In Grecian legend Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the sea-monster (Cetus), and Perseus are associated together, and on the Grecian sphere five neighbouring constellations represent the actors of the legend.

Studying these constellations as they must have appeared to observers of the heavens at different dates, we shall, I think, see some reason to attribute the imagining of the figure of the hero Perseus to a later age than that of the other members of the group, and, on the other hand, there are considerations which may make us hesitate whether we should not place the origin of the constellation Andromeda at an even earlier date than those of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and the sea-monster.[121] One point in the legend, however, finds strong astronomic support from a study of the precessional globe—namely, the fact that Cepheus and Cassiopeia were personages of Ethiopian—i.e., of tropical provenance.

It will be seen in Plate XXII., fig. 1, that only in a latitude as far South as 18° N. could the figure of Cassiopeia—even at the early date of 6000 B.C.—have been imagined as that of a queen seated in royal dignity, and visible in the northern quarter of the heavens.

By referring to Plate XV., we may learn that in Lat. 45° N. at that date, Cassiopeia would have appeared in the southern quarter of the sphere, head downwards, while the figure of Cepheus could only have been observed by turning first to one and then to the other quarter of the sky. As, however, the head of Cepheus would have marked so exactly the solstitial colure 6000 B.C., it seemed to me only right to seek for a latitude in which his figure and that of his queen should appear upright and in the same quarter of the heavens—a latitude, therefore, in which it might be possible to suppose these constellations had been originated as star-marks of the solstitial season. To attain this object it was necessary to set the globe to the very low latitude of 18° N.

To suppose at 6000 B.C. so wide a diffusion, not only of the human race, but also of astronomical science and authority, seemed to involve an historical unlikelihood. Moreover, even if for the sake of suitably establishing the dignity of this regal pair one were tempted to suppose the great improbability of schools of astronomy existing, and with equal authority instituting constellations as star-marks for the year, in regions as far north as Lat. 45° N. and as far south as 18° N.—even so, I do not think the position of the constellations themselves in relation to the solstitial colure as shown in the diagram is by any means so convincingly symmetrical as to force us to accept the date 6000 B.C. for their origin. The head only of Cepheus appears on the meridian, his figure and the whole constellation of Cassiopeia lie considerably to the east of that line.

Under these circumstances it is satisfactory to find at a later, and therefore at a more historically probable date, and still in an Ethiopian (tropical) latitude, a meridian line on and about which the constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Cetus form a well-balanced group.

This meridian, it is true, is not that of a solstice or an equinox; but it is one which marked a very important astronomical moment—namely, the commencement of the calendrical year—the year counted from the entry of the sun into the constellation Aries. (See Plate XXII., fig. 2.)

Of the high calendrical importance attached through thousands of years to this point in the sun’s annual course by the Accadian and Babylonian nations and by the Hindus down to the present day, astronomic records testify. Egyptian mythology and Chinese traditions also, as I have claimed, refer to it: it need not, therefore, surprise us to find constellations imagined to mark the beginning of a year counted from that point, even at a date when this beginning did not coincide either with solstice or equinox.

3500 B.C. is the approximate date I would suggest in a latitude not far from 23° N. for the origin of the constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and probably also for that of Cetus.

The legend tells us that Cassiopeia by boasting of her own or of her daughter’s surpassing beauty incurred the enmity of the nereids. She is

It seems to me that for this legend, as for many others, an astronomic basis may be assigned. 3500 B.C. the solstitial colure passed through the constellation Aquarius. The stars of that constellation might then not unfitly have been likened to sea divinities, and rival schools of astronomers and calendar keepers may have exalted the praise, on the one hand, of the stars that marked a calendrical, and, on the other hand, of those that marked a solstitial year.

A curious fact as to the lines in which Aratos refers to the constellation Cassiopeia must here be noted.

Aratos versified “the Phainomena of the astronomer Eudoxos, who lived cir. B.C. 403-350.” It has often been pointed out that the facts concerning the constellations which Aratos and Eudoxos record “are to a great extent traditional and archaic, and belong to another and far earlier epoch.” What is said of Cassiopeia is a case in point; for thus the poet deplores her pride and its punishment at line 654 et seq.—

Now in Eudoxos’ time and in his latitude, though Cassiopeia’s head did by a few degrees extend into the southern heavens, yet her position was not so deplorably ignominious as the poem would suggest. Three thousand years earlier the pity for her expressed by Aratos would have been more appropriate, for then her whole figure for observers in lat. 35° N. would have been visible in the southern quarter of the sky, and her feet, not her head (as at Lat. 23° N.), would have been on the zenith.

These considerations may lead us to suppose that the idea of Cassiopeia’s pride, and the fit punishment of it—i.e., her reversed position in the heavens, must have assumed form in northern latitudes almost at as early a date as the constellation figures were first imagined in tropical latitudes.

If this be so, it is indeed curious to find a legend which embodied the animus of astronomic rivalry 3500 B.C. handed down for thousands of years, and repeated in what professed to be a somewhat scientific treatise at a date between 400 and 300 B.C., when the astronomic facts no longer tallied with those narrated in the legend.

As to Andromeda, the classic story describes her as the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia; but the constellation itself—except on legendary grounds—might equally well have marked the beginning of a solstitial year 6000 B.C., or of a non-solstitial and calendrical year 3500 B.C.

The terrible prevalence of human sacrifices in ancient times, and at the solstices especially, may make us almost fear that the representation of a chained human victim had its place in the sphere at the earlier (solstitial) date.

The chains which bind Andromeda’s arms are fastened by staples to the sky. They appear (at fig. 1) at 6000 B.C. as though driven into two important astronomic lines—i.e., one of them into the line of the equator, the other into that of the solstitial colure. This may, of course, be a mere coincidence, and should not be allowed to weigh at all heavily in the almost evenly adjusted balance of probabilities regarding the date of the origin of the constellation Andromeda. Her story is so interwoven, not only with that of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, but also with that of the sea-monster Cetus, that we should not hastily attempt to dissociate the members of this group.

The very interesting question as to what southern people first depicted the Ethiopic king and queen on the sphere cannot be answered on astronomic grounds. We know that the latitude in which these figures were imagined must have been tropical, if the date of their imagining was as early as 3500 B.C. But we cannot learn from the celestial globe what was the longitude of the land in which they were so imagined. Ethiopia proper, and parts of Arabia and India, lie within the tropics, and the term Ethiopia, in classic writings, embraces all these countries.

Etymologists are, I believe, divided in opinion as to what language the rather un-Grecian names, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, were derived from. Some writers have suggested for their origin the Sanscrit names Capuja and Cassyape: and if, as I have already urged, the Aries-year was followed in ancient Vedic times in India, the Sanscrit derivation suggested will seem not an unlikely one. Nor under these suppositions would it be difficult to propose a possible Sanscrit origin for the name Andromeda, though for this purpose we should have to deprive the legend of all its classic and romantic charm. Cassyape, in Sanscrit story, is not the name of a gloriously beautiful queen, but of a “sage,” and it might be that the constellation Andromeda also, for ancient Indian astronomers, represented merely a human sacrifice, not that of the beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother. Though in the Rig Veda there is no legend of the sacrifice of a woman, yet in it we meet with seven consecutive hymns referring to the sacrifice, real or symbolical, of Sunahśepas, the son of a rishi or sage, who, according to the commentators, had consented to yield his son up to this cruel fate. The prayers of the victim, addressed to many gods, at last result in his deliverance.

Two other hymns in the Rig Veda relate to the great ceremony of the sacrifice, real or symbolical, of a horse. I give at p. 252 some of the considerations which have convinced me that the praises of the winged steed—i.e., of the constellation Pegasus, and not merely the praises of an earthly horse, are the subject of these two hymns. The ceremony in question bore the name of Aswamedha, literally Horse-Sacrifice.

In reading and comparing these two series of sacrificial hymns, some points of contact present themselves, and, observing this, it occurred to me that some Sanscrit word ending in Medha—i.e., sacrifice, and conveying the meaning of human sacrifice, might by ancient Indian astronomers have been attached to the constellation, which for us represents the hapless Andromeda: for if we suppose that the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus were imagined in India, but adopted with an appropriate legend into the Grecian sphere—the names of the personages in the legend at the same time suffering a Grecian change—it would be easy further to suppose that the Indian name of the constellation near to them, transformed and misunderstood, came to represent in Grecian story not merely a human sacrifice, but that of the much-to-be-pitied daughter of the proud Cassiopeia.

Whether these fanciful speculations concerning the names of the actors in the ancient legend be adopted or not need not affect our judgment as to the reasonableness, or otherwise, of the date, 3500 B.C., and of Lat. 23° N. for the origin of the constellational group here discussed.