Callisto

Callisto was a huntress in the train of Artemis, and her parentage is told several ways. Apollodorus reports that Eumelus and others made her a daughter of Lycaon, but Hesiod said she was one of the nymphs, Asius called her a daughter of Nycteus, and Pherecydes a daughter of Ceteus. Pausanias, who gives what he calls the current Greek legend, makes her Lycaon's daughter. Ovid's Juno also speaks of Lycaon as her father-in-law. The setting is Arcadia in every version.

She hunted in Artemis's dress and swore to her to stay a maiden. Apollodorus says she wore the same garb as the goddess and took the oath. Ovid's Calisto carries a javelin or a bow, binds her hair with a plain white fillet, and is loved by Diana above every other huntress on Mount Maenalus. In the Fasti she touches the goddess's bow and asks it to witness her virginity, and Diana names her leader of her companions.

Then Zeus wrongs her, and the sources say plainly that it was without her consent. Apollodorus says that he shared her bed against her will, disguised, as some say, as Artemis, or, as others say, as Apollo. Ovid's Jupiter finds her asleep in a secluded thicket at midday and reasons that Juno might scold him but the gain is worth it. He takes Diana's form and asks where she hunted. Calisto answers that she greets a goddess greater than Jove, and Jove smiles, pleased at being preferred to himself. She struggles when she understands, but cannot resist him.

Ovid shows her shame before her fate. She goes back to the woods, almost forgetting her bow, and fears every figure until she sees the real nymphs of Diana's band. She cannot look up or walk beside the goddess. Nine months on, Diana proposes a bath in a cool stream. Calisto hangs back until the others have undressed, her condition shows, and the angry goddess drives her away. The Fasti has the same scene and says the goddess ordered her out of the band. Ovid comments that if Diana were not a virgin, she would pity her.

Her son is born, and the punishment follows. In Ovid, Juno hears that Calisto has borne Jupiter a boy called Arcas. She seizes her rival by the hair, throws her to the ground and vows to spoil the beauty that had dazzled him. While Calisto begs for mercy, black hair spreads over her arms, her hands turn to claws, and her voice becomes a growl. Ovid says she keeps her human understanding. The Fasti agrees that Juno, angry, changed the girl's form, and adds that Calisto suffered Jove against her will.

Ovid gives the bear fifteen years of flight, until Arcas is grown. She fears the hounds and the hunters, though she was once a huntress, and even the wolves and bears of the mountains. Her son Arcas becomes a hunter. In the forest of Erymanthus he sees a bear who stands and gazes at him, and he raises his spear against his own mother. Jupiter stops the blow. He carries mother and son up on a wind and fixes them among the stars. The Fasti gives the same rescue, and says Arcas was fifteen (three lustra) when they met.

The sources disagree on who made her a bear. In Apollodorus, Zeus turns her into one himself to escape the notice of Hera, and Hera then persuades Artemis to shoot her down as a wild beast. Pausanias says Hera changed her, and that Artemis shot the bear to please Hera. In Ovid, Juno changes her and nobody shoots her: Callisto is saved, and Arcas is stopped on the point of striking. Apollodorus adds a second reason for Artemis's shot: some say she killed Callisto because she had not kept her maidenhood.

What happens to the child also differs. In Apollodorus, when Callisto has died, Zeus snatches the baby, names him Arcas and gives him to Maia to raise in Arcadia. Pausanias has Zeus send Hermes to save the child from her womb. Ovid keeps Arcas with his mother until he is fifteen and can lift his spear against her.

Her place in the sky is the point of the story in Ovid. Juno, watching Calisto crowned with glory among the stars, flies over the sea to Tethys and Oceanus and asks them to bar the Seven Stars from the ocean. Ovid's Juno wants no concubine bathing in pure waters. The Fasti says that Saturnia still rages and asks white-haired Tethys not to let Maenalian Arctos bathe in her waters. Apollodorus says Zeus called Callisto's star the Bear.

Pausanias doubts the sky story. He says Zeus turned her into the constellation known as the Great Bear, which Homer names in the Odyssey, but adds that it may be named in her honor, because the Arcadians point out her grave.

Her name is on the sky twice. The Great Bear of Pausanias, the constellation now called Ursa Major, is the bear she became. In 1610 Galileo Galilei discovered Jupiter's four largest moons, and NASA notes that Callisto is named for the woman Zeus turned into a bear. Simon Marius proposed the mythological names Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto soon after, saying Kepler suggested them. Galileo did not use them, and they stayed out of common use until the mid-twentieth century.