The lion was associated to the roaring Sun of the solstice of summer: its origin
from some is attributed to the Sumeri, than they called Ur.gu.la, from others
instead to the Egyptians, hit from the fact that the lions in order to escape
to the drought go in the valley of the Nilo just in the solstitial days, when
the beneficial river overflowed: from here the lion became the divine symbol
that nourished the cosmos and made to grow beneficial waters of the Nilo.
In Egypt, is born the symbol that associates the water source or the abundance
of the wine with the lion, in fact many fountains and vats are constructed with
a lion head from which gushes out the water or the wine (propitious-toria custom
still today practiced). An obvious example is constituted from famous Fountain
of  Bernini in Navona public square to Rome: the animal is carved waiting for
the unavoidable increase of the level of it approaches the snout to the water.
In the solstice of summer came drain it the sluices of Fontana in order to
simulate the overflowing of the Nilo. The Arabs had designed in skies a Lion much
largest , that it comprised also the Cancer, the Vergine and the Balance, beyond
touching the Greater Orsa and the Idra: in fact the star Algieba that today comes
imagined like the crest of the animal, derives from the Arab "to the jahbah",
that it means "the forehead" of the gigantic image Arabic leonina. In greco-roman
mythology there are mainly two interpretations: according to Igino Jupiter it
would have put in the sky the image of the Lion in how much King of the animals.
Other history instead support were be a matter of the Lion of Nemea killed from
Ercole in the first of  the 12 hards work in order becoming immortal. The animal
generated from Tifone and Echidna, the monstrous woman with the snake tail, eated
men and flokes. After a vain attempt with the arrows the hero caught the beast
in a cavern and he strangled it. Later Ercole unfleceed it using its same claws
(since the other means were turn out vain, for the hardness of the skin) and
used the skin like a cape and the head like an helmet, giving it a threatening
aspect. Finally Zeus placed in sky the lion in memory of the enterprise of Ercole.
The more luminous star, Regulus, from the Latin "regulus" (small king), has been
called therefore from Tolomeo, but wherever it has always had a regale character:
in Mesopotamia he was the King and for the Hebrew the star of David.