Cadmus

Summary

Cadmus is the founder of Thebes in Boeotia in Greek myth, son of Agenor, who ruled Phoenicia, and brother of Europa. Herodotus calls him "Cadmus of Tyre", Ovid says he set out "from Sidon's gates", and Herodotus says the Phoenicians who came with him brought the alphabet to Greece. His fullest accounts are in the Library ascribed to Apollodorus and in books three and four of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

His story begins with a loss. Zeus loved Europa, turned himself into a tame bull and carried her on his back through the sea to Crete, where she bore him Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon. Agenor sent his sons to search for her and told them not to come back until they had found her, and their mother Telephassa went with them. When they could not find her they did not go back, and each settled where he ended: Phoenix in Phoenicia, Cilix in the land called Cilicia after him, Thasus on the island called Thasos, and Cadmus with his mother in Thrace.

When his mother died he buried her and went to Delphi to ask about Europa. The god told him not to trouble about Europa but to be guided by a cow and to found a city wherever she should fall down for weariness. He found a cow among the herds of Pelagon and followed it; it crossed Boeotia and lay down where Thebes now stands. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares, but a great serpent, said to be the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and killed most of them. In anger Cadmus killed the serpent, and on Athena's advice sowed its teeth; armed men rose from the ground, called the Spartoi, "the sown men". They killed one another, and Pherecydes says Cadmus threw stones among them so that each thought another had struck him, and they fought. Only five survived, among them Echion.

To atone for the killing Cadmus served Ares for "an eternal year", which was then eight years. Then Athena gave him the kingdom, and Zeus gave him as wife Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. All the gods came down from the sky to the citadel of Cadmus at Thebes, feasted at the wedding and sang, and Pindar says Cadmus heard the Muses singing on the mountain and in seven-gated Thebes, saw the sons of Kronos on their golden seats and received wedding gifts. Cadmus gave his bride a robe and a necklace made by Hephaestus. She bore him Autonoe, Ino, Semele, Agave and a son, Polydorus.

Pindar says his three daughters took from him his share of joy by what they suffered. Semele died by Zeus's thunderbolt while carrying Dionysus, Agave tore her son Pentheus apart thinking he was a wild beast, and Ino threw herself into the sea with her son Melicertes. At the end of his life Cadmus left Thebes with Harmonia for the Encheleans in Illyria, led them to victory over their neighbours and became their king; then he and Harmonia were turned into serpents, and Zeus sent them to the Elysian Fields. Ovid tells that in old age he wondered whether the serpent he had killed was sacred, and said: if the gods are punishing me for it, let me become a serpent; and his body lengthened and he became one.

The idea his story turns on is that the man who set out to find his sister found a city. He was told not to come home without Europa, and at Delphi he was told to let her go and follow a cow. The city was founded on a killing: he killed the serpent of the spring so that his men could drink, sowed its teeth and warriors sprang up who killed each other, the survivors became the houses of Thebes, and he served eight years in atonement for the blood. Then the gods came down to his wedding, and with him came from the East something the Greeks did not have: letters. At the end of the story Cadmus becomes a serpent, in the likeness of the serpent he killed first.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Κάδμος, Kadmos, ends in -os, the nominative ending, leaving Καδμ-, whose letters are q-d-m, since Greek has no q and writes it as k. In Lane, qadama al-qawma is "he went before the people, headed them, led them", and qadima al-balada is "he came to, arrived at the town". Hebrew קֶדֶם, qedem, is "front, east, aforetime", and bənê qedem are "the dwellers in the east". So Cadmus is al-qādim, "the one who came", who came from the East, from Tyre and Sidon, arrived in Boeotia, went before his companions, built a city and was its first king. The project's Troy dossier gives this reading after the scholars Astour and West, and reads with it Europa from ʿ-r-b, sunset, so that brother and sister are East and West: the one who came from the east, and the one carried over the sea to the west.

Linguistic Root

Cadmus and qadima

Lane: qadama al-qawma, yaqdumuhum, "he went before the people, preceded them, headed them, led them so as to serve as an example"; qadima al-balada, "he came to, arrived at the town"; qaddama, to put a thing before another in time, place or rank; aqdama ʿalā al-amr, to venture boldly upon a thing. Brown–Driver–Briggs gives קֶדֶם, qedem, as "front", then "east", for one facing the sunrise, then "aforetime", with "the mount of the East" and bənê qedem, "dwellers in the east". So the root joins three senses: front, east and antiquity.

The sounds: q regularly becomes Greek k, as qarn became Κρόνος in the project's reading, d is δ, m is μ, and the nominative ending drops. So the three letters of q-d-m stand in the name in order, with nothing added and nothing missing.

The Troy dossier counts this reading among the academic proposals, contested but established in scholarship, and sees in it, with Europa, evidence that Greek names carry pairs of Semitic words. The pairing is in the story itself: Cadmus looks for his sister and heads west, and the bull carried Europa west over the sea. In Europa's name the last letter remains open: gharb and ʿarab have b, while Greek Εὐρώπη has p, and Arabic b regularly answers β. In Lane, gharabat al-shams is "the sun set", and maghrib is the place of sunset.

Melicertes and Melqart

Cadmus's grandson Melicertes, son of Ino, whom his mother took with her into the sea and who was honoured at the Isthmus, bears in his name, Μελικέρτης, the letters m-l-k-r-t in order, the letters of Melqart, god of Tyre, mlqrt, "king of the city", with q written k because Greek has no q. This is a reading proposed on the method, resting on the letters and on the boy's grandfather being, in the story, "Cadmus of Tyre".

Key Mythic Narratives

The Cadmean letters

Herodotus says the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, among them the Gephyraeans, brought to Greece many kinds of learning, among them the alphabet, which the Greeks had not known before. In time the sound and form of the letters changed; the Ionians learned them from the Phoenicians, changed their shapes a little and called them "Phoenician". He says he saw "Cadmean letters" engraved on tripods in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, mostly like Ionian letters, one of them reading: "Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae." Herodotus 5.58–59.

A temple on Thasos

Herodotus says he sailed to Tyre to learn how old Heracles was, and then went to Thasos, where he found a temple of Heracles built by the Phoenicians who settled the island when they sailed in search of Europa, five generations before the birth of Heracles son of Amphitryon. In the Library Thasus is Cadmus's brother who set out with him on the search.

The necklace

The Library follows Harmonia's necklace from hand to hand after Cadmus: it becomes the bribe with which Polynices buys Eriphyle, who sends her husband to the war in which he dies. Apollodorus says some held that Hephaestus gave it to Cadmus, while Pherecydes says Europa gave it to him, having received it from Zeus.

Symbolic Reading

The essay "A Semitic Reading of Greek Mythology" opens its section on the Phoenician layer in Greek with Herodotus's report that the Greek letters came from Phoenicia, and asks: if the letter travelled, did the meaning travel too? It then sets out the table of letters: alpha from aleph, ox, beta from bayt, house, gamma from jamal, camel, delta from dalet, door. The essay does not name Cadmus, but the report of Herodotus with which it opens is the report of the Phoenicians who came with him, so in that report Cadmus is a man from the East who brings letters each of which is a Semitic word.

The story itself meets this table: Cadmus is led to the site of the city by a cow, and the first of the letters he brought is the picture of an ox's head. The city stands on water: the first act at Thebes is drawing water from a spring, the first fight there is over the spring, and the survivors of the sown men become its people.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

His story joins the search for Europa to the temple of Tyre. The Phoenicians who sailed to find her built a temple of Heracles on Thasos, and the Heracles of Tyre in Herodotus is Melqart, founder and protector of his city. His grandson Melicertes bears the letters of Melqart's name.

His killing of the serpent that guards the spring and keeps the water from his men is one of the witnesses to divine combat with sea and serpent. The closest story is Indra's killing of Vṛtra, the serpent who held the waters in the mountain, so that when it was killed the waters ran. They differ in that Indra releases the water for the whole world, while Cadmus opens a spring for his companions and then pays for the blood.

His bringing of letters from Phoenicia sets him among the culture heroes, beside Thoth, to whom Egypt ascribed writing, and Cangjie in China. His wedding, to which all the gods came down and at which the Muses sang, is one of the witnesses to the sacred marriage, here between a man and the daughter of two gods.

Harmonia's necklace, passing with its curse from hand to hand, answers the dwarf's ring in Norse myth, on the page for Andvari.