Callisto (mythology)
In
The fourth Galilean moon of Jupiter and a main belt asteroid are named after Callisto.[1]
Mythology
As a follower of Artemis, Callisto, who
According to Hesiod,[4] she was seduced by Zeus, and of the consequences that followed:
[Callisto] chose to occupy herself with wild-beasts in the mountains together with Artemis, and, when she was seduced by Zeus, continued some time undetected by the goddess, but afterwards, when she was already with child, was seen by her bathing and so discovered. Upon this, the goddess was enraged and changed her into a beast. Thus she became a bear and gave birth to a son called Arcas. But while she was in the mountains, she was hunted by some goat-herds and given up with her babe to Lycaon. Some while after, she thought fit to go into the forbidden precinct of Zeus, not knowing the law, and being pursued by her own son and the Arcadians, was about to be killed because of the said law; but Zeus delivered her because of her connection with him and put her among the stars, giving her the name Bear because of the misfortune which had befallen her.
Eratosthenes also mentions a variation in which the virginal companion of Artemis that was seduced by Zeus and eventually transformed into the constellation Ursa Minor was named Phoenice instead.[5]
According to
According to
According to the mythographer Apollodorus,[12] Zeus forced himself on Callisto when he disguised himself as Artemis or Apollo, in order to lure the sworn maiden into his embrace. Apollodorus is the only author to mention Apollo, but implies that it is not a rarity. Callisto was then turned into a bear by Zeus trying to hide her from Hera, but Hera asked Artemis to shoot the animal, and Artemis complied. 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. Alternatively, Artemis killed Callisto for not protecting her virginity. Nonnus also writes that a "female paramour entered a woman's bed."[13]
Either Artemis "slew Kallisto with a shot of her silver bow," according to
According to John Tzetzes, Charon of Lampsacus wrote that Callisto's son Arcas had been fathered not by Zeus but rather by Apollo.[16]
As a constellation, Ursa Major (who was also known as Helice, from an alternative origin story of the constellation)[17] told Demeter, when the goddess asked the stars whether they knew anything about her daughter Persephone's abduction, to ask Helios the sun god, for he knew the deeds of the day well, while the night was blameless.[18]
Variations | Name | Sources | |||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hom. | Hes. | Amph. | Ovid | Hyginus | Apoll. | Paus. | Stat. | Lib. | Serv. | Non. | Vatican Mythographers | ||||||
Fab. | Astr. 1.[19] | Astr. 2.[10] | Astr. 3.[11] | V.M. 1[20] | V.M. 2[21] | ||||||||||||
Zeus disguised? | No mention | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
Yes, as Artemis | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓[22] | ✓[23] | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||
Yes, as Apollo | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||
God who transformed Callisto | Artemis | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||
Hera | ✓ | ✓[9] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓[24] | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||
Zeus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓[25] | ||||||||||||||
Killer of Callisto | Arcas and/or Arcadians | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||
Artemis | ✓[14] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Origin of the myth
The name Kalliste (Καλλίστη), "most beautiful", may be recognized as an
The myth in Catasterismi may be derived from the fact that a set of constellations appear close together in the sky, in and near the Zodiac sign of Libra, namely Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Boötes, and Virgo. The constellation Boötes, was explicitly identified in the Hesiodic Astronomia (Ἀστρονομία)[30] as Arcas, the "Bear-warden" (Arktophylax; Ἀρκτοφύλαξ):[31] He is Arkas the son of Kallisto and Zeus, and he lived in the country about Lykaion. After Zeus had seduced Kallisto, Lykaon, pretending not to know of the matter, entertained Zeus, as Hesiod says, and set before him on the table the babe [Arkas] which he had cut up.[32]
The stars of Ursa Major were all circumpolar in Athens of 400 BCE, and all but the stars in the Great Bear's left foot were circumpolar in Ovid's Rome, in the first century CE. Now, however, due to the
According to Julien d'Huy, who used phylogenetic and statistical tools, the story could be a recent transformation of a Palaeolithic myth.[33]
In art
Callisto's story was sometimes depicted in
Although Ovid places the discovery in the ninth month of Callisto's pregnancy, in paintings she is generally shown with a rather modest bump for late pregnancy. With the
During the
Aeschylus' tragedy Callisto is lost.
Genealogy
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Gallery
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Diana and Callisto commissioned from the artist by Philip IV of Spain
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Arcas about to kill his mother, engraving byHendrik Goltzius, 16th-17th century.
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Callisto discovered by Diana, engraving by Noël Le Mire.
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Illustration of Zeus as Artemis with Callisto, ohan Teyler (1648-1709).
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Diana and Callisto, relief by Jakob Kellner, 1763.
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Diana and Callisto, Anthonie Blocklandt van Montfoort, c. 1580.
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Diane et Callisto, by Nicolas-René Jollain, 1770, oil on canvas.
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Giove e Callisto, by Jacopo Amigoni, circa 1740–1750, oil on canvas.
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Callisto's pregnancy discovered, engraving by Jan Pietersz, 1599.
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Artemis, Callisto and the nymphs, ivory relief by Ignaz Elhafen, circa 1690–1695.
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Jupiter in the guise of Diana and Callisto, by Jean-Simon Berthélemy, nineteenth century, oil on canvas.
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Jupiter and Callisto, by Charles-Joseph Natoire, 1745, in the National Museum of Stockholm.
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Callisto, by Anselme Flamen, 1696, Versailles.
See also
Notes
- ^ "Satellites of Jupiter". The Galileo Project. Archived from the original on 11 February 2012. Retrieved 31 July 2007.
- ^ In his lost Astronomy, quoted in Catasterismi.
- ^ Other writers gave her a mortal genealogy as the daughter of one or the other of Lycaon's sons: Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke.
- ^ Hesiod frag 3, in his lost Astronomy, quoted in Catasterismi.
- ISBN 978-0-19-871698-3.
- Metamorphoses. Book II, Lines 405–531; Ovid narrates the myth also in Fasti, book II.
- ^ Hard, p. 40
- Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1.2.
- ^ a b Hyginus, Fabulae 177
- ^ a b Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1.3
- ^ a b Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1.4
- ^ Bibliotheca, 3.8.2
- ^ Nonnus, Dionysiaca 2.123; 36.70
- ^ a b Homerica, The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, 316 ff (trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White).
- ^ This was the version current in Greece when Pausanias visited in the second century CE (Pausanias, 8.3.6). Pseudo-Apollodorus also supports this version.
- ^ Tzetzes ad Lycophron Alexandra 481
- ^ Aratus, Phaenomena, translation by A. W. Mair, G. R. Loeb
- ^ Ovid, Fasti 4.575
- ^ Hyginus, Astronomica 2.1.1
- ^ First Vatican Mythographer, 17
- ^ Second Vatican Mythographer, 76
- ^ Statius, Thebaid 4.293
- ^ Libanius, Progymnasmata 12
- ^ Daniel J. Geagan. "The Athenian Constitution After Sulla" (Hesperia Supplements 12 1967:72, 95).
- ^ Klio: Beiträge Zur Alten Geschichte (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften Zu Berlin Institut für Griechisch-Römische Altertumskunde) 1907.
- ^ In Klio 7 (1907:213f).
- ISBN 9780877790426.
- ^ Hesiod, Astronomia, fragment 3, preserved as a quote in a commentary on Aratus.
- ^ Thus Hesiod is quoted, though Boötes, Βοώτης, from his very name, is a cow (βοως) herdsman.
- ^ The episode is a doublet of the serving up of Pelops.
- ^ d'Huy Julien, Un ours dans les étoiles: recherche phylogénétique Sur un mythe préhistorique. Préhistoire du sud-ouest, 20 (1), 2012: 91-106 [1]; A Cosmic Hunt in the Berber sky : a phylogenetic reconstruction of Palaeolithic mythology. Les Cahiers de l'AARS, 15, 2013: 93-106 [2].
- ^ Gods
- ^ There is a good but by no means complete, selection at Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, Myths → Callisto's pregnancy discovered by Diana; more on Wikimedia Commons
- ^ Brigstocke, 184
- ^ a b Hall, Gods
- ^ Jane Martineau (ed), The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600, 207, 1983, Royal Academy of Arts, London
- ^ Desnos, Robert (2013) [1962]. Calixto suivi de contrée. Translated by Sanders, Todd.
- ^ Pausanias, 8.3.6, 8.17.6; Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.409 ff.
References
- Brigstocke, Hugh; Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2nd Edn, 1993, National Galleries of Scotland, ISBN 0903598221
- "Gods": Aghion I., Barbillon C., Lissarrague, F., "Callisto", in Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity, Flammarion Iconographic Guides, pp. 77–78, 1996, ISBN 2080135805
- Hall, James, "Diana: 5", in Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, pp. 102–103, 1996 (2nd edn.), John Murray, ISBN 0719541476
- Maurus Servius Honoratus. In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii; recensuerunt Georgius Thilo et Hermannus Hagen. Georgius Thilo. Leipzig. B. G. Teubner. 1881.
Further reading
- Pseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheke III.8.2.
- Poeticon astronomicon, II.1: the Great Bear.
External links
- Hesiod, Astronomy, quoted by the Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi: e-text (English)
- Theoi Project – Kallisto
- Richard Wilson's 'Landscape with Diana and Callisto' at the Lady Lever Art Gallery
- Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 220 images of Callisto)