Andromeda (mythology)

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"Perseus and Andromeda" redirects here. For other uses, see Perseus and Andromeda
(disambiguation).

Andromeda being tied for sacrifice, Apulian Red Figure Vase, ca. 430-420 BC
In Greek mythology, Andromeda (/�n'dr?m?d?/; Greek: ??d??�?da, Androm�da or ??d??�?
d?, Androm�de) is the daughter of the Ethiopian king Cepheus and his wife
Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids,
Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage the coast of Ethiopia as divine
punishment. Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but
is saved from death by Perseus, who marries her and takes her to Greece to reign as
his queen.[1][2]

Her name is the Latinized form of the Greek ??d??�?da (Androm�da) or ??d??�?d?
(Androm�de): "ruler of men", from ????, ??d??? (aner, andr�s) meaning "man",
"husband", or "human being", and �?d? (medo) "I protect, rule over".

As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical times; it is one of
several Greek myths of a Greek hero's rescue of the intended victim of an archaic
hieros gamos (sacred marriage), giving rise to the "princess and dragon" motif.
From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived
from Ovid's Metamorphoses (4.663ff).

Contents
1 Mythology
2 Ethnicities of Andromeda
3 Cultural references
3.1 Constellations
3.2 In literature and theater
3.3 In music
3.4 In films
3.5 In art
4 Gallery
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Sources
Mythology

Jan Keynooghe, Perseus and Andromeda, 1561; King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia wait
beside their chained daughter Andromeda as Perseus battles the monster Cetus
In Greek mythology Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and
queen of ancient Ethiopia. Her mother Cassiopeia foolishly boasts that she is more
beautiful than the Nereids,[3][4] a display of hubris by a human that is
unacceptable to the gods. To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon floods
the Ethiopian coast and sends a sea monster named Cetus to ravage the kingdom's
inhabitants. In desperation, King Cepheus consults the oracle of Ammon, who
announces that no respite can be found until the king sacrifices his daughter,
Andromeda, to the monster. She is thus chained to a rock by the sea to await her
death.

Perseus holds up Medusa's head so Andromeda may safely see its reflection in the
pool below (fresco, 1st century AD, Pompeii)
Perseus is just then flying near the coast of Ethiopia on his winged sandals,
having slain the Gorgon Medusa and carrying her severed head, which instantly turns
to stone any who look at it. Upon seeing Andromeda bound to the rock, Perseus falls
in love with her, and he secures Cepheus' promise of her hand in marriage if he can
save her. Perseus kills the monster with the magical sword he had used against
Medusa, saving Andromeda. Preparations are then made for their marriage, in spite
of her having been previously promised to her uncle, Phineus. At the wedding a
quarrel takes place between the rivals, and Perseus is forced to show Medusa's head
to Phineus and his allies, turning them to stone.[5][6][7]

Andromeda follows her husband to his native island of Serifos, where he rescues his
mother Dana�. They next go to Argos, where Perseus is the rightful heir to the
throne. After accidentally killing Argos' king, his grandfather Acrisius, however,
Perseus chooses to become king of neighboring Tiryns instead. Perseus and Andromeda
have seven sons: Perses (who, according to folk etymology, is the ancestor of the
Persians), Alcaeus, Heleus, Mestor, Sthenelus, Electryon, and Cynurus as well as
two daughters, Autochthe and Gorgophone. Their descendants rule Mycenae from
Electryon down to Eurystheus, after whom Atreus attains the kingdom. The great hero
Heracles (Hercules in Roman mythology) is also a descendant, his mother Alcmene
being Electryon's daughter, while (like his grandfather Perseus) his father is the
god Zeus.[8][9] The goddess Athena (or her Roman version Minerva) places Andromeda
in the northern sky at her death as the constellation Andromeda, along with Perseus
and her parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia, in commemoration of Perseus' bravery in
fighting the sea monster Cetus.[10][11]

Variants of this story include:

Perseus defends Andromeda from the monster Cetus by pelting it with stones
(Corinthian amphora, 575-550 BC)
A 6th century BC vase painting shows Perseus throwing stones at Cetus instead of
using his sword (right).
Images from Classical antiquity often show Andromeda bound to two posts instead of
to a rock (see example above).
In Hyginus's account (Fabulae, 64) Perseus does not ask for Andromeda's hand in
marriage before saving her, and when he afterwards intends to keep her for his
wife, both her father Cepheus and her uncle Phineas plot against him, and Perseus
resorts to using Medusa's head to turn them to stone.
The primary Classical sources have Perseus kill Cetus with his magical sword, even
though he also carries Medusa's head, which could easy turn the monster to stone
(and Perseus does use Medusa's head for this purpose in other situations). The
earliest straightforward account of Perseus using Medusa's head against Cetus,
however, is from the later 2nd century AD satirist Lucian (The Hall, 22)[12]
The 12th century Byzantine writer John Tzetzes, in his Scholiast (notes) on
Lycophron's Alexandra (836), says that Cetus swallows Perseus, who kills the
monster by hacking his way out with his sword.
Conon (Narrations, 40) places the story in Joppa (Iope or Jaffa, on the coast of
modern Israel), and seeks to rationalize it by making Andromeda's uncles Phineus
and Phoinix rivals for her hand in marriage; her father Cepheus contrives to have
Phoinix abduct her in a ship named Cetos from a small island she visits to make
sacrifices to Aphrodite, and Perseus, sailing nearby, intercedes and destroys Cetos
and its crew, who are "petrified by shock" at his bravery. Conon thus explains away
all the exotic and magical elements of the story.
Ethnicities of Andromeda
Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia (Aithiopia/Aethiopia),
which ancient Greeks located at the edge of the world. The term Aithiops was
generally applied to peoples who dwelt above the equator, between the Atlantic
Ocean and the Indian Ocean, being derived from the Greek words a??? and ?? (aitho
�I burn� + ops �face�), translating as burnt-face (sunburnt) in noun form and red-
brown in adjectival form, as a reference to the natural light-to-dark red-brown
skin tones of the North Africans, Middle Easterners and Indians. Homer says the
Ethiopians live "at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West
and the other East,"[13] an idea echoed by Ovid, who located Ethiopia next to
India, close to where the sun rises each day.[14] The 5th century BC historian
Herodotus writes that "Where south inclines westwards, the part of the world
stretching farthest towards the sunset is Ethiopia", while also claiming that there
were Ethiopians who lived in Asia.[15] Thus Andromeda was originally thought to
come from a distant land, either to the south/southwest or east, whose people were
dark-skinned.

By the 1st century BC a rival location for Andromeda's story had been established,
however: an outcrop of rocks near the harbor of the ancient port city of Joppa
(Iope or Jaffa, today part of Tel Aviv, Israel) had become associated with the
place of Andromeda's chaining and rescue, as reported by Pliny the Elder,[16] the
traveler Pausanias,[17] the geographer Strabo, [18] and the historian Josephus.[19]
A case has been made that this new version of the myth was exploited to enhance the
fame and serve the local tourist trade of Joppa, which also became connected with
the biblical story of Jonah featuring yet another huge sea creature.[20][21] This
was, of course, at odds with Andromeda's Ethiopian origins, adding to the confusion
already surrounding her ethnicity, as reflected in 5th century Greek vase images
showing Andromeda attended by dark-skinned African servants and wearing clothing
that would have looked foreign to Greeks, yet with light skin[22]

Engraving after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, The Rescue of Andromeda (1632-1635), from
M. de Marolles, Tableaux du Temple des Muses (Paris, 1655)
Elizabeth McGrath, in her article The Black Andromeda,[23] discusses the tradition,
as promoted by the influential Roman poet Ovid, of Andromeda being a dark-skinned
woman of either Ethiopian or Indian origin. In his Heroides Ovid has Sappho explain
to Phaon: "though I'm not pure white, Cepheus's dark Andromeda/charmed Perseus with
her native color./White doves often choose mates of different hue/and the parrot
loves the black turtle dove"[24]; the Latin word fuscae Ovid uses here for "dark
Andromeda" refers to the color black or brown. Elsewhere he says that Perseus
brought Andromeda from "darkest" India [25] and declares �Nor was Andromeda�s color
any problem/to her wing-footed aerial lover�[26] adding that �White suits dark
girls; you looked so attractive in whit,e, Andromeda�.[27] Ovid's account of
Andromeda's story[28] follows Euripides' play Andromeda in having Perseus initially
mistake the chained Andromeda for a statue of marble, which has been taken to mean
she was light-skinned; but since statues in Ovid's time were commonly painted to
look like living people, her skin tone could have been of any color.[29] This
"white marble" misconception of Andromeda has been often used as an excuse to
ignore Ovid's repeated references to Andromeda's dark beauty, however.

The Aethiopica, a Greek romance attributed to the 3rd century AD writer Heliodorus
of Emesa, reflects the ambiguity between dark-skinned and light-skinned Andromedas
in Late Antiquity. In the kingdom of Mero� (modern Sudan), Queen Persinna gives
birth to her daughter, Chariclea who, despite having black parents, is born with
white skin. The mother's explanation is that, during the moment of conception, she
was gazing at a picture of a white-skinned Andromeda "brought down by Perseus naked
from the rock, and so by mishap engendered presently a thing like to her."[30]
After being long separated from her parents, living in Egypt and Greece, Princess
Chariclea returns home with her lover Theagnes and proves both her heritage and her
mother's story as true by showing her parents a single black spot upon her elbow.
Like the mythical Andromeda, Chariclea thus 'passes' as a member of the Greek/Roman
world as well as of her African birthplace.

This ambiguity is also reflected in a description by the 2nd century AD sophist

Philostratus of a painting depicting Perseus and Andromeda.[31] He emphasizes the
painting's Ethiopian setting, and notes that Andromeda "is charming in that she is
fair of skin though in Ethiopia," in clear contrast to the other "charming
Ethiopians with their strange coloring and their grim smiles" who have assembled to
cheer Perseus in this picture.

Perseus freeing Andromeda after killing Cetus, 1st century AD fresco from the Casa
Dei Dioscuri, Pompeii

Detail of Andromeda mosaic from 'House of Poseidon' in Zeugma,Turkey, 2nd-3rd

century AD
Through the centuries, Ovid's descriptions of Andromeda and/or other authors'
references to her Ethiopian/Indian origins have influenced some Western artists,
but not the majority. The alternative tradition of Andromeda's story taking place
at Joppa (on the coast of modern Israel) suggested that she was of light complexion
to some artists, while others simply followed the tendency of artists everywhere to
make the main subjects of their works look like themselves and the people around
them. Roman frescoes from Pompeii show light-skinned Andromedas, for instance, but
a 2nd-3rd century AD Roman mosaic found at Zeugma in modern Turkey shows her with
darker skin tones, which would be more common in the Middle East (see
illustrations). A few Renaissance and Baroque artists, such as Piero di Cosimo,
Titian, Giorgio Vasari, and Abraham van Diepenbeeck, painted Andromedas with darker
or dusky-colored skin tones (see Gallery), but Ovid's tradition was not continued
by their contemporaries or later artists.

Cultural references
Constellations

The constellation Andromeda as depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation

cards by Sidney Hall published in London c. 1825
Andromeda is represented in the Northern sky by the constellation Andromeda, which
contains the Andromeda Galaxy.

Several constellations are associated with the myth. Viewing the fainter stars
visible to the naked eye, the constellations are rendered as:||

A maiden (Andromeda) chained up, facing or turning away from the ecliptic.
A warrior (Perseus), often depicted holding the head of Medusa, next to
Andromeda, .
A huge man (Cepheus) wearing a crown, upside down with respect to the ecliptic.
A smaller figure (Cassiopeia) next to the man, sitting on a chair; as it is near
the pole star, it may be seen by observers in the Northern Hemisphere through the
whole year, although sometimes upside down.
A whale or sea monster (Cetus) just under the ecliptic.
The flying horse Pegasus, who was born from the stump of Medusa's neck after
Perseus had decapitated her.
The paired fish of the constellation Pisces, that in myth were caught by Dictys the
fisherman who was brother of Polydectes, king of Seriphos, the place where Perseus
and his mother Dana� were stranded.
In literature and theater
Sophocles, Andromeda (5th century BC), lost tragedy except for fragments
Euripides, Andromeda (412 BC), lost tragedy except for fragments; parodied by
Aristophanes in his comedy Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC) and influential in the
ancient world
George Chapman's poem in Heroic couplets Andromeda liberata, Or the nuptials of
Perseus and Andromeda, written for the 1614 wedding of the Robert Carr, 1st Earl of
Somerset and Frances Howard Frances Howard
Lope de Vega's play El Perseo (1621)

Set design for Corneille's Androm�de (1650)

Pierre Corneille's verse play Androm�de (1650), popular for its stage machinery
effects, including Perseus astride Pegasus as he battles the sea monster, the
success of which helped inspire Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Pers�e.[32]
Pedro Calder�n de la Barca's play Las Fortunas de Perseo y Andr�meda (1653)
John Weaver, Perseus and Andromeda (1716), a pantomimic entertainment
John Keats' 1819 sonnet On the Sonnet compares the restricted sonnet form to the
bound Andromeda as being "Fetter�d, in spite of pained loveliness"
James Robinson Planch� and Charles Dance's Victorian burlesque, The Deep deep sea,
or Perseus and Andromeda; an original mythological, aquatic, equestrian burletta in
one act (1857)
Charles Kingsley's free verse poem retelling the myth, Andromeda (1858)
William Brough's Victorian burlesque Perseus and Andromeda, or, The Maid and the
Monster: A Classical Extravaganza (1861)
William Morris retells the story of Perseus and Andromeda in his epic poem The
Earthly Paradise (1868) April: The Doom of King Acrisius
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Andromeda (1879)

Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,

With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
?Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

?Her Perseus linger and leave her t� her extremes?�

Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
?All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Gerard_Manley_Hopkins/Andromeda
Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet Andromeda (1879) (see box) has invited many
interpretations[33]
Julia Constance Fletcher (who wrote under the pseudonym George Fleming), Andromeda,
a Novel (1885)
Robert Williams Buchanan's novel Andromeda, An Idyl of the Great River (1901),
updates the myth using characters in a 19th century fishing community on the River
Thames
Richard Le Gallienne's prose version of Ovid's account, Perseus and Andromeda, A
Retelling (1902)
British poet, novelist and journalist Alphonse Courlander's (1881-1914) long poem
Perseus and Andromeda in 1903
Carlton Dawe's 1909 novel The New Andromeda (published in America as The Woman, the
Man, and the Monster) retells the Andromeda story in a modern setting
Muriel Stuart's closet drama Andromeda Unfettered (1922), featuring: Andromeda,
"the spirit of woman"; Perseus, "the new spirit of man"; a chorus of "women who
desire the old thrall"; and a chorus of "women who crave the new freedom"
Robert Nichols' short story Perseus and Andromeda (1923) satirically retells the
story in two contrasting styles
In her novel The Sea, the Sea (1978), Iris Murdoch uses the Andromeda myth, as
presented in a reproduction of Titian's painting Perseus and Andromeda, to reflect
the character and motives of her characters
Michael McClure's poem Fragments of Perseus (1983) "presents fragments of an
imaginary journal by Perseus, son of Zeus and Danae, slayer of the snake-haired
Medusa, and husband of Andromeda"
Andromeda is the main character in Harry Turtledove's 1999 short story Miss
Manners' Guide to Greek Missology, a satire filled with role reversals, puns, and
deliberate anachronisms relating to pop culture[34]
The main character in Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper (2004) is named Andromeda,
linking her parents' expecting her to sacrifice organs to keep her sister alive to
the mythical Andromeda who was sacrificed by her parents
In music
Claudio Monteverdi, Andromeda (1618-1620), opera; the libretto exists but the music
has been lost
Jean-Baptiste Lully, Pers�e (1682), trag�die lyrique in 5 acts
Georg Philipp Telemann, Perseus und Andromeda (1704), opera in 3 acts
Antonio Maria Bononcini, Andromeda (1707), cantata for 4 voices and orchestra
Andromeda liberata (1726), a pasticcio-serenata on the subject of Perseus freeing
Andromeda, made as a collective tribute to the visiting Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni by
at least five composers working in Venice, including Vivaldi
Louis Antoine Lefebvre, Androm�de (1762?), cantata for solo voice and orchestra
Giovanni Piasiello, Andromeda (1773), 3-act opera
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Symphony in F (Perseus' Rescue of Andromeda) and
Symphony in D (The Petrification of Phineus and his Friends), Nos. 4 and 5 of his
Symphonies after Ovid's Metamorphoses (ca. 1781)
Augusta Holm�s, Androm�de (1883), symphonic poem
Guillaume Lekeu, Androm�de (1891), cantata for 4 voices, chorus & orchestra
Cyril Rootham, Andromeda (1905), a musical setting of Charles Kingsley's poem
Andromeda
Jacques Ibert, Pers�e et Androm�de, ou le Plus heureux des trois (1929), opera in 2
acts
Salvatore Sciarrino, Perseo e Andromeda (1990), opera in one act for 4 voices and
synthesized sound
Caroline Mallon�e, Portraits of Andromeda for cello and string orchestra (2019)[35]
In films
Perseus (1973), a short animated film by Soviet animator Alexandra Snezhko-
Blotskaya, pits Perseus' natural kindness against the god Hermes' greed, and
presents the Ethiopian Andromeda as dark-skinned (while making Perseus blond).
The 1981 film Clash of the Titans is loosely based on the story of Perseus,
Andromeda, and Cassiopeia, and makes quite a few changes to the original myth. In
the film Cassiopeia boasts that her daughter is more beautiful than the single
Nereid Thetis, rather than the Nereids as a group. Andromeda and Perseus meet and
fall in love after he saves her soul from the enslavement of Thetis' "son" Calibos
(a made-up character introduced to provide Perseus with a dramatic foil) and before
he slays Medusa, whereas in the myth they first meet when Perseus finds Andromeda
chained to the rock as he is returning home from having already slain Medusa. In
the film the monster is called a kraken (which was the name of a giant squid-like
sea monster in Norse mythology) and looks very different from the whale-like Cetos
of Greek mythology. Perseus defeats the sea monster by showing it Medusa's face to
turn it into stone, even though the Classical sources typically say he killed the
monster with his magical sword. In the film Perseus tames and rides the flying
horse Pegasus, which in Classical mythology was done by the hero Bellerophon.
Perseus' use of Pegasus, along with his turning the monster to stone, was added to
Perseus' myth in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Also, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
criticizes this film (and its 2010 remake) for using white actresses to portray the
Ethiopian princess Andromeda.[36]
In the Japanese anime Saint Seiya (1986- ), the character Shun represents the
Andromeda constellation using chains as his main weapons, reminiscent of Andromeda
being chained before she was saved by Perseus. In order to attain the Andromeda
Cloth, he was chained between two large pillars of rock and he had to overcome the
chains before the tide came in and killed him, also reminiscent of this myth.
Andromeda appears in Disney's Hercules: The Animated Series (1998-1999) as a new
student of "Prometheus Academy" which Hercules and other characters from Greek
mythology attend.
The main character in My Sister's Keeper's (2010) is named Andromeda, linking her
parents' expecting her to sacrifice organs to keep her sister alive to the mythical
Andromeda who was sacrificed by her parents.
Andromeda is featured in the 2010 film Clash of the Titans, a remake of the 1981
version which strays so much further from the myth's ancient sources, and Greek
mythology in general, that there is little reason to make comparisons. The 2012
sequel, Wrath of the Titans, draws more from Norse mythology's twilight of the gods
(Ragnar�k), than Greek mythology.
In art
Andromeda, and her role in the popular myth of Perseus, has been the subject of
numerous ancient and modern works of art, where she is represented as a bound and
helpless, typically beautiful, young woman placed in terrible danger, who must be
saved through the unswerving courage of a hero who loves her: (see Gallery)

Although ancient artists at first presented her fully clothed, nude images of
Andromeda started appearing during Classical antiquity, and by the Renaissance the
chained nude figure of Andromeda, either alone or being rescued, had become the
standard, as seen in works by Titian, Joachim Wtewael, Cesari, Passerotti,
Veronese, Rubens, Bertin, Boucher, van Loo, Moreau, Stanhope, and Burne-Jones.
Rather than dwelling on Andromeda's physical beauty, artists such as Rembrandt,
Fetti, Chass�riau, Delacroix, Dor�, Leighton, and (satirically) Vallotton, have
focused on her terror and vulnerability as she awaits the monster.
Some artists such as Piero di Cosimo, Jan Keynooghe, Jacob Matham, and Pierre
Mignard, have shown Andromeda in relation to her parents and onlookers.
Andromeda was a popular subject for artists especially in the Renaissance and
Baroque eras, followed by a resurgence of interest in her myth in the 19th century,
but since then artists have shown much less interest in this subject.

Other Art Traditions Inspired by the Andomeda Myth:

Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, ca. 1456

Story of Perseus and Andromeda, (tapestry, Netherlands, early 1500s) showing

Perseus as a medieval knight astride Pegasus

Ingres, Roger Delivering Angelica (1819)

The legend of Saint George and the Dragon, in which a courageous knight rescues a
princess from a monster (with clear parallels to the Andromeda myth), became a
popular subject for art in the Late Middle Ages, and artists drew from both
traditions. One result is the idea of having Perseus riding the flying horse
Pegasus when fighting the sea monster (as seen in paintings by Matham, Passerotti,
Cesari, Wtewael, Rubens, Mignard, Bertin, and Leighton below), despite classical
sources consistently stating that he flew using winged sandals and connecting
Pegasus to the hero Bellerophon's adventures.
Ludovico Ariosto's influential epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516-1532) features a
pagan princess named Angelica who at one point is in exactly the same situation as
Andromeda, chained naked to a rock on the sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and
is saved at the last minute by the Saracen knight Ruggiero. Artists were drawn to
this subject for the same reasons they appreciated the Andromeda myth, and images
of Angelica and Ruggiero (or Roggiero/Roger) are often hard to distinguish from
those of Andromeda and Perseus