ABSTRACT
Daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, or else a nymph. Her name, derived from kalliste, means ‘most beautiful’. She followed Artemis as one of her maidens, having taken a vow to remain a virgin. But Zeus saw her and fell in love with her. He disguised himself, taking the form of Apollo or Artemis, and lured the girl into his embrace. Either Zeus or Hera or Artemis then turned Callisto into a bear. If it was Zeus, he did so to shield her from his wife’s anger; if Hera, it was a penalty for invading her marriage rights; if Artemis, her action was designed to punish Callisto for breaking her vow. In the version which ascribed the transformation to Zeus, Hera avenged herself by persuading Artemis to shoot the bear, whereupon Zeus sent Hermes to rescue the baby, Arcas, from Callisto’s womb. In a further variant of the story Callisto bore her son naturally, and was herself shot by Arcas when he was grown up and was hunting in the mountains of Arcadia. Yet another story tells how Callisto, in the form of a bear, was caught by some shepherds and given as a present to her father Lycaon: one day the bear happened to wander into the forbidden precinct of Zeus Lycaeus, and was shot down for this impiety by her son
Arcas. According to Ovid, however, Zeus stayed Arcas’ hand and turned the pair, mother and son, into stars, the constellations of the Great Bear and Arctophylax (Little Bear).
