The Lesser Dog
Above them all, illustrious through the skies,
Beams Procyon; justly by Greece thus called,
The bright forerunner of the greater Dog.
Canis Minor, according to mythology, was one of the hunting dogs that accompanied the giant hunter Orion, and hence it was sometimes called "Canis Orionis."
Burritt thinks that the Egyptians were the inventors of this constellation, and as it always rises a little before the Dog Star, which at a particular season they so much dreaded, it is properly represented as a little watchful creature, giving notice like a faithful sentinel of the other's approach.
In the valley of the Euphrates it seems to have been regarded as a water dog, on account of its standing on the border of the Milky Way, which represented to the ancients a river in the sky.
Canis Minor has been identified with the Egyptian god Anubis, but Sirius is generally associated with that dogheaded divinity.
Some think the Lesser Dog was the hound of Diana, noted for her love of the chase. Others think that it represents the faithful dog Mæra, which belonged to Icarius, and discovered to his daughter Erigone the place of his burial. It has also been considered to represent Helen's favourite, lost in the Euripus, that she prayed Jove might live again in the sky, and Actæon's hound that devoured his master after Diana had transformed him into a stag.
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