Καλλιστω
- The legend of the best-known Callisto is an Arcadian one. According to some writers she was a wood-nymph; to others she was the daughter of King Lycaon, and in some versions the daughter of Nycteus. She had vowed to remain a virgin and spent her life hunting in the mountains with the band of companions of Artemis. Zeus saw her and fell in love with her. He married her in the guise of Artemis, for Callisto shunned the company of all men. According to other writers, he assumes the likeness of Apollo, the god of Arcadia and the brother of Artemis.
By Callisto Zeus begot Arcas. She was pregnant with him when one day Artemis and her companions decided to bathe in a spring. Callisto had to undress and her offence was disclosed. Artemis in her anger hunted her and changed her into a she-bear. One variant of this story is that her change was due to the jealousy of Hera, or else to the foresight of Zeus, who wanted to conceal his love and to rescue her, in this shape, from the wrath of his wife. Nevertheless, Hera knew how to find her out, and persuaded Artemis to kill her with an arrow, or it may have been Artemis herself who killed her, in order to punish her for having lost her virginity. Zeus changed her into the constellation of the Great Bear (for other variants of her story, involving Arcas, see Table 9). She was also sometimes said to have had a second son, a twin brother of Arcas, namely the god Pan.
- A second Callisto was the sister of Odysseus (Table 39).
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources
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- Pseudo-Eratosh. Catast. 1ff.; 8
- Apollod. Bibl. 3, 8, 2
- schol. on Hom. Il. 18, 487
- Callim. Hymn. 1, 140
- Catull, 66, 66
- Theocr. 1, 125
- Hyg. Astron. 2, 1; Fab. 155; 176f
- Ovid, Met. 2, 409ff.; Fast. 2, 155ff.
- Serv. on Virgil, Georg. 1, 138
- Paus. 1, 25, 1; 8, 3, 6ff; 8, 4, 1; 10, 9, 5
- Tzetzes on Lyc. Alex. 478; 481
- schol. on Euripides, Rhes. 36
- schol. on Theocr. 1, 3
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- See Odysseus.