Chapter 14: Thebes
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♠ Hellanikos 4F96 FGrH – Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 1, p. 132, ed. F. Jacoby. 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Hellanikos 4F1 FGrH – Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 1, p. 107, ed. F. Jacoby. 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ ΣA Il 2.494 – Scholia A to Homer, Iliad – Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem I, p. 188, ed. W. Dindorf and E. Maass. Oxford 1875.
♠ ApB 3.4.1-2 – Apollodoros, Bibliotheke (Library)
When Telephassa died, Cadmus buried her, and after being hospitably received by the Thracians he came to Delphi to inquire 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. After receiving such an oracle he journeyed through Phocis; then falling in with a cow among the herds of Pelagon, he followed it behind. And after traversing Boeotia, it sank down where is now the city of Thebes. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares. But a dragon, which some said was the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those that were sent. In his indignation Cadmus killed the dragon, and by the advice of Athena sowed its teeth. When they were sown there rose from the ground armed men whom they called Sparti. These slew each other, some in a chance brawl, and some in ignorance. But Pherecydes says that when Cadmus saw armed men growing up out of the ground, he flung stones at them, and they, supposing that they were being pelted by each other, came to blows. However, five of them survived, Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus. But Cadmus, to atone for the slaughter, served Ares for an eternal year; and the year was then equivalent to eight years of our reckoning.
After his servitude Athena procured for him the kingdom, and Zeus gave him to wife Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. And all the gods quitted the sky, and feasting in the Cadmea celebrated the marriage with hymns. Cadmus gave her a robe and the necklace wrought by Hephaestus, which some say was given to Cadmus by Hephaestus, but Pherecydes says that it was given by Europa, who had received it from Zeus. And to Cadmus were born daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, Agave, and a son Polydorus. Ino was married to Athamas, Autonoe to Aristaeus, and Agave to Echion. Greek Text
♠ Hellanikos 4F23 FGrH – Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 1, p. 112-13, ed. F. Jacoby. 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Euripides fr 819 N2 – Prologue to Phrixos B (lost) – Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, pp. 627-28, 2nd ed. Leipzig 1889.
♠ HF 4-7 – Euripides, Herakles Mainomenos (Hercules Furens)
[Amphitryon] who lived here in Thebes, where from the sowing of the dragon’s teeth grew up a crop of earth-born giants; and of these Ares saved a scanty band, and their children’s children people the city of Cadmus. Greek Text
♠ HF 252-53 – Euripides, Herakles Mainomenos (Hercules Furens)
You sons of Earth, whom Ares once sowed, when from the dragon’s ravening jaw he had torn the teeth. Greek Text
♠ Pho 638-44 – Euripides, Phoinissai (The Phoenician Women)
Cadmus of Tyre came to this land, and at his feet a four-footed, untamed heifer threw itself down, fulfilling an oracle, where the god’s prophecy told him to make his home in the plains rich with wheat. Greek Text
♠ Pho 657-75 – Euripides, Phoinissai (The Phoenician Women)
There was Ares’ murderous dragon, a savage guard, watching with wandering eye the watery rivers and fresh streams. Cadmus destroyed it with a jagged stone, when he came there to draw lustral water; smiting the deadly head with a blow of his beast-slaying arm; and by the counsel of [PalIas,] the motherless goddess, he cast the teeth upon the deep fields to fall to the earth, from which the earth brought forth a sight fully-armed, above the surface of the soil; but grim slaughter once again united them to the earth they loved, bedewing with blood the ground that had shown them to the sunlit breath of heaven. Greek Text
♠ Pho 931-44 – Euripides, Phoinissai (The Phoenician Women)
In the chamber where the earth-born dragon kept watch over Dirce’s springs, he must be offered as a sacrifice and shed his blood on the ground, a libation of Cadmus, because of the ancient wrath of Ares, who now avenges the slaughter of his earth-born snake. If you do this, you shall win Ares as an ally. If the earth receives fruit for fruit and human blood for blood, you shall find her kind to you again, who once sent up to us a crop of Sown-men with golden helmets; for one of those born from the dragon’s teeth must die. Now you are our only survivor of the Sown race, pure-blooded both on your mother’s and your father’s side, you and your sons. Greek Text
♠ Hdt 4.147 – Herodotos, Historiae
On the island now called Thera, but then Calliste, there were descendants of Membliarus the son of Poeciles, a Phoenician; for Cadmus son of Agenor had put in at the place now called Thera during his search for Europa; and having put in, either because the land pleased him, or because for some other reason he desired to do so, he left on this island his own relation Membliarus together with other Phoenicians. Greek Text
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, University of Georgia, March 2020
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