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In Greek mythology, Cadmus (; ) was the legendary founder of Thebes. He was, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles.Karl Kerenyi, 1959. The Heroes of the Greeks (London: Thames and Hudson) p. 75. Commonly stated to be a prince of Phoenicia, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre, the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa, Cadmus traced his origins back to Poseidon and Libya.
Originally, he was sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores of Phoenicia by Zeus.A modern application of genealogy would make him the paternal grandfather of Dionysus, through his daughter by Harmonia, Semele. Plutarch once admitted that he would rather be assisted by Lamprias, his own grandfather, than by Dionysus's grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. ( Symposiacs, Book IX, question II ) In early accounts, Cadmus and Europa were instead the children of Phoenix.Scholia on Homer, Iliad B, 494, p. 80, 43 ed. Bekk. as cited in Hellanicus's Boeotica Cadmus founded or refounded the Greek city of Thebes, the acropolis of which was originally named Cadmeia in his honour.
He is also credited with the foundation of several cities in Illyria, like Bouthoe and Lychnidus. In ancient Greek literature, the end of the mythical narrative of Cadmus and Harmonia is associated with Enchelei and Illyrians, a tradition deeply rooted among the Illyrian peoples.
His parentage was sometimes modified to suit, e.g. claims of Theban origin name his mother as one of the daughters of Nilus, one of the river gods and deity of the Nile river.
Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, which would be around 2000 BC.Herodotus. Histories, Book II, 2.145.4. Herodotus had seen and described the Cadmean writing in the temple of Apollo at Thebes engraved on certain tripods. He estimated those tripods to date back to the time of Laius the great-grandson of Cadmus.Herodotus. Histories, Book V.59.1 On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which, as he attested, resembled Ionic Greek: Ἀμφιτρύων μ᾽ ἀνέθηκ᾽ ἐνάρων ἀπὸ Τηλεβοάων ("Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae.").
Although Greeks like Herodotus dated Cadmus's role in the founding myth of Thebes to well before the Trojan War (or, in modern terms, during the Aegean Bronze Age), this chronology conflicts with most of what is now known or thought to be known about the origins and spread of both the Phoenician and Greek alphabets. The earliest Greek inscriptions match Phoenician letter forms from the late 9th or 8th centuries BC—in any case, the Phoenician alphabet properly speaking was not developed until around 1050 BC (or after the Bronze Age collapse). The picture of the Mycenaean age betrays extremely little awareness of writing, possibly reflecting the loss during the Dark Age of the earlier Linear B script. Indeed, the only Homeric reference to writingThere are several examples of written letters, such as in Nestor's narrative concerning Bellerophon and the "Bellerophontic letter", another description of a letter presumably sent to Palamedes from Priam but in fact written by Odysseus (Hyginus. Fabulae, 105), as well as the letters described by Plutarch in Parallel Lives, Theseus, which were presented to Ariadne, presumably sent from Theseus. Plutarch goes on to describe how Theseus erected a pillar on the Isthmus of Corinth, which bears an inscription of two lines. was in the phrase "σήματα λυγρά", sēmata lugra, literally "baneful signs", when referring to the Bellerophontic letter. Linear B tablets have been found Thebes tablets, which might lead one to speculate that the legend of Cadmus as bringer of the alphabet could reflect earlier traditions about the origins of Linear B writing in Greece (as Frederick Ahl speculated in 1967F. M. Ahl. "Cadmus and the Palm-Leaf Tablets". American Journal of Philology 88.2, Apr. 1967, pp. 188–194.).
According to Greek myth, Cadmus's descendants ruled at Thebes on and off for several generations, including the time of the Trojan War.
Possible connected words include the Semitic triliteral root qdm () which signifies "east" in Ugaritic, in Arabic, words derived from the root "qdm" include the verb "qdm" meaning "to come" as well as words meaning "primeval" and "forth" as well as "foot", names derived from it are "Qadim", which means "the elder one",─in Hebrew language, qedem means "front", "east" and "ancient times"; the verb qadam () means "to be in front",Compare: (2025). 9781556354342, Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781556354342 and the Greek kekasmai (<* kekadmai) "to shine". Therefore, the complete meaning of the name might be: "He who excels" or "from the east".
Cadmus did not journey alone to Samothrace; he appeared with his mother TelephassaOr known by another lunar name, Argiope, "she of the white face" (Kerenyi 1959:27). in the company of his nephew (or brother) Thasus, son of Cilix, who gave his name to the island of Thasos nearby. An identically composed trio had other names at Samothrace, according to Diodorus Siculus:Diodorus Siculus, 5.48.2; Clement of Alexandria, to wit Proreptikos 2.13.3. the Pleiad Electra and her two sons, Dardanos and Eetion or Iasion. There was a fourth figure, Electra's daughter, Harmonia,Harmonia at Thebes was accounted the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite; all these figures appeared in sculptures on the pediment of the Hellenistic main temple in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace, the Hieron; the ancient sources on this family grouping were assembled by N. Lewis, Samothrace. I: The Ancient Literary Sources (New York) 1958:24-36. whom Cadmus took away as a bride, as Zeus had abducted Europa.Kerenyi (1959) notes that Cadmus in some sense found another Europa at Samothrace, according to an obscure scholium on Euripides's Rhesus 29.
The wedding was the first celebrated on Earth to which the gods brought gifts, according to DiodorusDiodorus Siculus, 5.49.1; when the gods attended the later wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the harmony was shattered by the Apple of Discord. and dined with Cadmus and his bride.The full range of references in Antiquity to this wedding is presented by Matia Rocchi, Kadmos e Harmonia: un matrimonio problemmatico (Rome: Bretschneider) 1989.
The cow was given to Cadmus by Pelagon, King of Phocis, and it guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes.
Intending to sacrifice the cow to Athena, Cadmus sent some of his companions, Deioleon and Seriphus, to the nearby Ismenian spring for water.John Tzetzes. Chiliades, 10.32 line 4 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.
He was then instructed by Athena to sow the dragon's teeth in the ground, from which there sprang a race of fierce armed men, called the Spartoi ("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 do penance for eight years by serving him. According to Theban tellings, it was at the expiration of this period that the gods gave him Harmonia ("harmony", literally "putting or assembling together", "good assembly", or "good composition") as wife. At Thebes, Cadmus and Harmonia began a dynasty with a son Polydorus, and four daughters, Agave, Autonoë, Ino and Semele. In rare accounts, the couple instead had six daughters which are called the Cadmiades: Ino, Agaue, Semele, Eurynome, Kleantho and Eurydike.John Malalas, Chronography 2.39
At the wedding, whether celebrated at Samothrace or at Thebes, all the gods were present; Harmonia received as bridal gifts a peplos worked by Athena and a necklace made by Hephaestus. This necklace, commonly referred to as the Necklace of Harmonia, brought misfortune to all who possessed it. 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 went with Harmonia to Illyria, to fight on the sideApollodorus, 3.5.4. of the Enchelii.Pierre Grimal, Pierre, Maxwell-Hyslop, A. R. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Blackwell, 1996, , p. 83. Later, as king, he founded the city of Lychnidos and Bouthoe.Wilkes, J. J. The Illyrians. Blackwell Publishing, 1992, , p. 99.
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 enamoured 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, which they granted (Hyginus).
In another telling 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 fields. In Euripides's The Bacchae, Cadmus is given a prophecy by Dionysus whereby both he and his wife will be turned into snakes for a period before eventually being brought to live among the blessed.
Homer mentions Cadmus only once, but he had already referred to the inhabitants of Thebes with the name "Cadmeans". Aeschylus and Sophocles, in particular, repeatedly mention the "city of Cadmus" and "Cadmeans", relating Thebes with Cadmus. Also Euripides linked Thebes with Cadmus, but he was one of the earliest authors and the only tragedian to mention "Cadmus the Tyrian". Herodotus refers to Cadmus the Tyrian, and he was the first to mention Cadmus's 'Phoenician' origins, but he certainly was not the initiator of this transformation, as his Histories provides evidence that the myth was already widespread. Since Herodotus Cadmus has been commonly described as a prince of Phoenicia. According to Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), Cadmus had Theban origins.
Modern historian Albert Schachter has suggested that Cadmus was a Fiction named after the Thebean acropolis and was made 'Phoenician' due to the influence of immigrants from the Eastern world to Boeotia. According to M. L. West the myth of Cadmus and Harmonia at Thebes originated from 9th or 8th century BC Phoenician residents in the city. According to Jason Colavito, although modern scholars have debated on whether the myth came from Phoenicia, there is evidence that the core of Cadmus's myth originated in Near Eastern stories of the battle between a hero and a dragon. The myth of Cadmus the Phoenician was not a literal reinterpretation of an original Phoenician myth, although being probably inspired by one, rather it was the Greeks' interpretation of the Phoenician civilization and the benefits they acquired from it, specifically the alphabet. According to archaeologist John Boardman, the "Phoenicians" who came with Cadmus, were not "Phoenicians", but rather Greeks who had lived in the Near East for a while and had returned to teach what they had learned there, including the alphabet.
Given the absence of a Phoenician colony in Thebes, several hypotheses arguing against Cadmus's eastern origin have been proposed by modern scholars:
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