Cadmus

Phoenician prince, son of King Agenor of Tyre and brother of Europa, Phoenix, and Cilix. When Zeus carried off Europa, Agenor sent Cadmus out with orders to find her or not come back; he searched the world and failed. At Delphi the Pythia told him to abandon the search, follow a cow that would appear at his way out of the sanctuary, and found a city where she lay down. The cow led him across Boeotia and collapsed on the site of Thebes. There he killed the dragon that guarded the Ismenian spring, sowed its teeth on Athena's instruction, and the Spartoi (the Sown Men) sprang up fully armed from the furrow; five of them survived the mutual battle and became the ancestors of the Theban aristocracy. Cadmus founded the Cadmeia and received Harmonia (daughter of Ares and Aphrodite) as his bride in a wedding attended by all the gods — the necklace Hephaestus gave her that day becomes the curse-object that drives the Seven against Thebes. The Greeks credited him with bringing the alphabet from Phoenicia; in old age he and Harmonia were transformed into serpents and led to the Elysian Fields.

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