The legend relates that Callisto, a nymph, the beautiful daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, incurred the jealous wrath of Juno. Jupiter, fearing that Callisto would suffer injury at Juno's hands, transformed her into a bear. Juno on perceiving this induced Diana to kill the bear in the chase, but Jupiter placed his favourite out of harm's way in the starry skies. Callisto's son Areas afterwards became the constellation of Ursa Minor.
Addison, in his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, thus writes that Jove—
In whirlwinds up to heaven and fix'd them there;
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.
Juno, it is said, indignant at the honour thus shown the objects of her hatred, persuaded Tethys and Oceanus to forbid the Bears to descend like the other stars into the sea.
Homer in the following lines thus alludes to the perpetual punishment meted out to Callisto and Areas:
Bryant also writes in like vein:
In the blue brine, descends not to the deep.
The Bear now sets except in high latitudes, but in Homer's day and long before, his stars did not sink below the horizon or lave the seas.
Lowell in "Prometheus" thus refers to the Bear:
Sparkling upon the hoar frost of my chain
