From Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, 1889, Richard H.

Allen

THE CONSTELLATION OF ANDROMEDA

A CHAINED WOMAN The etymology and symbolism of the constellations Andromeda, the original "maiden in distress" is daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopeia, and his wife Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia was proud of her daughter's beauty and boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful than the Sea Nymphs, the Nereids, who were daughters of Poseidon (Neptune). The Nereids complained to Poseidon who sent a sea monster (Cetus) to ravage the coast. With his kingdom in grave danger Cepheus consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya for advice. He learned the only way to save his kingdom was to sacrifice his daughter, Andromeda, to the sea monster. Andromeda is chained to a rock and left to the mercy of the monster. The hero, Perseus, riding through the air on winged sandals, arrives at the scene and they fall in love. Perseus has a consultation with Cepheus and Cassiopeia, it is agreed that if he rescues their daughter he could marry her. The sea monster (Cetus) arrives and Perseus kills it by turning it to stone with the Medusa's Head (Algol). Perseus breaks the chains that bound Andromeda to the rock and frees her. The wedding follows.

PERSEUS was one of the most celebrated of the Greek heroes. His story was as follows:--Perseus' mother Danae was locked in a bronze chamber by her father Akrisios, where she was impregnated by Zeus in the form of a golden shower. Akrisios put both mother and child in a chest and set them adrift in the sea, but they washed safely ashore on the island of Seriphos. Later when Perseus was grown, King Polydektes, command he bring back the head of Medousa. With the help of the gods, Perseus first obtained an invisible helm, magical sword, and winged sandals. He then stole the single eye of the Graiai, three ancient hags, who told him where to find the Gorgones. The hero approached the sleeping Medousa, and beheaded her with eyes turned away, to avoid her petrifying visage. On his way back to Greece, he spied the princess Andromeda chained to the rocks as a sacrifice to a sea-monster. Perseus slew the monster, and rescued the girl, bringing her back to Greece as his bride. On Seriphos, he turned King Polydektes to stone, then travelled to his grandfather's kingdom to claim the throne. The old man fled, and was later accidentally killed by Perseus at some Games with an awry discus throw. Perseus was the ancestor through his sons and daughter of the royal houses of Mykenai, Elis, Sparta, Messenia, and distant Persia. His most famous descendant of all was Herakles.

Perseus & Andromeda, Roman fresco Pompeii C1st A.D., Archaeological Museum of Naples

History of the constellation from Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, 1889, Richard H. Allen

Andromeda, the Woman Chained, the Andromede of Aratos, and Andromeda of Eratosthenes, Hipparchos, and Ptolemy, represents in the sky the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of Aethiopia, chained in exposure to the sea monster (Cetus) as punishment other mother's boast of beauty superior to that of the Nereids. Sappho, of the 7th century before Christ, is supposed to mention her, while Euripides and Sophocles, of the 5th, wrote dramas in which she was a character; {Page 32} but she seems to go far back of classical times, and we probably must look to the Euphrates for her origin, with that of her family and Cetus. Sayce claims that she appeared in the great Babylonian Epic of Creation, of more than two millenniums before our era, in connection with the story of Bel Marduk and the dragon Tiamat that doubtless is the foundation of the story of Perseus and Andromeda. She was noted, too, in Phoenicia, where Chaldaean influence was early felt. As a constellation these stars have always borne our title, frequently with the added Mulier Catenata, the Woman Chained, and many of the classical Latins alluded to her as familiar and a great favorite. Caesar Germanicus called her Virgo Devota; a scholiast, Persea, as the bride of Perseus; while Manilius, and Germanicus again, had Cepheis, from her father (Cepheus).

In some editions of the Alfonsine Tables and Almagest she is Alamac, taken from the title of her star gamma (Almach); and Andromada, described as Mulier qui non vidit maritum, evidently from Al Biruni, this reappearing in Bayer's Carens Omnino viro. Ah Aben Reduan (Haly), the Latin translator of the Arabian commentary on the Tetrabiblos, had Asnade, which in the Berlin Codex reads Ansnade et est mulier quae non habet vivum maritum; these changed by manifold transcription from Alarmalah, the Widow, applied by the Arabians to Andromeda; but the philologist Buttmann said from Anroneda, another erroneous form of our word. The Antamarda of the Hindus is their variation of the classical name. The original figure probably was, as Durer drew it, that of a young and beautiful woman bound to the rocks, Strabo said at Iope, the biblical Joppa [Joppa is a Biblical name for the Israeli city of Yafo, otherwise known as Jaffa, now a part of Tel Aviv - Yafo]; and Josephus wrote that in his day the marks of her chains and the bones of her monster foe (Cetus) were still shown on that sea-shore. But this author, "who did not receive the Greek mythology, observes that these marks attest not the truth but the antiquity of the legend." Others, who very naturally thought her too far from home at that spot, located Iope in Aethiopia and made her a negress; Ovid expressing this in his patriae fusca colors suae, although he followed Herodotus in referring her to India. Manilius [author of the Astronomica] on the contrary, in his version of the story described her as nivea cervice; but the Aethiopia of this legend probably was along the Red Sea in southwestern Arabia. {Page 33} Arabian astronomers knew these stars as Al Marah al Musalsalah, their equivalent of the classical descriptive title, Chilmead's Almara Almasulsala, for Western mythological names had no place in their science, although they were familiar with the ideas. But they represented a Sea Calf, or Seal, Vitulus marinus catenatus [The common seal is Phoca vitulina], as Bayer Latinized it, with a chain around its neck that united it to one of the Fishes; their religious scruples deterring them from figuring the human form. The Spanish edition of the Alfonsine Tables pictures Andromeda with an unfastened chain around her body, and two fishes, one on her bosom, the other at her feet, showing an early connection with Pisces; the Hyginus, printed at Venice anno salutifere incarnationis, 7th of June, 1488, by Thomas de blauis de alexandria, with some most remarkable illustrations, has her standing between two trees, to which she is bound at the outstretched wrists; in the Leyden Manuscript she is partly clothed on the sea beach, chained to rocks on either side. Caesius [author of Coelum Stellatum Christianum (1627)] said that she represented the biblical Abigail ("her Father's joy") of The Books of Samuel; and Julius Schiller, in 1627, made of her stars Sepulchrum Christi [This appeared in the Coelum Stellatum Christianum, which, according to its title-page, was the joint production of Schiller and Bayer, an enlarged reprint of the Uranometria of 1603], the "new Sepulchre wherein was never man yet laid." [Page 34 } The apparently universal impulse of star-gazers to find earthly objects in the heavens is shown in the Cross which is claimed for some of Andromeda's stars; beta (Mirach), gamma (Almach) and delta, marking the upright, a alpha (Alpheratz) and k kappa the transverse. But a much more noticeable group, an immense Dipper, is readily seen in following up its gamma (Almach) and beta (Mirach) to the Square of Pegasus, far surpassing, in extent at least, the

better-known pair of Dippers around the pole. Andromeda is bounded on the north by Cassiopeia and Perseus; on the east by Perseus; on the south by Pisces and Triangulum; and on the west by Lacerta and Pegasus. Milton's passage in Paradise Lost, where Satan surveys our world from eastern point of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the Horizon, seems to have puzzled many; but the poet was only seeking to show the comprehensive view had by the archfiend east and west through the six signs of the zodiac from the Scales to the Ram (Aries) with the golden fleece; Andromeda, above the latter, apparently being borne on by him to the westward, and so, to an observer from England, over the Atlantic. Kingsley's Andromeda well describes her place: "I set thee High for a star in the heavens, a sign and a hope for the seamen, Spreading thy long white arms all night in the heights of the aether, Hard by thy sire and the hero, thy spouse, while near thee thy mother Sits in her ivory chair, as she plaits ambrosial tresses; All night long thou wilt shine; these members of the royal family, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Perseus, lying contiguous to each other, wholly or partly in the Milky Way. The stars that mark her right arm may be seen stretching from delta to iota and kappa and zeta marking the left arm with the end of the chain towards Lacerta; but in early days she was somewhat differently located, and even till recently there has been confusion here; for Smyth wrote: Flamsteed's Nos. 51 and 54 Andromedae are psi and upsilon Persei, though placed exactly where Ptolemy wished them to be on the lady's foot: so also alpha (Alpheratz) in this asterism has been lettered delta Pegasi by Bayer, and beta (Mirach) has been the lucida of the Northern Fish (in Pisces). La Lande and Dupuis asserted that the Phoenician sphere had a broad Threshing-floor in this spot, with stars of Cassiopeia as one of the Gleaners {Page 35} in the large Wheat-field that occupied so much of that people's sky; its exact boundaries, however, being unknown to us.