He found the islanders suffering from sickness under the stifling and baneful effects of the Dog-Star Sirius at its first appearance before the sun's rising, in early July.
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When the miscreants were found out and executed, and a shrine erected to Zeus Ikmaios, the great god was propitiated and decreed that henceforth the Etesian wind should blow and cool all the Aegean for forty days from the baleful rising of Sirius.
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which brought the annual relief of the cooling Etesian winds.
The species name actaeon derives from the name Actaeon of a famous Theban hero, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, trained by the centaur Chiron.
Practically nothing of his life is known except that the mathematician Pappus of Alexandria refers to him as Aristaeus the Elder which presumably means that Pappus was aware of another later mathematician also named Aristaeus.