Pherecydes The earliest version of Procris' story comes from
Pherecydes of Athens. Cephalus remains away from home for eight years because he wants to test Procris' fidelity. When he returns, he seduces her while disguised. Although they reconcile eventually, Procris suspects that her husband has a lover because he is often away hunting. A servant tells her that Cephalus called to
Nephele (a cloud) to come to him. Procris follows him the next time he goes hunting and leaps out of the thicket when she hears him call out to Nephele again. He is startled and thinking that she is a wild animal, shoots her with an arrow and kills her.
Ovid '', by
Piero di Cosimo (c. 1486–1510)
Early version Ovid tells the end of the story a bit differently in the third of his books on
The Art of Love. No goddesses are mentioned in this earlier published work, a
cautionary tale against
credulity. After hunting, Cephalus calls for a breeze (
Zephyr The transformation scene centers on the dog, which always catches its quarry, and the uncatchable fox; Jupiter turns them into stone. The tale resumes with a similar ending to that of Pherecydes, as Procris is informed of her husband's calling out to "Aura", the Latin word for breeze, which sounds similar to Eos' Roman equivalent Aurora. Cephalus kills her by accident when she stirs in the bushes nearby, upset at his beseeching of "beloved Aura" to "come into his lap and give relief to his heat". Procris dies in his arms after begging him not to let Aura take her place as his wife. He explains to her that it was 'only the breeze' and she seems to die at ease.
Apollodorus, Hyginus, and Antoninus The
Bibliotheca gives an entirely different characterization of Procris. It states that Procris was bribed with a golden crown to sleep with
Pteleon, but was discovered in his bed by her husband. She is described as fleeing to
King Minos, who had been cursed by his wife
Pasiphaë to ejaculate scorpions, serpents and centipedes that killed his mistresses from the inside. Procris was said to have helped cure the king of his genital sickness with a
circean herb. She was given a dog no quarry could escape and an infallible javelin. The
Bibliotheca states that she gave the dog and javelin to Cephalus and they were reconciled.
Hyginus (who states that the dog and javelin are gifts from the goddess
Artemis) and
Antoninus Liberalis, however, write that she disguised herself as a boy and seduced her husband, so that he too was guilty, and they were reconciled. According to the latter, Minos' unexplained disease not only killed his mistresses, but also prevented him and Pasiphaë from having any children (Pasiphaë herself was not otherwise harmed, being an immortal daughter of
Helios). Procris then inserted a goat's bladder in a woman, told Minos to ejaculate there, and after that she sent him to his wife; the couple was thus able to conceive, and Minos gave his spear and his dog as gratitude gifts to her.
The dog and the fox The name of the dog is
Laelaps. The story of the hunting of the
Teumessian fox, which could never be caught, and that Zeus turned to stone along with Procris' dog when the dog hunted it, and the death of Procris were told in one of the lost early Greek epics of the
Cycle, most probably the
Epigoni.
Medieval tradition Procris' story is included in
De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the
Florentine author
Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 136162. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature. ==Notes==