And, by the council of a wise oracle, Cassiopeia thought she could save herself and her kingdom by sacrificing Andromeda to the sea-monster Cetus. The boast enraged the sea-god Poseidon, who sought to punish the kingdom of Aethiopia for Cassiopeia’s transgression. Its namesake was derived from the myth of Cassiopeia, who was said to have been a queen of ancient Aethiopia (a place roughly aligning with the modern region of Ethiopia), an ancient Greek territory.Īs the story goes, Cassiopeia was said to have been a vain and arrogant queen-going so far as to claim that the beauty of herself and her daughter, Andromeda, was far greater than that of the Nereids, a group of sea-nymphs. Cassiopeia MythologyĬassiopeia is another example of the original forty-eight constellations listed out by the Greek-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the eighty-eight recognized constellations today. However, despite this, Cassiopeia is still home to unrivaled beauty and wonder-perhaps not in the figure it represents, but in the contents of its space. Said to be in the shape of a ‘beautiful queen’, one might be hard-pressed to make out that likeness. Constellations are the stars an astronomer chose to connect, and Cassiopeia is no exception to this rule. While it is said to be in the likeness of a ‘bear’, someone viewing it without that specified prior knowledge may be more inclined to view it as a ‘dog’ or ‘horse’ or some other four-legged animal-or not an animal at all. Through their long histories, we assume constellations reside in the night sky as inarguable depictions of their collected stars-but sometimes constellations aren’t all that reflective of the images we ascribe to them.
While Cassiopeia may not be among the most widely-known constellations, it might be one of the few that truly lives up to its namesake.
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