Andromeda

Princess of Ethiopia — though in the canonical post-Hellenistic geography the rock where she was chained stood at the harbour of Joppa on the Phoenician coast (Pliny *Natural History* 5.69 and 9.11; Pomponius Mela 1.64; Josephus *Bellum Judaicum* 3.420). Her mother Cassiopeia had boasted of being more beautiful than the Nereids; they complained to Poseidon, who sent a sea-monster against the kingdom; the oracle of Ammon said only Andromeda's sacrifice could appease him, and her father Cepheus chained her to a rock at the water's edge. Perseus, flying back from Medusa's lair with the Gorgon's head in the kibisis, saw her and fell in love (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 2.4.3; Ovid *Metamorphoses* 4.668–764). He killed the monster — with a sickle, or by showing it Medusa's face, the sources differ — and married her over the opposition of her already-betrothed uncle Phineus, whom he petrified at the wedding feast (Ovid *Met.* 5.1–249). She went with him to Seriphos, then to Argos and Tiryns, and bore him seven children including Perses — eponym and ancestor of the Persian royal line (Herodotus 7.61) — and Alcaeus, father of Amphitryon and grandfather of Heracles.

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