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.[4] In early accounts, Cadmus and Europa were instead the children ofPhoenix.[5] Cadmus founded or refounded the Greek city ofThebes, theacropolis of which was originally namedCadmeia in his honour.
He is also credited with the foundation of several cities inIllyria, likeBouthoe andLychnidus. In ancient Greek literature, the end of the mythical narrative of Cadmus and Harmonia is associated withEnchelei andIllyrians, a tradition deeply rooted among the Illyrian peoples.[6][7][8]
His parentage was sometimes modified to suit, e.g. claims of Theban origin name his mother as one of the daughters ofNilus, one of theriver gods and deity of the Nile river.[9]
Cadmus was credited by the Greek historianHerodotus with introducing the originalPhoenician alphabet to the Greeks, who adapted it to form theirGreek alphabet.[10][11] Modern scholarship has almost unanimously agreed with Herodotus concerning the Phoenician source of the alphabet.[12]
Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, which would be around 2000 BC.[13] Herodotus had seen and described the Cadmean writing in the temple ofApollo at Thebes engraved on certain tripods. He estimated those tripods to date back to the time ofLaius the great-grandson of Cadmus.[14] On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which, as he attested, resembledIonian letters:Ἀμφιτρύων μ᾽ ἀνέθηκ᾽ ἐνάρων ἀπὸ Τηλεβοάων ("Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of [the battle of] Teleboae.").
Although Greeks like Herodotus dated Cadmus's role in thefounding myth of Thebes to well before theTrojan War (or, in modern terms, during theAegean 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 fromthe late 9th or 8th centuries BC—in any case, thePhoenician alphabet properly speaking was not developed until around 1050 BC (or after theBronze Age collapse). TheHomeric picture of the Mycenaean age betrays extremely little awareness of writing, possibly reflecting the loss during theDark Age of the earlierLinear B script. Indeed, the only Homeric reference to writing[15] was in the phrase "σήματα λυγρά",sēmata lugra, literally "baneful signs", when referring to theBellerophontic letter. Linear B tablets have been foundin abundance at Thebes, 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 (asFrederick Ahl speculated in 1967[16]).
According to Greek myth, Cadmus's descendants ruled at Thebes on and off for several generations, including the time of theTrojan War.
The etymology of Cadmus's name remains uncertain.[17] According to one view,[note 1] the name originates fromPhoenician, from theSemitic rootqdm, which signifies "the east", the equation ofKadmos with the Semiticqdm was traced to a publication of 1646 by R. B. Edwards.[18] According to another view,[note 2] the name is ofGreek origin, ultimately from the wordkekasmenos. (Greek:κεκασμένος,lit.'excellent').[19][20]
Possible connected words include the Semitictriliteral rootqdm (Ugaritic:𐎖𐎄𐎎)[21] which signifies "east" in Ugaritic, inArabic, 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",[citation needed]─inHebrew,qedem means "front", "east" and "ancient times"; the verbqadam (Syriac:ܩܕܡ) means "to be in front",[22][23] and the Greekkekasmai (<*kekadmai) "to shine".[note 3] Therefore, the complete meaning of the name might be: "He who excels" or "from the east".[25]
After his sister Europa had been carried off byZeus from the shores ofPhoenicia, Cadmus was sent out by his father to find her, and enjoined not to return without her. Unsuccessful in his search—or unwilling to go against Zeus—he came toSamothrace, the island sacred to the "Great Gods"[26] or theKabeiroi, whose mysteries would be celebrated also atThebes.
Cadmus did not journey alone to Samothrace; he appeared with his motherTelephassa[27] in the company of his nephew (or brother)Thasus, son ofCilix, who gave his name to theisland ofThasos nearby. An identically composed trio had other names at Samothrace, according toDiodorus Siculus:[28] thePleiadElectra and her two sons,Dardanos andEetion orIasion. There was a fourth figure, Electra's daughter,Harmonia,[29] whom Cadmus took away as a bride, as Zeus had abducted Europa.[30]
Cadmus and the Serpent (c. 100 BC)
The wedding was the first celebrated onEarth to which the gods brought gifts, according to Diodorus[31] and dined with Cadmus and his bride.[32]
Cadmus Asks the Delphic Oracle Where He Can Find his Sister, Europa,Hendrick Goltzius
Cadmus came in the course of his wanderings toDelphi, where he consulted theoracle. He was ordered to give up his quest and follow a special cow, with ahalf moon on her flank, which would meet him, and to build a town on the spot where she should lie down exhausted.[33][34]
The cow was given to Cadmus byPelagon, King ofPhocis, and it guided him toBoeotia, where he founded the city ofThebes.[33]
Intending to sacrifice the cow toAthena, Cadmus sent some of his companions, Deioleon and Seriphus, to the nearby Ismenian spring for water.[35][36] They were slain by the spring's guardian water-dragon (compare theLernaean Hydra), which was in turn destroyed by Cadmus, the duty of aculture hero of the new order.
He was then instructed by Athena to sow thedragon's teeth in the ground, from which there sprang a race of fierce armed men, called theSpartoi ("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.[33]
The dragon had been sacred toAres, 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 himHarmonia ("harmony", literally "putting or assembling together", "good assembly", or "good composition") as wife.[5] At Thebes, Cadmus and Harmonia began a dynasty with two sonsPolydorus andIllyrius, and four daughters,Agave,Autonoë,Ino andSemele.[33] In rare accounts, the couple instead had six daughters which are called the Cadmiades: Ino, Agaue, Semele,Eurynome,Kleantho andEurydike.[37]
At the wedding, whether celebrated at Samothrace or at Thebes, all the gods were present; Harmonia received as bridal gifts apeplos worked by Athena and a necklace made byHephaestus.[33] This necklace, commonly referred to as theNecklace 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 grandsonPentheus, and went with Harmonia toIllyria, to fight on the side[38] of theEnchelii.[39] Later, as king, he founded the city ofLychnidos andBouthoe.[40]
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. InEuripides'sThe Bacchae, Cadmus is given a prophecy byDionysus whereby both he and his wife will be turned into snakes for a period before eventually being brought to live among the blessed.
Cadmus was of ultimately divine ancestry, the grandson of the sea godPoseidon andLibya on his father's side, and ofNilus (theRiver Nile) on his mother's side; overall he was considered a member of the fifth generation of beings following the (mythological) creation of the world:
Dotted lines indicate extra-marital relationships or adoptions.
Kings of Thebes are numbered withbold names and a light purple background.
Joint rules are indicated by a number and lowercase letter, for example, 5a. Amphion shared the throne with 5b. Zethus.
Regents of Thebes are alphanumbered (format AN) withbold names and a light red background.
The number N refers to the regency preceding the reign of the Nth king. Generally this means the regent served the Nth king but not always, asCreon (A9) was serving as regent toLaodamas (the 10th King) when he was slain byLycus II (the usurping 9th king).
The letter A refers to the regency sequence. "A" is the first regent, "B" is the second, etc.
The fact thatHermes was worshipped inSamothrace under the name of Cadmus or Cadmilus seems to show that the Theban Cadmus was interpreted as an ancestral Theban hero corresponding to the Samothracians.[33] Another Samothracian connection for Cadmus is offered via his wife Harmonia, who is said byDiodorus Siculus to be daughter ofZeus and the SamothracianElectra, who was one of the sevenPleides.[43]
Illustration of the relief on the Cadmus skyphos; the Spartoi, Ares, Athena, Cadmus and the cow are shown.
Homer mentions Cadmus only once, but he had already referred to the inhabitants ofThebes with the name "Cadmeans".Aeschylus andSophocles, in particular, repeatedly mention the "city of Cadmus" and "Cadmeans", relating Thebes with Cadmus. AlsoEuripides linked Thebes with Cadmus, but he was one of the earliest authors and the only tragedian to mention "Cadmus theTyrian".[45]Herodotus refers to Cadmus the Tyrian, and he was the first to mention Cadmus's 'Phoenician' origins,[46] but he certainly was not the initiator of this transformation, as hisHistories provides evidence that the myth was already widespread.[47] Since Herodotus Cadmus has been commonly described as a prince ofPhoenicia.[3] According toDiodorus Siculus (1st century BC), Cadmus hadTheban origins.[46]
Modern historian Albert Schachter has suggested that Cadmus was afictitious hero named after the Thebeanacropolis and was made 'Phoenician' due to the influence of immigrants from theEast toBoeotia.[48][46] According toM. L. West the myth of Cadmus and Harmonia at Thebes originated from 9th or 8th century BC Phoenician residents in the city.[46] 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.[3] According to archaeologistJohn Boardman, the "Phoenicians" who came with Cadmus, were not "Phoenicians", but rather Greeks who had lived in theNear East for a while and had returned to teach what they had learned there, including the alphabet.[49][50]
Given the absence of a Phoenician colony in Thebes, several hypotheses arguing against Cadmus's eastern origin have been proposed by modern scholars:
Mycenaean hypothesis
According to historianFrederick M. Ahl, scholarly suggestions[note 4] that Cadmus was aMycenaean must be taken into account against Cadmus's Phoenician origin, as for him it is becoming harder and harder to reconcile literary and archaeological evidence, not to mention epigraphical difficulties.[52] Ahl rather suggest that "Cadmus was a Mycenaean, and the writing he brought to Thebes wasLinear B, which may have been known to Greek-speaking peoples then or later asφοινικήια γράμματα."[53]
Cretan hypothesis
Henry Hall set forth an hypothesis, arguing that Cadmus and the Cadmeians came fromCrete.[54][55] There are a number of difficulties involved in this hypothesis, however, notably the assertion that Mycenaean society resulted from the triumph of the Minoan civilization over the mainland one.[54][56][51]
Argive hypothesis
Cadmus was used as an identification figure by theArgives, representing an intriguing example of mythical requisition in relation to the wars between Argos and Thebes. According to the Argive legend, Cadmus's father Agenor was descended from the Argive princessIo. In this light, Cadmus becomes an Argive and Thebes his "home away from home", which is connected with the emergence of hybrid identities during the period of the Great Colonization.[57]
It has been argued by various scholars that in a letter from the King ofAhhiyawa to theHittite King, written in the Hittite language in c. 1250 BC, a specific Cadmus was mentioned as a forefather of the Ahhijawa people. The latter term most probably referred to theMycenaean world (Achaeans), or at least to a part of it.[58][59] Nevertheless, this reading about a supposed Cadmus as historical person is rejected by most scholars.[60]
E. Nesbit's 1901 novelThe Wouldbegoods includes an episode in which the children protagonists sow what they believe are dragon's teeth, and the next day, "just like Cadmus," they find an encampment of soldiers there.
^A modern application of genealogy would make him the paternal grandfather ofDionysus, through his daughter byHarmonia,Semele.Plutarch once admitted that he would rather be assisted byLamprias, his own grandfather, than by Dionysus's grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. (Symposiacs, Book IX,question IIArchived 13 October 2008 at theWayback Machine)
^Edwards,Kadmos the Phoenician: A Study in Greek Legends and the Mycenaean Age (Amsterdam 1979), noted byWalter Burkert,The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Bronze Age (Harvard University Press) 1992:2, and note, who remarks that the complementary connection ofEuropa withrb, "West" was an ancient one, made byHesychius.
^Compare:Graves, Robert (1990) [1955]. "58: Europe and Cadmus".The Greek Myths. Vol. 1. London: Penguin.ISBN9781101554982. Retrieved11 November 2016.[...] a small tribe, speaking a Semitic language, seems to have moved up from the Syrian plains to Cadmeia in Caria–Cadmus is a Semitic word meaning 'eastern' [...].
^Ruprecht, Louis A. Jr. (2008).God Gardened East: A Gardener's Meditation on the Dynamics of Genesis. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 31.ISBN9781556354342.
^R. S. P. Beekes,Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 614.
^"Cadmus". Baby Names. SheKnows. Retrieved14 January 2017.The name Cadmus is a Greek baby name. In Greek the meaning of the name Cadmus is: He who excels; from the east.
^Harmonia at Thebes was accounted the daughter ofAres andAphrodite; all these figures appeared in sculptures on the pediment of theHellenistic main temple in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace, theHieron; the ancient sources on this family grouping were assembled by N. Lewis,Samothrace. I: The Ancient Literary Sources (New York) 1958:24-36.
^Kerenyi (1959) notes that Cadmus in some sense found another Europa at Samothrace, according to an obscurescholium on Euripides'sRhesus 29.
^The full range of references in Antiquity to thiswedding is presented by Matia Rocchi,Kadmos e Harmonia: un matrimonio problemmatico (Rome: Bretschneider) 1989.
^Hall, H. R. (1909). "The Discoveries in Crete and Their Relation to the History of Egypt and Palestine".Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. Vol. 31. Society of Biblical Archaeology. p. 282.
^Matz, Friedrich (1962)Minoan civilization: Maturity and Zenith. Cambridge University Press. p. 45
Svetlana Janakieva, "Lе Mythe de Cadmos et l'aire ethnolinguistique paleobalkanique,"Thracia, 11, 1995 (= Studia in honorem Alexandri Fol. Sofia, 1995).
Kühr, Angela (2006).Als Kadmos nach Boiotien kam. Polis und Ethnos im Spiegel thebanischer Gründungsmythen [When Cadmus came to Boeotia. Polis and ethnos as reflected in Theban founding myths].Hermes Einzelschriften, vol. 98. Stuttgart: Steiner,ISBN978-3-515-08984-5.
Vian, F.Les origines de Thébes: Cadmos et les Spartes. Paris, 1963.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
