogs seem referred to:—
Men of chase
Were taking the fleet hares; two keen-toothed dogs
Bounded beside.
Homer would find no difficulty in pluralising the mighty Hunter and the hare into huntsmen and hares when utilising a description originally referring to the constellation.
I conceive that the original description related to one of those zodiac temples whose remains are still found in Egypt, though the Egyptian temples of this kind were probably only copies of more ancient Chaldæan temples. We know from Assyrian sculptures that representations of the constellations (and especially the zodiacal constellations) were common among the Babylonians; and, as I point out in the essay above referred to, 'it seems probable that in a country where Sabæanism or star-worship was the prevailing form of religion, yet more imposing proportions would be given to zodiac temples than in Egypt.' My theory, then, respecting the two famous 'Shields' is that Homer in his eastern travels visited imposing temples devoted to astronomical observation and star-worship, and that nearly every line in both descriptions is borrowed from a poem in which he described a temple of this sort, its domed zodiac, and those illustrations of the labours of different seasons and of military or judicial procedures which the astrological proclivities of star-worshippers led them to associate with the different constellations. For the arguments on which this theory is based I have not here space. They are dealt with in the essay from which I have quoted.
One point only I need touch upon here, besides those I have mentioned already. It may be objected that the description of a zodiac temple has nothing to connect it with the subject of the Iliad. This is certainly true; but no one who is familiar with Homer's manner can doubt that he would work in, if he saw the opportunity, a poem on some subject outside that of the Iliad, so modifying the language that the description would correspond with the subject in hand. There are many passages, though none of such length, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, which seem thus to have been brought into the poem; and other passages not exactly of this kind yet show that Homer was not insensible to the advantage of occasionally using memory instead of invention.
Any one who considers attentively the aspect of the constellation Draco in the heavens, will perceive that the drawing of the head in the maps is not correct; the head is no longer pictured as it must have been conceived by those who first formed the constellation. The two bright stars Beta and Gamma are now placed on a head in profile. Formerly they marked the two eyes. I would not lay stress on the description of the Dragon in the Shield of Hercules, 'with eyes oblique retorted, that askant shot gleaming fire;' for all readers may not be prepared to accept my opinion that that description related to the constellation Draco. But the description of the constellation itself by Aratus suffices to show that the two bright stars I have named marked the eyes of the imagined monster—in fact, Aratus's account singularly resembles that given in the Shield of Hercules. 'Swol'n is his neck,' says Aratus of the Dragon—
... Eyes charg'd with sparkling fire
His crested head illume. As if in ire,
To Helice he turns his foaming jaw,
And darts his tongue, barb'd with a blazing star.
And the dragon's head with sparkling eyes can be recognised to this day, so soon as this change is made in its configuration, whereas no one can recognise the remotest resemblance to a dragon's head in profile. The star barbing the Dragon's tongue would be Xi of the Dragon according to Aratus's account, for so only would the eyes be turned towards Helice the Bear. But when Aratus wrote, the practice of separating the constellations from each other had been adopted; in fact, he derived his knowledge of them chiefly from Eudoxus, the astronomer and mathematician, who certainly would not have allowed the constellations to be intermixed. In the beginning, there are reasons for believing it was different, and if a group of stars resembled any known object it would be called after that object, even though some of the stars necessary to make up the figure belonged already to some other figure. This being remembered, we can have no difficulty in retorting the Dragon's head more naturally—not to the star Xi of the Dragon, but to the star Iota of Hercules. The four stars are situated thus,
the larger ones representing the eyes; and so far as the head is concerned it is a matter of indifference whether the lower or the upper small star be taken to represent the tongue. But, as any one will see who looks at these stars when the Dragon is best placed for ordinary (non-telescopic) observation, the attitude of the animal is far more natural when the star Iota of Hercules marks the tongue, for then the creature is situated like a winged serpent hovering above the horizon and looking downwards, whereas when the star Xi marks the tongue, the hovering Dragon is looking upwards and is in an unnaturally constrained position. (I would not, indeed, claim to understand perfectly all the ways of dragons; still it may be assumed that a dragon hovering above the horizon would rather look downwards in a natural position than upwards in an awkward one.)