Harmonia

Harmonia is the wife of Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who founded Thebes. Hesiod's Theogony says that Cytherea, a title of Aphrodite, bore to Ares the gods Panic and Fear and also Harmonia, whom high-spirited Cadmus made his wife (Theogony 933-937). Apollodorus gives the same parents. He says Athena obtained the kingdom for Cadmus after his servitude, and Zeus gave him Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares (Library 3.4.2).

Apollodorus says all the gods left the sky and feasted in the Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, and celebrated the marriage with hymns (Library 3.4.2). Cadmus gave his bride a robe and a necklace. Apollodorus says the necklace was wrought by Hephaestus and adds that some say Hephaestus gave it to Cadmus. The wedding stands near the start of the Theban Cycle, the myths of one royal house that run on to Oedipus.

Hesiod names five children of Harmonia and Cadmus: Ino, Semele, Agave, Autonoe and Polydorus (Theogony 975-978). Apollodorus lists the same five. He says Ino married Athamas, Autonoe married Aristaeus and Agave married Echion (Library 3.4.2). Of the daughters, he tells next how Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her unknown to Hera (Library 3.4.3).

Ovid tells the end of the pair in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses. Cadmus and his wife come as exiles to Illyria, where he asks whether the serpent he once killed was sacred and prays to become a serpent himself. Harmonia cries out to him to put off the monster shape, then asks the gods to change her too. Both slither off to a nearby grove. Ovid adds that the two serpents never harm people, because they remember what they were (Metamorphoses 4.563-603). Apollodorus gives no reason. He says only that both were turned into serpents and that Zeus sent them to the Elysian Fields (Library 3.5.4).

In Euripides's Bacchae the change is a prophecy. Dionysus tells Cadmus that he will become a dragon and that his wife Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, whom Cadmus though mortal had married, will receive the form of a serpent in exchange (Bacchae 1330-1339). Diodorus Siculus gives her a different origin. In his account of Samothrace, Harmonia is a daughter of Zeus and the Atlantid Electra and a sister of Iasion. He says this against the Greek myths that make her a daughter of Ares.

Her wedding gift outlived her. Apollodorus says Polynices took the necklace and the robe to Argos. He gave the necklace to Eriphyle and begged her to persuade her husband Amphiaraus to march. She accepted and persuaded him to join the war of the Seven against Thebes (Library 3.6.1-3.6.2). Apollodorus does not call the necklace cursed. Later writers such as Statius add that motive.