Cadmus and the Dragon

The story begins with a search that goes wrong. Ovid says Agenor sent his son Cadmus to find the sister carried off by Jupiter, and proclaimed him doomed to exile if he came back without her. When Cadmus failed, he shunned his country and asked Phoebus's oracle for a land where he could live. Apollodorus tells it differently. In his Library Cadmus settles in Thrace after his mother dies, and only then goes to Delphi to ask about Europa. The god tells him to stop worrying about her and let a cow guide him. The earlier chapter of the family's story is in The Rape of Europa.

The oracle's instruction is simple. In Ovid, Phoebus says that a heifer that has never known the yoke will cross Cadmus's path, and where she lies down to rest he is to build a city. Cadmus leaves the Castalian cave, sees the unguarded heifer at once, and follows her over the Cephissus and through the fields of Panope into Boeotia. There she stops, lifts her broad forehead towards the sky, lows, and lies down on the grass. Cadmus kisses the foreign soil.

Apollodorus says the cow came from the herds of Pelagon, and that Cadmus followed her through Phocis. Pausanias heard the same tale at Thebes. Cadmus was leaving Delphi by the road to Phocis, and the cow he bought from Pelagon's herdsmen had a white mark like the orb of a full moon on each side. Thebans also pointed out the spot itself. Pausanias says there was an altar and an image of Athena in the open, said to have been dedicated by Cadmus.

Cadmus meant to sacrifice the cow at once. Apollodorus says the offering was for Athena, and Ovid says it was for Jupiter. Either way, he needed water, and he sent some of his companions to fetch it. Apollodorus names the spring as the spring of Ares. Ovid describes an ancient grove that had never known an axe, with a cave under a low arch of osiers at its centre and a stream welling from its dark mouth.

The cave held a dragon sacred to Mars, the Roman Ares. Ovid gives it a crest, scales that shone, eyes like glowing coals, three tongues, and three rows of teeth. When the Tyrians lowered their urns into the water, it reared up and hissed. Ovid says it stung some of them to death, crushed others in its coils, and blasted the rest with its breath. Apollodorus is briefer: the dragon guarded the spring, some said it was a child of Ares, and it killed most of the men sent.

At midday, with his men still gone, Cadmus went after them. He wore a lion's skin and carried a lance and a javelin, and Ovid adds that he had a dauntless soul as well. He found the bodies and the dragon licking blood from their wounds, and swore to avenge them or share their death.

The fight in Ovid is long and physical. Cadmus hurls a huge millstone, and the dragon's scales turn it aside. A javelin does better and goes through the middle of the spine, but the dragon twists and wrenches out the shaft, and the iron head stays in its bones. Enraged, it charges. Cadmus stands behind the lion's skin and jams his lance into its jaws. The dragon bites the steel, spits blood, and pulls back in time to save its throat. Cadmus follows, pressing the point deeper, until an oak blocks the way. He pins the dragon through the neck to the trunk, and the tree bends under its weight.

The other accounts are shorter and disagree on the weapon. Apollodorus says only that Cadmus killed the dragon in his indignation. In Euripides's Phoenissae the chorus sings of Ares's murderous dragon guarding the streams, and says Cadmus destroyed it with a jagged stone when he came to draw lustral water himself. No companions appear there.

Ovid does not let the victory settle. While Cadmus stands over the huge body, a voice speaks from a source he cannot find.

Cadmus goes pale, and his hair stands on end. Then Minerva appears from the air above and tells him to plough the ground and sow the dragon's teeth, so that another race of men can grow from them. Apollodorus and Euripides agree that Athena gave the advice, though Euripides calls her Pallas and says only that the teeth were cast on deep fields.

In Ovid, the crop appears like a curtain rising at the theatre: first spear points, then helmet crests, then shoulders, chests and arms. Cadmus prepares to arm himself, but one of the earth-born shouts at him not to arm and not to join a civil war. That man strikes down a brother with his sword and is himself pierced by a spear from far off. The rest fall on one another until, Ovid says, five are left. One of them, Echion, is warned by Minerva, throws down his arms and asks his brothers to stop.

Apollodorus calls the men Sparti, the sown men, and says they killed each other in a chance brawl or in ignorance. He adds that Pherecydes has Cadmus throw stones among them, so that each man thinks another threw it. Euripides has grim slaughter return the armed men to the earth. Apollodorus names the five survivors: Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor and Pelorus.

Of the four accounts, only Apollodorus counts the price of the killing, and he counts it in service. The dragon belonged to Ares, or in Apollodorus some said it was his child, so Cadmus owed him atonement. The term is given in one line, quoted below.

Athena then procured him the kingdom, and Zeus gave him Ares's daughter Harmonia as his wife. Ovid has no servitude in the passage read here. His voice at the dragon's body foretells a serpent, and his next lines call Cadmus the son-in-law of Mars and Venus, with Thebes now founded. The serpent transformation is told later in the poem, and the character page follows it.