Jupiter and Venus, by the Compiling Tradition

The planetary nature usually given to Alpheratz is Jupiter with Venus, and the delineation, honour, riches, a keen mind, independence, is not Ptolemy's but comes from the later compiling tradition, in English overwhelmingly from Vivian Robson's Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology of 1923. Ptolemy in the Tetrabiblos treats the stars of Andromeda together and does not single this one out with the specificity later writers imply. As with most bright-star delineations in circulation, the honest position is that the ancient layer is thin and the confident modern reading is Victorian in its wording. Alpheratz is not among Agrippa's fifteen Behenian stars.

Alpheratz is a useful check on how thin the Ptolemaic layer actually is beneath a Victorian-sounding delineation: Ptolemy's Andromeda passage in the Tetrabiblos gives the whole figure a Venus-and-Mercury-leaning character in general terms and stops there, so the specific Jupiter-with-Venus pairing later writers state for this particular star is an inference laid onto that general remark rather than a sentence Ptolemy actually wrote about Alpheratz by name. The habit of converting a constellation-wide Ptolemaic remark into a star-specific delineation, then stating the result with the confidence of a direct citation, recurs through the whole Robson-descended tradition and is worth watching for generally.