Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Cephalus, son of Deion (an Aeolid), married Procris, daughter of Erechtheus of Athens. Their marriage was destroyed by tests of fidelity and by fatal gifts. In Apollodorus’s compressed line: Cephalus, testing Procris, sent a messenger with bribes; she yielded (or seemed to); he revealed himself and she fled in shame to Minos (or to Artemis’s company). From Artemis—or from Minos, in the strand where she cures his curse and receives gifts—Procris obtained a javelin that never missed and the hound Laelaps that always caught its prey. Reconciled, she gave these to Cephalus. He hunted continually. Procris, still jealous (fearing a nymph or the Dawn goddess Eos, who had once carried Cephalus off in related tales), spied on him from a thicket. Hearing a rustle, Cephalus cast the unerring spear and killed his wife. Thus the gifts of perfect hunt became the instruments of domestic tragedy. Apollodorus also notes that Amphitryon later borrowed Laelaps for the Cadmeian vixen chase (Theban saga link). Greek sources keep the Attic genealogy and the accidental killing; Ovid’s long Eos seduction and double-disguise plot is **Roman** scenic expansion of the same couple.