True Love, Cretan Lies, and Monsters

The tale of Cephalus and Procris ends the seventh book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is rich in strange and magical elements, speaking of love, mistrust, coincidence, necessity, inescapable devices and fatal paradoxes. It has a long afterlife, extending to Shakespeare's Cymbeline and Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, as E.H. Gombrich and other scholars have noted.

The story seems simple, but has enigmatic elements - we'll look at a few of them here, but this is by no means exhaustive.