Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Phocus.
The gallery
Phocus Receives Cephalus (illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VII)
Engraved by Pierre-Philippe Choffard and others after François Boucher, 1767
A copperplate engraving from the lavish 1767 Paris edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Latin and French, illustrating the seventh book. Phocus, the young son of King Aeacus of Aegina and the Nereid Psamathe, welcomes the Athenian envoy Cephalus and the sons of Pallas at the palace. Struck by Cephalus's curious gold-tipped wooden javelin, Phocus asks about its origin, drawing from his guest the sorrowful tale of how that very weapon killed his wife Procris. Phocus is the rare named figure of the Aeacid line to appear in a narrative image at all: best remembered for his death at the hands of his envious half-brothers Peleus and Telamon, he is shown here in the gentler role of attentive host, the listener whose question frames one of the poem's most poignant stories.