March 5: International Day For Disarmament And Non-Proliferation Awareness

The mythological couple Prokris and Kephalos dealt with trust issues, and that’s an understatement. It even took the intervention of Artemis, who donated Prokris two presents, that she could offer her husband as reconciliation gifts. One was a spear that never missed. And the other a dog, Lailaps, that always caught its pray. It took the sting out of the marriage for a while, but as this is a Greek myth, Kephalos managed to kill Prokris with the javelin. After that, looking for redemption, he heard about the “Teumessian Fox”, also called “Cadmean Vixen”, that some offended god had sent to the city of Thebes, to prey on its children. According to the oracle, this fox could never be caught. Intrigued by the paradox of a dog that always got its prey, versus a fox that always escaped, he set out for the hunt. It’s said that Lailaps and the fox went around the earth several times, until supreme god Zeus got tired of the whole thing, and put them both in the sky, as Canis Major and Canis Minor. Since they both look like dogs to me, I suspect that the fox got away after all.

Cave Canem, mosaic, House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeï, Italy

Cephalus and Procris, Gerard Hoet, Private Collection