Cadmus, or Kadmos (Greek: Κάδμος), in Greek mythology, was the
son of Agenor and the brother of Phoenix,
Cilix and Europa. He is the grandfather of the Greek
god Dionysus, through his daughter Semele. Cadmus founded the
city of Thebes, and its acropolis was originally named
Cadmeia in his honor. Cadmus was credited by the Hellenes with the introduction of the
Phoenician alphabet, phoinikeia grammata.[1] Herodotus who gives this account estimates
that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 B.C.[2] According to Greek myth, Cadmus' descendants ruled at Thebes
on-and-off for several generations, including the time of the Trojan War. For a discussion of
the mythical kings of Thebes, see Theban kings - Greek mythology. The
Greek journalist Ch. Papachristopoulos identifies the legend of Cadmus with
the real story of the Nobelist writer Albert Camus.
Legend
After his sister Europa had been carried off by Zeus, Cadmus was sent out to find her.
Unsuccessful in his search, he came in the course of his wanderings to Delphi, where he consulted
the oracle. He was ordered to give up his quest and follow a special cow, with a half moon on her
flank, which would meet him, and to build a town on the spot where she should lie down exhausted.
The cow was given to Cadmus by Pelagon, King of Phocis, and
it guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes. Robert Graves (The Greek Myths) suggested that the
cow was actually turned loose within a moderately confined space, and that where she lay down, a temple to the moon-goddess
(Selene) was erected: "A cow's strategic and commercial sensibilities are not well developed,"
Graves remarked.
Intending to sacrifice the cow to Athena, Cadmus sent some of his companions to the nearby
Castalian Spring, for water. They were slain by the spring's guardian water-dragon
(compare the Lernaean Hydra), which was in turn destroyed by Cadmus, the duty of a
culture hero of the new order.
By the instructions of Athena, he sowed the Dragon's teeth in the ground,
from which there sprang a race of fierce armed men, called Spartes ("sown"). By throwing
a stone among them, Cadmus caused them to fall upon one another until only five survived, who assisted him to build the Cadmeia
or citadel of Thebes, and became the founders of the noblest families of that city.
The dragon had been sacred to Ares, so the god made Cadmus to do penance for eight years by
serving him. At the expiration of this period, the gods gave him as wife Harmonia,
daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, by whom he had a son
Polydorus, and four daughters, Agave,
Autonoë, Ino and Semele.
At the wedding, all the gods were present; Harmonia received as bridal gifts a peplos
worked by Athena and a necklace made by Hephaestus. Notwithstanding the divinely ordained
nature of his marriage and his kingdom, Cadmus lived to regret both: his family was overtaken by grievous misfortunes, and his
city by civil unrest. Cadmus finally abdicated in favor of his grandson Pentheus, and retired with Harmonia to Illyria, whose inhabitants proclaimed him their king.
Nevertheless, Cadmus was deeply troubled by the ill-fortune which clung to him as a result of his having killed the sacred
dragon, and one day he remarked that if the gods were so enamored of the life of a serpent, he might as well wish that life for
himself. Immediately he began to grow scales and change in form. Harmonia, seeing the transformation, thereupon begged the gods
to share her husband's fate, and she did (Hyginus).
In a variation of the story, the bodies of Cadmus and his wife were changed after their deaths; the serpents watched their
tomb while their souls were translated to the Elysian fields.
In the play The Bacchae Cadmus is depicted as being turned into a dragon, or
alternatively a serpent, after Dionysus overthrows Thebes.
To this day, some in Greece contend that Cadmus was originally a Boeotian, that is, a Greek
hero, and that in later times, the story of a Phoenician immigrant of that name became current, to whom was ascribed the
introduction of the alphabet, the invention of agriculture and working in bronze and of
civilization generally. But the name itself is Greek; and the fact that Hermes was worshipped in
Samothrace under the name of Cadmus or Cadmilus seems to show that the Theban Cadmus was
originally an ancestral Theban hero corresponding to the Samothracian. Another Samothracian connection for Cadmus is offered via
his wife Harmonia, who is said in some accounts to be daughter of Zeus and Electra and of Samothracian birth. The name Cadmus may mean "order," and may be used to characterize one who
introduces order and civilization.
In Phoenician, as well as Hebrew, the root qdm signifies "the east," the Levantine
origin of "Kdm" himself, according to the Greek mythographers.
Al-Qadmūs, Tartus, Syria, is named for Cadmus.
Classical sources
See also
References
Notes
Further reading
- R.B. Edwards, Kadmos, the Phoenician (Amsterdam, 1979)
External links
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