Fig. 3.—Orion.
Orion is situated on the side opposite to the Great Bear. It is the most beautiful constellation in our western sky. You may easily recognise it by three stars, very close together, which are inscribed, as it were, in the centre of a great trapezium of four stars, two of which are of the first magnitude. Beneath the three first stars, called the Three Kings, or Orion's Belt, is visible a small stellar group of the fourth and fifth magnitude, near which, with a good average glass, may be distinguished the largest and most remarkable of the nebulæ.
Here we find the mythologists—those theologians of the Greco-Roman polytheism—at disagreement. According to an ancient legend, immortalised by Homer—
"Aurora sought Orion's love,...
Till, in Ortygia, Dian's wingèd dart
Had pierced the hapless hunter to the heart."[3]
The giant, in the lower world, is still animated by a burning passion for the chase—
"There huge Orion, of portentous size,