Credulity
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In Greek mythology, Procris was the daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens and his wife, Praxithea.
In Ovid's account, the goddess of the dawn, Eos (Aurora to the Romans) seizes Cephalus while he is hunting, but although the two have a relationship for some time and have three children together, Cephalus begins to pine for Procris. A disgruntled Eos returns Cephalus to his wife, but offers to show Cephalus how easily Procris would be seduced by another stranger. He therefore goes home in disguise.
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, here, and the tale is related as a caution against credulity. Cephalus quite innocently beseeches a cool breeze (Zephyr, or Aura) to come to his overheated breast when he lies in the shade after hunting. A busybody related the overheard comment to Procris, who grew pale with terror that her husband loved another, and hastened in fury to the valley, then crept silently to the forest where Cephalus hunted. When she saw him flop on the grass to cool himself and call, as was his wont, to Zephyri to come relieve him, Procris realized that what she had taken to be the name of a lover was merely a name for the air and nothing more. Joyfully she rose to fling herself into his arms, but hearing a rustling of foliage, Cephalus shot an arrow at what he thought would be a wild beast in the brush. Dying, the woman laments that the breeze by whose name she was deceived would now carry away her spirit, and her husband weeps, holding her in his arms.
