Key Points

- A hunting dog that could catch anything 

- A fox that could not be caught

- Due to this paradox, Zeus turned them to stone and put them in the sky as constellations

Brief Bio

The Laelaps was a gift from Zeus to Europa. The hound was passed down to King Minos, who gave it as a reward to the Athenian princess Procris. She obtained it by drugging him with a drink from the Circean root, which came from a plant of the milkweed family. In another version of her story, she received the animal as a gift from the goddess Artemis.

It was said that the Teumessian fox had been sent by the gods (perhaps Dionysus) to prey upon the children of Thebes as a punishment for a national crime. Creon, then–Regent of Thebes, set Amphitryon the impossible task of destroying this beast. He discovered a supposedly perfect solution by using the magical dog Laelaps, who was destined to catch everything it chased, to catch the Teumessian fox. 

Zeus, faced with an inevitable contradiction due to the paradoxical nature of their mutually excluding abilities, turned the two beasts into stone. The pair were cast into the stars and remain as Canis Major (Laelaps) and Canis Minor (Teumessian Fox).