Cadmus

, son of Agenor king of Phœnicia by Telepha a or Agriope, was ordered by his father to go in quest of his sister Europa, whom Jupiter had carried away, and he was never to return to Phœnicia if he did not bring her back. As his search proved fruitle , he consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was ordered to build a city where he should see a young heifer stop in the gra , and to call the country Bœotia. He found the heifer according to the directions of the oracle; and as he wished to thank the god by a sacrifice, he sent his companions to fetch water from a neighbouring grove. The waters were sacred to Mars, and guarded by a dragon, which devoured all the Phœnician’s attendants. Cadmus, tired of their seeming delay, went to the place, and saw the monster still feeding on their flesh. He attacked the dragon, and overcame it by the a istance of Minerva, and sowed the teeth in a plain, upon which armed men suddenly rose up from the ground. He threw a stone in the midst of them, and they instantly turned their arms one against another, till all perished except five, who a isted him in building his city. Soon after he married Hermione the daughter of Venus, with whom he lived in the greatest cordiality, and by whom he had a son Polydorus, and four daughters, Ino, Agave, Autonoe, and Semele. Juno persecuted these children; and their well-known misfortunes so distracted Cadmus and Hermione, that they retired to Illyricum, loaded with grief and infirm with age. They intreated the gods to remove them from the misfortunes of life, and they were immediately changed into serpents. Some explain the dragon’s fable, by supposing that it was a king of the country whom Cadmus conquered by war; and the armed men rising from the field, is no more than men armed with bra , according to the ambiguous signification of a Phœnician word. Cadmus was the first who introduced the use of letters into Greece; but some maintain, that the alphabet which he brought from Phœnicia, was only different from that which was used by the ancient inhabitants of Greece. This alphabet consisted only of 16 letters, to which Palamedes afterwards added four, and Simon ides of Melos the same number. The worship of many of the Egyptian and Phœnician deities was also introduced by Cadmus, who is supposed to have come into Greece 1493 years before the christian era, and to have died 61 years after. According to those who believe that Thebes was built at the sound of Amphion’s lyre, Cadmus built only a small citadel which he called Cadmea, and laid the foundations of a city which was finished by one of his succe ors. Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 3 , fables 1, 2, . — Hero dot us , bk. 2 , ch. 49 ; bk. 4 , ch. 147 .— Hyginus , fables 6, 76, 155, . — Diodorus , bk. 1 , . — Pausanias , bk. 9 , ch. 5 , . — Hesiod , Theogony , li. 937 , . ――A son of Pandion of Miletus, celebrated as an historian in the age of Crœsus, and as the writer of an account of some cities of Ionia, in four books. He is called the ancient , in contradistinction from another of the same name and place, son of Archelaus, who wrote a history of Attica in 16 books, and a treatise on love in 14 books. Diodorus , bk. 1 .— Dionysius of Halicarna us , bk. 2 .— Clement of Alexandria , bk. 3 .— Strabo , bk. 1 .— Pliny , bk. 5 , ch. 29 .――A Roman executioner, mentioned Horace , bk. 1 , satire 5, li. 39 .