Monday, March 12th, 2012 Today’s Myth of the Week is in honor of
Latin teacher extraordinaire Walter, and his delightful
students. Good luck on the upcoming National Latin exam! Galileo
knew his mythology. After discovering the four largest moons of
Jupiter, he decided to name them, fittingly, after four famous
loves of Zeus (Jupiter, to Romans): Io, Europa, Ganymede and
Callisto. Of these four, Callisto’s story is the least well
known, but maybe the most fascinating. Callisto (Kallisto in the
Greek) was an Arcadian nymph, whose name literally means “most
beautiful.” Her father was the infamous and cruel Lycaon, whom
Jupiter changed into a wolf as punishment for his savage and
“wolfish” behavior. He is often cited as a mythological
precursor of the werewolf. Callisto preferred the woods to her
father’s house. She loved to hunt and became a favorite of the
goddess Artemis, joining her band of nymphs and swearing to
remain a virgin eternally. Although today we might regard this
as overly stringent, in the world