Wednesday 28 March 2012

Every star tells a Story

Every star tells a Story










Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of the kingdom Ethiopia.  Perseus and Andromeda love each other, but Andromeda is betrothed to her uncle Phineus.

Cassiopeia boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, the Nymph daughters of the sea god, Nereus. To punish the Queen for her arrogance, Poseidon, brother of Zeus and god of the sea, sends a sea monster to ravage the coast of Ethiopia including the kingdom of its vain Queen. The desperate King consults the Oracle of Apollo, who announces that no respite would be found until the king sacrifices his daughter Andromeda to the sea monster. She is chained to a rock on the coast line of the kingdom.

The drama is resolved only through Perseus’ triumph over supernatural obstacles. In a series of elaborate spectacles he is supplied by the gods with armour and weapons and slays the Gorgon Medusa of whose blood monsters were born.

Perseus returns from having slain the Gorgon, when he finds Andromeda tied to the rock as a sacrifice for the sea monster, which he slaughters, approaching invisible with Hades' helmet. He sets her free and marries her in spite of Andromeda having been previously promised to her uncle Phineus. At the wedding a quarrel takes place between the rivals, and Phineus is turned to stone by the sight of the Gorgon Medusa's head.
After their deaths, Andromeda and Perseus are placed by Athena amongst the Constellations in the northern sky, theire love to be immortalized for ever in the  heavenly skies.

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