3500 B.C. is the approximate date I would suggest in a latitude not far from 23° N. for the origin of the constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and probably also for that of Cetus.
The legend tells us that Cassiopeia by boasting of her own or of her daughter’s surpassing beauty incurred the enmity of the nereids. She is
“... that starr’d Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their power offended.”[122]
[122] Milton, Il Penseroso.
It seems to me that for this legend, as for many others, an astronomic basis may be assigned. 3500 B.C. the solstitial colure passed through the constellation Aquarius. The stars of that constellation might then not unfitly have been likened to sea divinities, and rival schools of astronomers and calendar keepers may have exalted the praise, on the one hand, of the stars that marked a calendrical, and, on the other hand, of those that marked a solstitial year.
A curious fact as to the lines in which Aratos refers to the constellation Cassiopeia must here be noted.
Aratos versified “the Phainomena of the astronomer Eudoxos, who lived cir. B.C. 403-350.” It has often been pointed out that the facts concerning the constellations which Aratos and Eudoxos record “are to a great extent traditional and archaic, and belong to another and far earlier epoch.” What is said of Cassiopeia is a case in point; for thus the poet deplores her pride and its punishment at line 654 et seq.—
“And now she, too, her daughter’s form pursues,