Andromeda (play) with Andromeda alone on stage, having been chained to a rock near the sea and near a cave by her father Cepheus, King of Aethiopia, to be eaten by a sea monster. This was to mollify the sea god Poseidon after either Cepheus or his wife Cassiopeia had offended the god. Andromeda laments her fate alone, with only her echo to respond. A chorus of virgins ("parthenoi") appears as Andromeda's lament continues. Then Perseus appears, using the crane to depict his flight on winged sandals, "planting my foot on high, cutting a path through the midst of the ether," having
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")