How a Huntress Became a Bear

Although Juno was the queen of the gods, she had a weakness common to mortals. She was very jealous, especially of any earthly maiden whom she thought Jupiter might one day give a place among the great family of gods on Mount Olympus. As soon as Juno saw Callisto, a beautiful huntress of the forests of Arcadia, she disliked her.

Perhaps Juno would have liked to be free to roam through the woods where Pan played his music for dancing and the Dryads sported from one season to another as Callisto did. The goddess may have envied the huntress her happy, free life with no royal duties to interfere with her daily chase of the deer or any heavy crown to keep the breezes from tossing her long dark hair. Callisto revered Jupiter and Juno alike, with no thought that she might be arousing the goddess's displeasure, but one day a strange and fearful thing happened to her.

She had just raised her bow to her shoulder, ready to shoot an arrow as straight as a dart through the green forest path, when suddenly it struck her hand and she fell to the moss on her hands and knees. She tried to reach out her arms in prayer, but they had become thick and heavy and were covered with long black hair. Her hands grew rounded, armed with crooked claws, and served her as feet. Her voice, which had been so sweet that it charmed the birds when she called to them, changed to a terrifying growl.

Callisto raised herself as well as she could, lifting up her paws to beg mercy of the gods and uttering frightful roars as she bemoaned her fate. She had always been obliged to defend herself from the lions and wolves that haunted the forest, and she felt that she would be at their mercy now. Suddenly she understood what had happened to her. She, herself, was no longer a mortal but a wild beast. Juno had persuaded Jupiter to change Callisto into the first bear.

She had never liked to be out in the woods at night, but now she had no shelter and had to roam through the darkness, often pursued by the same wild beasts whom she had once hunted. She fled from her own dogs in terror and lived in hourly fear of the same arrows she had formerly aimed so straight. In winter, Callisto crawled into a hollow log or dug a cave to survive the season of the North Wind's reign, and when spring came she crawled out, lean and weak, to search for the wild bee's comb and the first juicy juniper berries.

One day a boy saw the bear while he was out hunting. Callisto saw him at the same time and realized that he was her own son, Arcas, now grown to be a tall youth, taking his part in the chase as his mother had done so many seasons before. Callisto forgot her changed form in her great joy at seeing her son. She rose onto her hind feet and hastened toward him, holding out her paws to embrace him. The boy, alarmed, raised his hunting spear and ran to meet the bear, thrusting its point through her heart. Callisto's son would have killed her if Jupiter had not, just then, looked down on the forest from his throne and felt a sudden pity for the tragedy he had brought about.

The gods had made a long road in the sky that led to the palace of the Sun. Anyone can see this road on a clear night, for it stretches across the face of the sky and is known as the Milky Way. The palaces of the illustrious gods stood on either side of the road, and a little farther back were placed the homes of the lesser deities.

At the very moment that Arcas, his spear raised, rushed upon Callisto, two new comers appeared in the sky near the road of the gods. They had the form of a Great Bear and a Little Bear, but their bodies were made of brightly shining stars. The mighty Jupiter had transformed Callisto and her son into these two constellations.

How enraged Juno was when she found out! She descended to the sea and told her troubles to Oceanus, a giant of the race of Titans who ruled the waters at that time.

"Do you wonder, Oceanus," Juno cried, "why I, the queen of the gods, have left the heavenly plains and seek your depths? It is because my authority has been set aside. I shall be supplanted among my fellow gods, for Callisto, the bear, has been taken up to the skies and given a place among the stars. Who can deny that she may not occupy my throne next!"

"What would you have me do about it?" old Oceanus asked, a little puzzled as to why Juno had consulted him.

"I forbade Callisto to keep her human form, and my will has been unjustly set aside," Juno replied. "Now that she has an abode on the road to heaven, she will be able to take any form she desires and may come to you for help in her attempt to steal my throne. I command you to never allow the stars of her constellation to touch the waters."

Oceanus called a council of the other powers of the waters, and they assented to Juno's decree. One after another the stars rose and set, touching the sea in their courses, but the Great Bear and the Little Bear moved ceaselessly round and round in the sky, never sinking to rest as the other stars did beneath the ocean. Juno had thought that this would be a punishment for them, but as it turned out, it was a kind of reward.

Because the Great Bear and the Little Bear were always to be seen in their changeless, shining course, people who had to travel at night, especially those at sea, grew to depend on them as a means of finding their way in the darkness. The last star in the tail of the Little Bear indicated the north and was known after a while as the Pole Star. The ancients also called it the Star of Arcadia, for it helped so many mariners to find their way home across the perilous waters.

It had happened to Juno, as it often happens to jealous people today, that she had not hurt Callisto in the least but had brought her a great deal of honor.