Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Arcas, son of Zeus and Callisto, survived his mother’s transformation and became the eponymous king from whom the Arcadians took their name—replacing the older Pelasgian or “Apidanian” designations in Pausanias’s ethnography. He taught crops and bread-baking (or refined earlier Pelasgus’s ways), and by the Dryad Erato (or other wives in variants) he fathered Azan, Apheidas, and Elatus; the land was later divided among their lines (Azania, Tegea’s district, and Mount Cyllene’s). Pausanias records tombs and cult notes for Arcas and his sons across Arcadia. Catalogue Arcas as culture-king and eponym, distinct from Callisto’s bear-metamorphosis and stellification.