Cadmus

Cadmus Europe
The founder of Thebes. According to the Greeks, Cadmus and his four brothers were sent after Europa with instructions not to return home without her. Although these sons of Agenor, King of Tyre, failed to recover their abducted sister from Zeus, they seem to have had a strong influence on the places they eventually settled. On advice from the oracle at Delphi, Cadmus founded the city of Thebes in Boeotia. To obtain water there he slew a dragon, the offspring of war god Ares, and had to undergo a term of servitude. Athena told him to sow the dragon's teeth, and there sprang up a harvest of ferocious warriors, whom he mastered by setting them to fight one another. It was believed that the Theban aristocracy descended from the five warriors who survived.

The Greeks also credited Cadmus with the introduction into Europe from Phoenicia of an alphabet of sixteen letters. There are in fact a number of ancient references to Phoenician activity in...

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