Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/69



the shadow of a dream among the summer stars of the northern sky is a wonderful story of romance and adventure. This story has been mentioned in all Greek literature of the 5th century before Christ, in incidents portrayed on early vases and in wall-paintings found in Pompeii, and its characters have been immortalized on brilliant groups of stars.

The tale that I am about to recount has lived since the time when great fabled sea-monsters were wont to appear and frighten the people along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Wild with terror, the king and his subjects would fly to the temples for protection and would even sacrifice their loved ones if an oracle so decreed.

In an age long past, scientists tell us, strange beasts actually inhabited the waters of the ocean. This they know for they have found the fossilized skeletons. For the sake of the romance let us imagine that some of these still survived in Andromeda's time; that one such monster had wandered in through the straits to the blue waters of the Mediterranean during the reign of her father King Cepheus, and that this king, following the advice of an oracle, actually chained his daughter to a rock upon the sea-shore