Cadmus

The cow had a white mark on each flank, shaped like the disc of the full moon, and it walked without stopping while the men behind it went footsore in the dust. Cadmus followed it down out of Phocis into the low green country of Boeotia, watching for the one thing the oracle had promised him: the moment the animal would tire and fold its legs and lie down in the grass. When it finally sank into the meadow with a long groan, he understood that his wandering was over and that he was standing on the ground of a city that did not yet exist.

He had never meant to build anything. He had set out to find his sister. Europa was a daughter of Agenor, king of the Phoenician city of Tyre, and one morning Zeus had come to her in the shape of a white bull, knelt for her to climb on, and carried her across the sea to Crete. Agenor sent his sons after her with an order that left no room for failure: find Europa or never come home. Cadmus searched the coasts and the islands and found nothing, because there was nothing a mortal could do against a god who wanted to stay hidden. When the trail went cold he did the sensible thing and went to Delphi, and the oracle told him to give up the sister he could not recover, follow a certain cow, and found his city where she lay down.

So he had his place. What he did not have was water. To consecrate the new ground he meant to sacrifice the cow to Athena, and he sent his companions to a nearby spring, the spring of Ares, to fetch it. The spring had a guardian. Coiled in the cave behind it lived a great serpent sacred to the war god, crested and venomous, and when the men of Cadmus bent to the water it came out and killed them. He waited, and when they did not return he went down himself and found the dragon among their bodies. He killed it. He crushed its skull with a stone and drove a spear through it, and the thing that had drunk the blood of his friends lay dead in the red water.

Then came the strangest hour of his life. Athena appeared and told him to take the dragon’s teeth and plough them into the earth like seed corn, and out of the furrows rose the points of spears, then helmets, then whole armed men standing in the soil, a crop of warriors grown from a monster’s mouth. They were called the Spartoi, the Sown Men, and they turned at once toward the stranger who had planted them. Cadmus did not fight. He threw a single stone into the middle of them, and each man, not seeing the hand that cast it, accused the man beside him, and they fell on one another until only five were left alive. Those five, Echion and Udaeus and Chthonius and Hyperenor and Pelorus, laid down their weapons and helped him raise the citadel he named the Cadmeia, and their descendants became the proud old families of Thebes.

Killing the serpent was not free. It had been sacred to Ares, and the god required payment, so Cadmus served him for what the poets call an everlasting year, eight years of bondage, before the debt was clear. At the end of it the gods gave him a wife who outshone any reward a hero had been offered before. He married Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and every god came down from Olympus to the wedding and brought a gift. Among the gifts was a necklace made by Hephaestus, beautiful and ruinous, and a woven robe, and both would carry disaster down through the family for generations. The marriage was cursed from its finest gift.

For a while there was glory. Cadmus and Harmonia had four daughters, Semele and Ino and Agave and Autonoe, and a son, Polydorus, and from them the line of Thebes ran on. But the blood of the dragon stayed in the soil. Semele was burned to ash asking to see Zeus in his true form. Agave, driven mad in the rites of her own grandson Dionysus, tore her son Pentheus apart on the mountain and carried his head home thinking it a lion’s. Autonoe lost her son Actaeon to his own hounds. One by one the house came down, and Cadmus, old now, said that if a serpent’s life mattered so much to the gods that it could poison everything he had built, then let him be a serpent too.

His skin answered him before the gods did. It darkened and hardened into scales, his legs fused and lengthened, and he felt himself pouring down toward the ground. Harmonia, watching her husband disappear into the long coiling shape, stripped off her clothes and begged to follow him, and the gods, who had taken so much, granted this. She became a serpent beside him. The two of them, harmless now, glided away into the woods of Illyria, where in his last human years he had gone to be king among the Enchelii, and the stories send their souls at last to the Elysian Fields.

What he could do was never the strength of an arm. Cadmus won by patience and by the cold cleverness of the thrown stone, by knowing when to fight and when to let his enemies destroy themselves, and above all by the gift the Greeks never stopped thanking him for: he is the man who brought the Phoenician letters across the sea and taught them to a people who had no writing, so that everything afterward could be remembered. His weakness was the same as any mortal’s set against the gods. He could kill the serpent but not escape the price of killing it; he could found a city but not protect the children who grew up in it; and in the end the favour of the gods, which had given him a divine bride and a kingdom, took back everything around him and left him only the choice of what shape to wear into exile.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Cadmus in Greek mythology?

Cadmus was a Phoenician prince who founded the city of Thebes in Greece. He was the son of King Agenor of Tyre and the brother of Europa, and he is also credited with introducing the alphabet to the Greeks.

What did Cadmus do with the dragon’s teeth?

After killing the serpent sacred to Ares, Cadmus was instructed by Athena to sow its teeth in the earth, from which armed warriors called the Spartoi sprang up. He threw a stone among them so they fought one another, and the five survivors helped him build Thebes and founded its noble families.

Why was Cadmus turned into a serpent?

Cadmus was transformed into a serpent at the end of his life because of the blood-guilt he carried for killing the dragon sacred to Ares, which brought ruin on his entire family. Worn down by the deaths of his children and grandchildren, he wished aloud to become a serpent himself, and the gods granted it; his wife Harmonia begged to share his fate and was changed as well.

Did Cadmus bring the alphabet to Greece?

According to Herodotus and other ancient writers, Cadmus introduced the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks, who adapted it into their own writing system. The early Greek letters were sometimes called “Cadmean letters” in his honour.

Who did Cadmus marry, and who were his children?

Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of the gods Ares and Aphrodite, at a wedding attended by all the Olympians. Their children included the daughters Semele, Ino, Agave, and Autonoe, and a son, Polydorus, whose descendants made up the doomed royal house of Thebes.

Related Entries

Europa, Semele, Dionysus, Echion, Ares, Aphrodite, Athena, Zeus, Drakon, Drakaina, Jason, Argonauts, Cecrops