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Cadmus And Harmonia

WHEN Cadmus had served eight years in bondage to Ares, to expiate the murder of the Castallan serpent, Athene secured him the land of Boeotia. With the help of his Sown Men, he built the Theban polis, named ‘The Cadmea’ in his own honour and, after being initiated into the mysteries which Zeus had taught Iasion, married Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares; some say that Athene …brought… her to him when he visited Samothrace.
b. This was the first mortal wedding ever attended by the Olympians. Twelve golden thrones were set up for them in Cadmus’s palace, which stood on the site of the present Theban market place; and all brought gifts. Aphrodite presented Harmonia with the famous golden necklace made by Hephaestus-originally it had been Zeus’s love-gift to Cadmus’s sister Europe-which conferred irresistible beauty on its wearer. Athene gave her a golden robe, which conferred divine dignity on its wearer, also a set of flutes; and Hermes lyre. Cadmus’s own present to Harmonia was another rich robe. Electra, Iasion’s mother, taught her the rites of the Great Goddess, while Demeter assured her a prosperous barley harvest by lying with Iasion in a thrice-ploughed field during the celebrations. The Thebans still show the place where the Muses played the flute and sang on this occasion, and where Apollo performed on the lyre.
c. In his old age, to placate Ares, who had not yet wholly forgiven him for him for killing the serpent, Cadmus resigned the Theban throne in favour of his grandson Pentheus, whom his daughter Agave had to Echion the Sown Man, and lived quietly in the city. But when Pentheus was done to death by his mother, Dionysus foretold that Cadmus and Harmonia, riding in a chariot drawn by heifers, would rule over barbarian hordes. These same barbarians, he said, would sack many Greek cities until, at last, they plundered a temple of Apollo, whereupon they would suffer just punishment; but Ares would rescue Cadmus and Harmonia, after turning them into serpents, and they would live happily for all time in the Islands of the Blessed.
d. Cadmus and Harmonia therefore emigrated to the land of the Encheleans who, when attacked by the Illyrians, chose them as their rulers, in accordance with Dionysus’s advice. Agave was now married to Lycotherses, King of Illyria, at whose court she had taken refuge after her murder of Pentheus; but on hearing that her parents commanded the Enchelean forces, she murdered Lycotherses too, and gave the kingdom to Cadmus.
e. In their old age, when the prophecy had been wholly fulfilled, Cadmus and Harmonia duly became blue-spotted black serpents, and were sent by Zeus to the Islands of the Blessed. But some say that Ares changed them into lions. Their bodies were buried in Illyria, where Cadmus had built the city of Buthoë. He was succeeded by Illyrius, the son of his old age.
1. Cadmus’s marriage to Harmonia, in the presence of the Twelve Olympian deities, is paralleled by Peleus’s marriage to Thetis, and seems to record a general Hellenic recognition of the Cadmeian conquerors of Thebes, after they had been sponsored by the Athenians and decently initiated into the Samothracian Mysteries. His founding of Buthoë constitutes a   claim by the Illyrians to be treated as Greeks, and therefore to take part in the Olympic Games. Cadmus will have had an oracle in Illyria, if he was pictured there as a serpent; and the lions into which he and Harmonia are also said to have been transformed, were perhaps twin heraldic supporters of the Great Goddess’s aniconic image-as on the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae. The mythographer suggests that he was allowed to emigrate with a colony at the close of his reign, instead of being put to death.



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