Callisto (mythology)

Callisto recognized that something was wrong the moment Jupiter started giving her "non-virginal kisses", but by that point it was too late, and even though she fought him off, he overpowered her.

The real Diana arrived in the scene soon after and called Callisto to her, only for the girl to run away in fear she was Jupiter, until she noticed the nymphs accompanying the goddess.

Juno, enraged that her attempt at revenge had been frustrated, appealed to Tethys that the two might never meet her waters, thus providing a poetic explanation for the constellations' circumpolar positions in ancient times.

[12] Hyginus also records a version where Hera changed Callisto for sleeping with Zeus,[13] and Artemis later slew her while hunting, not recognizing her.

[14] In another of the versions Hyginus records, it was Zeus who turned Callisto into a bear, to conceal her from Juno, who had noticed what her husband was doing.

[15] According to the mythographer Apollodorus,[16] Zeus forced himself on Callisto when he disguised himself as Artemis or Apollo, in order to lure the sworn maiden into his embrace.

Zeus then took the child, named it Arcas, and gave it to Maia to bring up in Arcadia; and Callisto he turned into a star and called it the Bear.

"[17] Either Artemis "slew Kallisto with a shot of her silver bow," according to Homer,[18] in order to please Juno (Hera) as Pausanias and Pseudo-Apollodorus write[19] or later Arcas, the eponym of Arcadia, nearly killed his bear-mother, when she had wandered into the forbidden precinct of Zeus.

According to John Tzetzes, Charon of Lampsacus wrote that Callisto's son Arcas had been fathered not by Zeus but rather by Apollo.

[30] Artemis Kalliste was worshiped in Athens in a shrine which lay outside the Dipylon gate, by the side of the road to the Academy.

The constellation Boötes, was explicitly identified in the Hesiodic Astronomia (Ἀστρονομία)[34] as Arcas, the "Bear-warden" (Arktophylax; Ἀρκτοφύλαξ):[35] He is Arkas the son of Kallisto and Zeus, and he lived in the country about Lykaion.

The subject's attraction was undoubtedly mainly the opportunity it offered for a group of several females to be shown largely nude.

[39] Here, as in most subsequent depictions, Diana points angrily, as Callisto is held by two nymphs, who may be pulling off what little clothing remains on her.

Annibale Carracci's The Loves of the Gods includes an image of Juno urging Diana to shoot Callisto in ursine form.

However, Callisto rejoined the dramatic tradition in the Baroque period when Francesco Cavalli composed La Calisto in 1651.