Cassiopeia: Why the Myth Says the Queen Turns Upside Down

A boast, a flood and a sea monster

Of the texts checked, the Library credited to Apollodorus is the one that spells out each step from the queen's claim to the monster. It is a Greek handbook of myths from the first or second century AD. In J. G. Frazer's 1921 translation, "Cassiepea, the wife of Cepheus, vied with the Nereids in beauty and boasted to be better than them all; hence the Nereids were angry, and Poseidon, sharing their wrath, sent a flood and a monster to invade the land" (2.4.3). An oracle of Ammon promised relief if her daughter Andromeda was given to the monster, so Cepheus bound her to a rock, and Perseus killed the beast.

Illustration

Ovid, writing in AD 8, names no rival in this episode. Brookes More's 1922 translation has Ammon decree that "Andromeda, the Innocent, should grieve / her mother's tongue" (Metamorphoses 4.670–671). Ovid's Latin later blames maternae fiducia formae (4.687), "trust in the mother's beauty" (Translation: Where Tales Began), while More turns it into pride in the daughter: "how her charms / had been her mother's pride."

Table data: cassiopeia-text-records.csv, with the passage, edition and link for every row.

The same Library also tells of Deucalion's flood (1.7.2), and the comparison of flood myths places both of its floods beside the Sumerian and Akkadian flood tablets. Poseidon's flood, sent as a punishment, stands there as a parallel, with no claim that one story comes from the other.

Why is Cassiopeia upside down?

Aratus describes the queen twice. Early in the poem she wheels ahead of Cepheus, a small figure with few stars, stretching out her arms as if grieving for her daughter (188–196). Later, in a passage on the stars that set as others rise, the image turns over.

τὰ δʼ οὐκέτι οἱ κατὰ κόσμον φαίνεται ἐκ δίφροιο, πόδες καὶ γούναθʼ ὕπερθεν, ἀλλʼ ἥ γʼ ἐς κεφαλὴν ἴση δύετʼ ἀρνευτῆρι … ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἄρʼ ἔμελλεν ἐκείνη Δωρίδι καὶ Πανόπῃ μεγάλων ἄτερ ἰσώσασθαι. (Aratus, Phaenomena 654–658, Greek text ed. G. R. Mair, 1921)

Her limbs no longer show in good order from her chair: feet and knees are on top, and she goes down head first like a diver … since she was not to measure herself against Doris and Panope without paying dearly. (Translation: Where Tales Began)

Doris and Panope are two of the fifty daughters of Nereus, the Nereids, whom Hesiod's Theogony lists by name (240–264, in H. G. Evelyn-White's 1914 translation, where Panope is spelled Panopea).

The De Astronomia gives the same tilt a cause. It credits Euripides, Sophocles and several others with the story of her boasting. It sets her among the stars on a chair, a siliquastrum, and says that for her impiety she seems to be carried head back as the heavens turn (2.10). Aratus shows the posture as she sets; the De Astronomia ties it to the turning of the sky.

How do you find Cassiopeia?

Look north. In the IAU's list of approved star names as of January 1, 2021, four of the W's five stars are named: Caph, Schedar, Ruchbah and Segin. By this page's count from those positions, they lie 26° to 33° from the celestial pole, so from 40° north they never set. They circle Polaris once a day, so the W turns over about every twelve hours.

The chart below shows the same view at 9 p.m. standard time on four dates. On November 15 the W stands 64° to 73° above the horizon, above Polaris, and reads as an M; on May 15 it sits 7° to 15° above the northern horizon, below Polaris, and reads as a W. In February it stands on its end to the left of Polaris, in August to the right. The view comes about two hours earlier each month.

The chart shows only the four named stars. The middle star of the W, gamma Cassiopeiae, has no name in the 2021 IAU list used here, so it is left out. In the index of all 88 constellations, Cassiopeia is one of Ptolemy's 48 and one of the 47 figures that Aratus describes; the IAU lists her as Cas, the Seated Queen.

The lost Andromeda plays

Sophocles and Euripides, the two tragedians that the De Astronomia names as tellers of the story, each wrote an Andromeda, and neither play survives. Frazer's 1921 note to the Library says that "Sophocles and Euripides composed tragedies on the subject, of which some fragments remain." As English Wikipedia summarizes them, Sophocles' Andromeda is believed to date from around 450 BC and Euripides' from 412 BC, and modern reconstructions suggest Euripides' play most likely ended with Athena announcing that all the characters would become constellations.

By the same summary, Aristophanes parodied the Euripides play in the Thesmophoriazusae of 411 BC. In his Frogs of 405 BC, the god Dionysus says that reading it gave him a longing for the dead poet (52–54, 66–67).

καὶ δῆτʼ ἐπὶ τῆς νεὼς ἀναγιγνώσκοντί μοι τὴν Ἀνδρομέδαν πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν ἐξαίφνης πόθος τὴν καρδίαν ἐπάταξε πῶς οἴει σφόδρα. (Aristophanes, Frogs 52–54, Greek text ed. F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart, 1907)

And there on the ship, as I was reading the Andromeda to myself, a longing suddenly struck my heart, you can't think how hard. (Translation: Where Tales Began)

Under the site's rule for dating records, the lost plays count only through these later reports, so among the texts checked for this page the surviving record of her rivalry with the Nereids starts with Aratus. The later readers of Euripides' play are followed in the catalogue of lost books.

The W in other skies

Aratus describes no letter in her stars. He compares their line to the key that knocks back the bolts of a double door (192–195).

The Persian astronomer al-Sufi wrote his Book of Fixed Stars around 964, more than twelve centuries later. As English Wikipedia summarizes it, he drew each constellation twice, once as seen in the sky and once as seen on a globe. The same encyclopedia says he drew Cassiopeia as a crowned queen holding a staff with a crescent moon. It adds that some Arabic atlases drew a "Tinted Hand" in the same stars.

Sima Qian's Shiji, finished before 86 BC, calls four stars in the Milky Way Tiansi (天駟) and adds: "旁一星，曰王良。王良策馬……", "Beside them is one star, called Wang Liang. When Wang Liang whips the horses …" (Translation: Where Tales Began). In the star tables that Chinese Wikipedia follows, the Wang Liang asterism has five stars in Cassiopeia, and Ce (策), "the whip," is gamma Cassiopeiae, the middle star of the W.

Tycho's new star, 1572

In November 1572 a new star blazed up in Cassiopeia. As English Wikipedia summarizes the reports of the time, it appeared soon after November 2, outshone Jupiter by November 11, peaked around November 16 at about magnitude −4, and stayed visible to the naked eye into early 1574. Tycho Brahe's study of it, De nova stella, was published in 1573. The explosion is often called Tycho's supernova.