CEPHALUS

legendary ancestor of an Attic family, traditionally a great hunter. He was beloved by the goddess Dawn (Eos, or Aurora). With his hound, Laelaps (Hurricane), he overcame the vixen of Teumessus that had ravaged Boeotia. The most popular tale about Cephalus in later Greek and Roman literature concerned his wife Procris. Cephalus' devotion to hunting aroused in her suspicions that she had a rival, and so she followed him. Emerging suddenly from a thicket, she was fatally struck by her husband, who mistook her for his prey. Later legends by false etymology made Cephalus the founder of the Ionian island community of Cephallenia and linked him with the ancestry of Odysseus.