Princess and dragon hero is envisioned as slaying dragons even though, for instance, the Brothers Grimm had only a few tales of dragon and giant slayers among hundreds of tales. One of the earliest example of the motif comes from the Ancient Greek tale of Perseus, who rescued the princess Andromeda from Cetus, a sea monster often described as resembling a serpent or dragon. This was taken up into other Greek myths, such as Heracles, who rescued the princess Hesione of Troy from a similar sea monster. Most ancient versions depicted the dragon as the expression of a god's wrath: in Andromeda's case,
Andromeda (play) Classicist Gilbert Murray commented that "Only a few fragments of the "Andromeda" remain, but they are curiously beautiful; and the play as a whole seems to have been the one unclouded love-romance that Euripides ever wrote. Murray also related a story told by Lucian (in "The Way to Write History") writing 500 years after "Andromeda" was first produced, that people in Abdera, Thrace, were stricken by the play and walked around "as though in a dream" while mumbling to themselves a speech from the play which began "O love, high monarch over gods and men..." Andromeda (play) Andromeda (, "Androméda")