In Greek mythology, Procris was an Athenian princess, the third daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, and his wife Praxithea. She married Cephalus, and the tragic tale of their marriage — marked by mutual jealousy, tests of fidelity, and her accidental death at her husband's hand during a hunt — survives in at least six divergent ancient accounts. Homer names her among the dead spirits Odysseus sees in the Underworld, and Sophocles wrote a now-lost tragedy titled Procris.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Procris" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Overview
In Greek mythology, Procris was an Athenian princess, the third daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, and his wife Praxithea. Homer mentions her in the Odyssey as one of the many dead spirits Odysseus saw in the Underworld.
Sophocles wrote a tragedy called Procris, which has been lost, as has a version of her story from the Greek Cycle. Despite these losses, at least six different accounts of her story survive from antiquity.
II.Family
Procris's sisters were Creusa, Oreithyia, Chthonia, Protogeneia, Pandora and Merope, while her brothers were Cecrops, Pandorus, Metion, and possibly Orneus, Thespius, Eupalamus and Sicyon. She married Cephalus, the son of King Deioneus of Phocis.
III.Mythology
Several distinct versions of Procris's story survive, differing in the details of how she and Cephalus deceived and ultimately lost one another.
In the account of Pherecydes, Cephalus absented himself for eight years to test Procris's fidelity. On his return he seduced her while in disguise. Though they reconciled, Procris grew suspicious when Cephalus called out to Nephele during his hunts. Following him one day, she emerged from the thickets; startled, he shot her with an arrow and killed her, mistaking her for a wild animal.
In an early version told by Ovid in The Art of Love, Cephalus calls for a breeze to cool himself. A busybody reports this to Procris, who grew pale with terror that her husband loved another. She follows him and realizes the breeze is merely air, but dies when Cephalus shoots an arrow at what he thinks is a wild beast.
IV.Ovid — Later Version
In Ovid's later telling, the goddess Eos abducts Cephalus, then returns him to test Procris's fidelity by offering to seduce him. Procris flees to take part in Diana's activities and later returns with magical gifts. Ovid notes that Cephalus dares not say how he obtained the dog and javelin, suggesting that the deception was mutual.
Procris ultimately dies in his arms after she mistakes his calls to Aura for the name of another woman.
V.Apollodorus, Hyginus, and Antoninus
According to the Bibliotheca, Procris was bribed with a golden crown to sleep with Pteleon. She then fled to King Minos, who was afflicted with a curse laid on him by Pasiphaë, and she helped cure him with magical herbs. In return she received a dog from which no quarry could escape and an infallible javelin.
Hyginus and Antoninus Liberalis recount that Procris disguised herself as a boy to seduce Cephalus, thereby proving his own guilt. Minos rewarded her with gifts after she devised a remedy for his condition.
VI.The Dog and the Fox
The dog Procris received is named Laelaps. In one strand of the tradition it is set to hunt the uncatchable Teumessian fox, and Zeus, confronted with a hound destined to catch its prey and a prey destined never to be caught, turns both the dog and the fox to stone. This episode appears in lost early Greek epics, probably the Epigoni.
VII.Medieval Tradition
Procris's story is included in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361–62. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.