King of Ethiopia and father of Andromeda, who was forced to expose his daughter to the sea-monster after his wife Cassiopeia boasted against the Nereids — not to be confused with Cepheus son of Aleus, the Tegean Argonaut.1
When Perseus came to Ethiopia, Apollodorus says, he found Cepheus king there and the king's daughter Andromeda set out as prey for a sea-monster. Cassiopeia had vied with the Nereids in beauty and boasted to be better than them all; the Nereids were angry, and Poseidon sent a flood and the beast. To appease the god, Cepheus bound Andromeda to the rock — the father who consented to the sacrifice the hero would undo.2
Perseus promised to destroy the monster if Cepheus would give him the rescued damsel to wife; the terms were sworn, and the hero slew the beast and released Andromeda. Phineus, a brother of Cepheus to whom Andromeda had first been betrothed, plotted against the marriage; Perseus discovered the plot and by showing the Gorgon's head turned Phineus and his fellow conspirators at once into stone.3
Before Perseus brought Andromeda to Greece, Apollodorus says, he left with Cepheus a son Perses — from whom the kings of Persia are descended — while in Mycenae Andromeda bore Alcaeus, Sthenelus, and the other children of the Perseid house. Ovid sets the rescue on the Ethiopian coast where Ammon had made unjust decree, and Hyginus names Cepheus son of Phoenix, king of the Ethiopians, father of the girl exposed to the monster — a genealogy the poets set among the stars with Cassiopeia and Andromeda beside him.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story