 In The Greek Myths ( 1955 ) , Robert Graves views Oenopion as his perennial Year @-@ King , at the stage where the king pretends to die at the end of his term and appoints a substitute , in this case Orion , who actually dies in his place . His blindness is iconotropy from a picture of Odysseus blinding the Cyclops , mixed with a purely Hellenic solar legend : the Sun @-@ hero is captured and blinded by his enemies at dusk , but escapes and regains his sight at dawn , when all beasts flee him . Graves sees the rest of the myth as a syncretism of diverse stories . These include Gilgamesh and the Scorpion @-@ Men , Set becoming a scorpion to kill Horus and the story of Aqhat and Yatpan from Ras Shamra , as well as a conjectural story of how the priestesses of Artemis Opis killed a visitor to their island of Ortygia . He compares Orion 's birth from the bull 's hide to a West African rainmaking charm and claims that the son of Poseidon should be a rainmaker . 
