Cephalus the Aeolid hunter and Procris swore never to be untrue — but Dawn carried him off, jealousy returned in whispers of a rival named Aura, and the wife who followed her husband into the thicket died on his unerring javelin when he hurled at what he thought was game.1
Minos and the Sporades
Ovid sets the tale on Aegina while Minos son of Zeus sails against the Aeacidae: the Cretan fleet passed the islands that gave no aid — Oliarus, Didymae, Tenos, Gyaros, Andros, and Peparethos rich in glossy olives — before he turned to Oenopia, the realm Aeacus had renamed Aegina from his mother's name.2
The vow
Cephalus son of Deion, king of Phocis, married Procris — Apollodorus and Pausanias call her daughter of Erechtheus, Hyginus daughter of Pandion — and they bound each other with oaths of fidelity. He loved the hunt above all; she loved him. Then Eos saw the hunter on the mountain and carried him away, and the marriage cracked under suspicion.3
Aura
Ovid tells how reconciled lovers renewed their trust until a busybody heard Cephalus call upon the breeze — Aura, come — to cool him after the chase, and reported to Procris that a mistress shared the name. Hyginus instead has Aurora disguise the hunter to test his wife; either way Procris fled, won back gifts of the chase, and returned — yet doubt still gnawed.4
The gifts
Apollodorus says Procris, after fleeing to Crete and sharing Minos' bed, received a dog that no beast could outrun and a dart that never missed — the same weapons Diana gives her in Hyginus when she sends the wife back to out-hunt her husband and win reconciliation. Cephalus prized both; Procris kept the javelin close.5
The thicket
Procris followed her husband at dawn to spy on the rival Aura; when she rustled the leaves Cephalus, hearing movement, threw the unerring dart at what he took for a beast and pierced his wife. She died in his arms naming the innocent breeze; he learned too late that jealousy, not adultery, had brought them to the wood. Apollodorus adds the Areopagus and perpetual banishment; Ovid ends in grief and the tale told to Aeacus.6
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