According to Arato the Greater Dog it's the faithful dog from hunting
of Orione, Sirio, than it was said was the far fastest of the world.
It seems also that the Greater Dog crosses the sky to the pursuit
of the hare, represented exactly from the constellation of the Lepus
that is under to the feet of Orione.
The Egyptians held in great consideration the star hinge of the
constellation, Sirio. They observed carefully the eliacal rising
(the period of the year in which the star it rises little before the
sun) because its rising was at the beginnig of the
floodings of the Nilo and of the warm season. Perhaps also for this
singular way to watch by the arrival of the summer it was easy to
imagine this constellation as a bloodhound that waking incessantly
its quarry.
Also the Latins knew the peculiarity of Sirio, than they
called star caniculae, and in fact they introduced the canicola
expression (still today in use) just to indicate the summery
sultriness that punctually was forewardned of the Greater Dog in sky.
The myth students as Eratostene and Igino said that the constellation
represented Lelapo, a dog much fast one that nobody qarry could to run
away. This dog had a long list of owners, one of which
was Procri, daughter of the King Eretteo of Atene and wife of Cefalo,
but the reports of like have come in possession of the animal are not
unanimous. According to a version the dog was given to them from
Artemis, goddess of the hunting; but a history says that
Lelapo is the dog given from Zeus to Europe and from whose son Minosse,
King of Creta, were passed to Procri. With to the dog a giavellotto was
given to them that the target never did not lack; this demonstrated
an unlicky gift, because was with it that the husband Cefalo killed
accidentally during one shooting game.
Cefalo inherited the dog and carried it behind Tebe (not the Tebe
of Egypt but a city of the Beozia, to north of Atene) where a bax fox
devasted the country. The fox was much fast to appear
destined not to be captured.
They sprinted so fast that was difficult to even follow them with
the eyes. There was a moment in which it seemed that the dog was
to tighten its, but nothing. The fox resumed to run with renewed energy.
It was a paradox without possibility of solution and Zeus
transformed both in stones, and arranged the dog in sky like the
Canis Major, without the fox.