The Bear Driver. Bootes is also known as The Hunter, on the tracks of the Great Bear, accompanied by his two dogs Asterion and Chara, the "Canes Venatici" or hunting dogs. And yet the constellation was once known as Arctophylax which means the protector of the Bear. Perhaps it was the Romans who changed his role, for they called him Venator Ursae: the Bear Hunter. Another popular name for the constellation is "The Herdsman" (as known in French: Le Bouvier), as he eternally herds the stars around the North Pole. The constellation was known in antiquity, with the first recorded appearance being in Homer's Odyssey. In Book V, Odysseus sails his ship by the stars, using the Pleiades, the Bear, and Bootes ("which set late") to reach his destination.