VV(18): Sirius

[Dave Monroe]

Again, Otto, David, Christian, Doug, er, Menschen,
thanks for all of this.  "God is in the details" (A.
Einstein).  Or, at any rate, you learn something new
everyday at the Pynchon List (D. Monroe) ...

--- Otto <o.sell at telda.net> wrote:
>  
> Anyway, I thought what has Apollo to do with Sirius?
> Where does the pest
> reference to Sirius Pynchon uses come from?
> 
> I checked Apollo at Karl Kerényi, "Die Mythologie
> der Griechen" (dtv)
> and Robert von Ranke-Graves, Griechische Mythologie"
> (rowohlt) and looked
> for Apollo's children. Though bisexual there should
> be at least some. . . .
> 
> I found Aristaios, the "best god," son of Apollo and
> and the nymph Kyrene
> (who later had another son with Ares, Diomedes).
> 
> Kerényi says that according to Vergils "Aeneis"
> (4.377) Apollon had changed
> into a wolf when he took Kyrene . . .
> 
> Aristaios was raised and educated by the healer
> Chiron. He worked for the
> muses as a shepherd and got the gifts of healing and
> prediction from them.
> When Sirius was burning the Cyclades Islands and the
> people found no way
> aginst the pest, they called for him, ordered to do
> so by Apollo. On his
> father's order he came and did some sacrificing to
> Zeus and Sirius. From
> this day on the "Etesien" --passat winds-- began to
> blow for forty days.
> (p. 113)
> 
> Ranke-Graves tells it a little bit different, but
> only en detail. He gives
> the reason why Sirius burns a special island (Keos)
> with a disease (entry
> No. 82 in the German edition).
> 
> Otto

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