Callisto and the Great Bear

One account: Callisto

In the version Hyginus credits to Hesiod, Callisto is turned into a bear by Diana.

Hyginus begins his chapter on the Great Bear (opens in a new tab) with Hesiod's version: the bear is Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, a huntress and companion of Diana. When Diana discovers that Callisto is pregnant by Jupiter, she turns her into a bear, and as a bear she bears a son, Arcas.

In the same account (opens in a new tab), mother and son are later hunted in Arcadia, and Jupiter rescues them by placing them among the stars, naming her Arctos and her son Arctophylax.

Sources for this section Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1 (the Great Bear), tr. Mary Grant, Theoi Classical Texts Library (opens in a new tab)

Other accounts

Other writers blame Juno instead of Diana, or name the girl Megisto.

Hyginus records competing versions (opens in a new tab). In one, credited to the comic writer Amphis, Jupiter takes Diana's form to approach Callisto. In others it is Juno, in jealousy, who makes her a bear, or Jupiter himself, to hide her, and Diana kills the bear while hunting.

The historian Araethus of Tegea (opens in a new tab), Hyginus adds, said she was not Callisto at all but Megisto, granddaughter of Lycaon. Ian Ridpath (opens in a new tab) notes a further identification of the bear with Adrasteia, one of the nymphs who nursed the infant Zeus, and that Ovid tells the Callisto story at length in his Metamorphoses.

Keep in mind These are several stories credited to different writers, not one Greek belief. This page reports them as Hyginus and Ridpath give them and does not blend them into one.

Sources for this section Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1 (the Great Bear), tr. Mary Grant, Theoi Classical Texts Library (opens in a new tab) · ; Ian Ridpath, Star Tales: Ursa Major (opens in a new tab)

Why the bear never sets

One story explains a real fact: from Greece, the bear never dips below the horizon.

Hyginus notes that this constellation does not set (opens in a new tab), and gives a reason some told: Tethys, wife of Ocean, refuses to let her into the sea, because Tethys had nursed Juno, whose husband Callisto had taken.

Homer had already described the Bear as the only constellation that never bathes in the sea (opens in a new tab). The fact is real: by this site's calculation (opens in a new tab), the whole Big Dipper never sets anywhere north of about 41°N.

Sources for this section Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1 (the Great Bear), tr. Mary Grant, Theoi Classical Texts Library (opens in a new tab) · ; Ian Ridpath, Star Tales: Ursa Major (opens in a new tab) · ; Bright Star Catalogue, 5th Revised Ed. (Hoffleit & Warren 1991), as computed by this site's star engine (opens in a new tab)

In the sky today

The bear is Ursa Major, the third-largest constellation; the Dipper is its back and tail.

Ursa Major is the third-largest constellation (opens in a new tab), and its seven brightest stars, the Big Dipper, make the bear's rump and tail.

Arctophylax, the bear-watcher, became Boötes, home of Arcturus; NASA's “arc to Arcturus” (opens in a new tab) still leads from the bear's tail to the bear-watcher.

Sources for this section Ian Ridpath, Star Tales: Ursa Major (opens in a new tab) · ; NASA Science, What's Up: September 2021 (opens in a new tab)