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Aratos and others connect the Whale with the story of Perseus and Andromeda, there is little doubt that the constellation antedates the time of Perseus.

In earlier times it seems to have been regarded as some kind of leviathan, without connection with the story of the sacrifice of Andromeda. Allen suggests that it may have represented the ferocious Tiamat of the Chaldean myths. In all delineations it has been a strange and fierce marine creature, unlike any known to man, and totally unlike the figure of a whale.

According to Pliny and Solinus, after the monster's encounter with Perseus, in which it suffered from the petrifying gaze of the Medusa, its bones were brought to Rome by Scaurus. Saint Jerome corroborated this story, claiming to have seen the bones of the monster at Tyre.

Brown tells us that Cetus signified "the chaos of the deep" to the Babylonians. It represented primarily the state of chaos "when the earth was waste and wild and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Aratos called it "the dusky monster."

Cetus is sometimes represented as swimming in the river Eridanus, or river Po, the celestial stream into which the venturesome Phaëton was hurled by the bolts of Jove.