http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(constellation)
http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky/leo/index.html
Since Hercules had killed his family, the oracle Delphi sent him on a mission to purge his sin. The king Eurystheus had assigned these orders. Hercules’s first task was to kill Leo the Lion. When he went to kill Leo, none of his weapons would work because the lion was so strong. Finally giving up, Hercules went and strangled the lion himself. When he brought back the Lion to the king the king was so frightened by the dead lion that he fled the room in fright. After that (because Hercules did look very scary) Hercules always wore the pelt of the lion as a cape and that is how the myth for Leo the Lion goes.
One star in Leo the Lion is called Regulus but designated as Alpha Leonis and it is a blue-white main sequence star that has a magnitude of 1.4 and is 77.5 light years away from Earth. It’s traditional name (Regulus) means “the little king”. It is a double star with a secondary magnitude of 7.7. On the opposite side of Leo the is a blue-white star called Beta Leonis known as Denebola. It has a magnitude of 2.1 and is 36 light years from Earth. Denebola means “the lion’s tail”.