Callisto, priestess of hunting, was the daughter of King Lycaon of Arcadia and protected by the goddess Artemis. Her beauty attracted the interest of Zeus, and angered Artemis, who expelled her from her environment. Callisto, pregnant by the father of the gods, wandered alone in the dense forests of Arcadia and gave birth to Arkadas under a plane tree. Zeus' wife, Hera, avenged them by transforming Callisto into a bear.
The years passed and, once, while the young Arkadas was hunting in the forests, the transformed Callisto emerged from the foliage, and ran with longing to embrace him. Terrified, the son prepared to kill the bear with his spear. Zeus, who could not bear the pain of maternicide, took mother and son to heaven and transformed them into constellations to rejoice forever at night, close to each other. The mother became the Big Dipper constellation, the crowning jewel of the northern hemisphere of the sky, and her son became the Little Dipper constellation.
Jealous, Hera immediately ordered Ocean to never allow the two constellations to rest in his liquid realms. Since then, they are eternal, that is, visible all year round, and doomed not to rise or set, never cooling off at sea.
