ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Orion, who is an ambiguous hero, the most pious and the most impious of people, the most keenly devoted to the search for happiness and the most tragic victim of fate. The author of the entry on Orion in the Real-Encyclopadie refuses to credit any of the old etymologies, or indeed the new ones that have been suggested to explain a name which, according to him, is pre-Greek in origin. From Antiquity to the present day painting has twice mediated the literary myth. In De domo Lucian describes a pictorial representation of Orion walking with Cedalion on his shoulders towards the rising sun. This scene is the subject of Poussin's canvas Paysage avec Orion aveugle, 1658. It might be asked why it is only in recent decades that the myth of Orion has regained its ability to give life to literary works.
