Lives of Alcyone

the temple, the Pharaoh Unas offered his daughter Helios to Orion
in marriage, and the ceremony was celebrated with much pomp and
magnificence. Orion ardently loved his young wife, but nevertheless
he realised that he had made a mistake in giving up the temple, and
he never ceased to regret this. His wife died young but left behind
her three children of whom the eldest Ptah-hotep(whom we know as
Selene) was an unusually studious youth. He later became a
learned man, and wrote a widely celebrated book on The Wisdom of
Egypt . He lived to an extreme old age, one hundred and ten years,
and was much respected for his great erudition.
Orion’ s later days were somewhat lonely, as all the friends
for whom he cared passed on before him. Towards the end of his
life he came to poverty. Evidently this royal life in Egypt under such
remarkably favourable conditions was intended to be the climax
towards which many previous incarnations had led. But choice must
always be free, and Kephren chose wrongly, thus postponing the
designed culmination.
Erato also took his part in this life, though he was born far
away at Ajmere in Rajputana, as the son of the chieftain Deneb, and
married the daughter of the suzerain Mars. In his youth he went to
the wars with his father, and was presently sent along with him by
Mars on an important embassy to Egypt. Among the officers who
received the embassy were Sirius and Castor, with whom Erato at
once struck up a friendship. The embassy was housed on the bank
of the Nile in the neighbourhood of the group of friends to which
reference has already several times been made, and Erato was
readily admitted to intimacy with it. After his return to India he again
took part in the constant wars of the period, and eventually had the