Andromeda

Andromeda was the daughter of Cepheus, king of the Ethiopians, and his wife Cassiopeia, whom Apollodorus's Library spells Cassiepea. According to Apollodorus, Cassiopeia claimed to be more beautiful than all the Nereids, the sea nymphs. The Nereids were angered, and Poseidon shared their anger, sending a flood and a sea monster against the land. The oracle of Ammon declared that the disaster would end only if Andromeda were exposed to the monster. Apollodorus adds that the Ethiopians forced Cepheus to do it, and he bound his daughter to a rock by the sea.

Perseus arrived on his way home from beheading Medusa. In Apollodorus he falls in love at first sight and makes a bargain with Cepheus: he will kill the monster if he may marry the rescued girl. Ovid's Metamorphoses tells the scene at length. Perseus at first takes the chained girl for a marble statue, until the wind stirs her hair and he sees her tears. She tells him her name and her mother's fault as the monster comes into view. Perseus attacks it from the air and drives his sword into it again and again until it dies. Her parents greet him as the saviour of their house, and her chains are struck off. Ovid adds that he took her without a dowry.

The wedding feast turned into a battle. Andromeda had first been promised to Phineus, her father's brother. Apollodorus says Phineus plotted against Perseus and was turned to stone with his fellow conspirators when Perseus showed them the Gorgon's head. Ovid expands this into a long fight in Cepheus's hall that ends the same way. Andromeda then went to Greece with her husband. Apollodorus has Perseus take her and his mother Danae to Argos to see his grandfather Acrisius, whom Perseus later killed by accident with a thrown discus.

Andromeda became the mother of a royal house. Apollodorus lists her sons by Perseus: Perses, born before they left for Greece and left behind with Cepheus, and in Mycenae Alcaeus, Sthenelus, Heleus, Mestor and Electryon, with a daughter Gorgophone. Through Electryon's daughter Alcmena she was an ancestor of Heracles, and through Sthenelus of Eurystheus, who came to rule Mycenae. Herodotus reports that the Persians took their name from her son Perses. He also tells of a Persian herald who reminded the Argives that Perses was the son of Perseus and Andromeda, and so kin to them.

Ancient writers placed her rock in different lands. Apollodorus and Ovid set the story in Ethiopia. Strabo's Geography records that some writers moved Ethiopia to the Phoenician coast and made Joppa, modern Jaffa, the scene of her exposure. Pliny the Elder's Natural History reports a rock in front of Joppa that still showed the marks of her chains. Pausanias describes a red spring near Joppa where local people said Perseus washed off the monster's blood. Later Roman star lore, in the Astronomica attributed to Hyginus, says Minerva set Andromeda among the constellations to honor Perseus's courage. Euripides and Sophocles each wrote a tragedy called Andromeda, both now lost.

Titian painted Perseus and Andromeda in 1554 to 1556 as one of his mythological poesie for Philip II of Spain, drawing on Ovid's version. The painting is now in the Wallace Collection in London. The 1981 film Clash of the Titans, with stop-motion creatures by Ray Harryhausen, casts Judi Bowker as Andromeda, a princess of Joppa. In the film it is the sea goddess Thetis who punishes Cassiopeia's boast by demanding Andromeda as a sacrifice to a monster called the Kraken.