Sowing the Dragon's Teeth by Jonathan E. Hernandez

For his part in this tragedy Kadmos was bound in servitude to Ares for eight years, but at the end of this period Athene bestowed the kingship upon him and with the surviving Spartoi he began to build up the city of Thebes.

At the sight of these warriors suddenly gathering about him, Kadmos was stricken with fear and began to hurl stones at them and they, thinking that the missiles were thrown by their fellows, murderously set upon one another until only five of them were left alive.

From the teeth sprang a host of armed men who were called Spartoi ('Scattered') from the strange manner of their birth. In obedience to the divine command Kadmos journeyed after the animal across Phokis until at length she sought repose beside a hill in the heart of Boiotia, and there he founded Thebes.ĭesiring to sacrifice the cow to Athene, Kadmos dispatched a number of his men to draw water for the rites from the spring Areia, but most of them were killed by the dragon, the issue of Ares, which guarded the water, whereupon Kadmos himself slew the beast and at the suggestion of Athene scattered the teeth broadcast over the earth as a farmer strews his grain. The god commanded him to cease worrying over his sister and to turn his thoughts into another channel, bidding him to follow a heifer which he would find outside the shrine and to establish a city on the spot where she would first lie down to rest. After the death of Telephassa, Kadmos felt free to continue his search for Europe, and going to Delphoi he inquired of the oracle concerning her. On her disappearance Agenor sent his wife and sons throughout the neighbouring lands in quest of her and ordered them not to return without her, but all failed in their errand, and, fearful of Agenor's anger, they resolved never to go back home, Phoinix settling in a district of Phoinikia, Kilix in Kilikia, and Thasos, Kadmos, and their mother Telephassa in Thrace.

Agenor, a great-grandson of Io, established himself in Phoinikia, where he had a daughter named Europe, whom Zeus one day carried away to Crete by force. The Greeks explained this coincidence by suggesting that after Kadmos killed Ares' dragon, the dragon's teeth were divided, with half going to Kadmos and half to Aeetes, who later forced Jason to sow them. The motif of the Spartoi appears in two Greek myths, that of Jason and that of Kadmos.

Sowing the Dragon's Teeth by Jonathan E. Hernandez