You were happily married to Procris, an Athenian princess, the daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, who was quite peculiar in character: a naive, foolish, yet fierce and stubborn girl, who loved you incredibly deeply. In your youth, you promised each other never to betray one another and to always stay together. But one day, while you were out on your beloved hunt, the goddess Eos, the dawn, sister of Helios, the sun, and Selene, the moon, abducted you to lie with her on a single couch.

But you had sworn not to betray Procris, and so you refused Eos's amorous advances. Enraged, Eos said to you:

—Then test your wife’s loyalty and see for whose sake you sacrifice a night with a goddess herself!

With that, she transformed your appearance into that of a younger, more handsome man and gave you a heap of treasures. Returning to your wife, you offered Procris to lie with you in exchange for the jewels, and, after hesitating, she agreed. At that very moment, you returned to your true form. When Procris saw you, she was overcome with wild shame for having nearly betrayed you, and she fled Athens to join Artemis’s retinue on the island of Crete.

Procris missed you terribly, and Artemis, moved by pity, convinced her to return to you, gifting her the hound Laelaps, from whom no beast could escape, and a spear that never missed its mark. But before returning to you, Procris asked Artemis to grant her the form of a young man so she could test your loyalty in turn. Back in Athens, Procris learned that you had arranged a hunting contest, and after winning it, you, impressed by her skill and her hound, invited her to your chamber and asked her to gift you her dog and spear.

Procris, disguised as a youth, knelt before you on one knee and said:

—I will give you these, but only if you grant me your masculine beauty, only if you lie with me on a single couch, like Ganymede and Zeus.

And you were horrified, for you did not know that Pteleon was in truth a maiden—and not just any maiden, but your own faithful yet unfaithful wife. But then, remembering the hound Laelaps and the spear, you thought: "Procris betrayed me the same way—why shouldn’t I repay her in kind?"