Andromeda (mythology)


In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of the king of Aethiopia; 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.
Her name is the Latinized form of the Greek Ἀνδρομέδα or Ἀνδρομέδη : "ruler of men", from 's rescue of the intended victim of an archaic hieros gamos, giving rise to the "princess and dragon" motif. From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Mythology

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, 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 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. Andromeda was never asked for her opinion. 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.
Andromeda follows her husband to his native island of Serifos, where he rescues his mother Danaë. 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, 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 is also a descendant, his mother Alcmene being Electryon's daughter, while his father is the god Zeus.
The goddess Athena 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.
Variants of this story include:
Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia, 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 n natives of the Kingdom of Kush. Homer says the Ethiopians live "at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East," an idea echoed by Ovid, who located Ethiopia next to India, close to where the sun rises each day. 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.
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 had become associated with the place of Andromeda's chaining and rescue, as reported by Pliny the Elder, the traveler Pausanias, the geographer Strabo, and the historian Josephus. 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. 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
, The Rescue of Andromeda, from M. de Marolles, Tableaux du Temple des Muses
Elizabeth McGrath, in her article The Black Andromeda, 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"; 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 and declares “Nor was Andromeda’s color any problem/to her wing-footed aerial lover” adding that “White suits dark girls; you looked so attractive in white, Andromeda”. Ovid's account of Andromeda's story 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.
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 Meroë, 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." 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. 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.
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 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. 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, but Ovid's tradition was not continued by their contemporaries or later artists.

Cultural references

Constellations

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:

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:
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:
, Saint George and the Dragon, ca. 1456