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  He went to the oracle at Delphi who advised him to find a cow with the image of the moon on its side, and walk behind it until it sat down exhausted. The place where the cow sat down would be his home.

  Cadmus followed the oracle’s instructions and found near where the cow sat down a river that was guarded by a dragon. Cadmus fought the dragon and killed it, not realizing that the creature belonged to Ares and anyone who slayed it was doomed to suffer a curse for generations.

  Athena advised Cadmus to sow the teeth of the dragon in the soil. From it sprang a race of hostile and fully armed warriors. Cadmus threw a rock amongst them, causing them to quarrel and fight with each other, until only five survived.

  These five joined Cadmus to found the citadel of Thebes.

  Cadmus looks for Europa, while Castor and Pollux look for Helen. Brothers are thus seen as guardians of sisters, a theme also found in Hindu mythology, where Dhristadyumna keeps a lookout for the welfare of Draupadi, Balarama and Krishna watch over Subhadra, and Yama over Lakshmi.

  Cadmus is the mythic founder of Thebes though many have tried to prove he was a historical figure, a migrant from the Near East. Herodotus calculated that Cadmus lived 1600 years before his time, in 2000 BCE. But the Phoenician script, from which the Greek script came into being, was developed only around 1000 BCE.

  The city of Al-Qadmus in Syria is named after Cadmus.

  The phrase ‘Cadmean victory’ means a victory that involves ruin. Cadmus, while establishing his city, sends his people to fetch water from a river whose guardian dragon kills them. Though Cadmus slays the dragon, it is only after it has claimed the lives of those who were supposed to live in the city Cadmus was building.

  Cadmus brought the Phoenician script to Greece. The alphabet was sacred in Greece for it recorded the feats of heroes and thus granted immortality to great men. While the oral tradition depended on humans, the written tradition broke free from such dependence. This distinguishes Greek culture from Indic culture where until recent times, greater value was placed on the oral tradition.

  Harmonia

  Zeus felt sorry for Cadmus, who had failed in his mission to find his sister. So he decided to give him a wife: Harmonia.

  All the gods were invited to the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia. Amongst them was Hephaestus, who gave Harmonia a necklace as a wedding present. This necklace was cursed: it would cause madness, strife and suffering for generations in the House of Cadmus. Hephaestus did this cruel thing because he believed Harmonia was the child born of the union of his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares.

  So it came to pass that Harmonia’s son Polydorus died at an early age. Polydorus’s son, Labdacus, was killed by Dionysus’s followers for criticizing their god. In this period of turmoil, Nycteus, father-in-law of Polydorus, served as regent of Thebes. Labdacus’s son, Laius, was sent to Pisa, where he was raised in the House of Pelops.

  The idea that the quarrels of the gods (Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Ares) result in strife on earth (misfortune in the House of Cadmus) has no parallel in Hindu mythology. However, the idea that the deeds of ancestors (Cadmus killing Ares’s dragon) impact the lives of future generations (Polydorus, Labdacus) has parallels in Hindu mythology. In the epic Mahabharata, because Yadu disobeys his father Yayati, his descendants are cursed with death should they wear the crown and become kings themselves. Thus Yadu’s descendants, Krishna included, never crown themselves as rulers.

  Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, brings harmony, while Eris, daughter of Zeus and Hera, known to Romans as Discordia, beings disharmony.

  Cadmus was deeply troubled by the ill fortune that clung to his family and he blamed it on the dragon he killed to establish Thebes. Since the gods seemed to love a serpent so much, he wished to become one. The gods obliged. Harmonia clung to the serpent and begged the gods to turn her into one too. In art, Cadmus and Harmonia are often depicted as a pair of serpents.

  Nycteus and Lycus

  King Nycteus had a daughter called Antiope, who was a Maenad, a follower of Dionysus, whom Zeus ravished in the form of a satyr. Thus disgraced, a pregnant Antiope ran away from Thebes and married Epopeus of Sicyon.

  Unable to bear the shame, Nycteus killed himself. His brother, Lycus, then became regent of Thebes in his place. To avenge his brother Lycus attacked Sicyon, killed Epopeus and dragged Antiope back home. On the way, she gave birth to twin boys in a cave in the middle of a forest, but was forced by her uncle to abandon them.

  In Thebes, Antiope suffered the cruel treatment meted out by Lycus’s wife, Dirce, for years until she managed to escape. She found her children, the twin boys Amphion and Zethus, in the cave, being raised by hunters. Amphion, son of Zeus, had grown up to be a fine musician while Zethus, son of Epopeus, was a herdsman.

  Antiope roused her sons to wage war against her uncle who had treated her so badly. The brothers waged war and defeated Lycus, and forced him to declare the brothers the new rulers of Thebes. They would have killed Lycus, but Hermes forbade them to. So they turned their attention to his wife, Dirce, tormentor of their mother. They tied her hair to the horns of a bull and let the animal drag her to her death.

  Rape is not a common theme in Hindu mythology. It is associated with villains, not gods. In the Bhagavata Purana, Kansa is conceived when his mother is raped by a gandharva, so the mother curses that this child of rape will be killed by a true descendant of Yadu. In the Ramayana, Ravana rapes Rambha who curses Ravana that if he forces himself on a woman his head will split into a thousand pieces. In the Mahabharata, King Danda rapes Araja, the daughter of Shukra, as a result of which he is cursed: his kingdom will be consumed by a sandstorm and turned into a wilderness called Dandaka-aranya.

  As the word ‘rape’ evokes violence, some authors prefer the phrase ‘seduction by the gods’. But in many of these stories, the women resist the advances of the gods, who do not take kindly to being spurned and take the women by force, in which case it is not seduction, but rape.

  Satyrs have human torsos and the hind legs of a goat. That Zeus takes this form explains the close association Antiope has with Dionysus in the Greek tradition. She is often described as a Maenad.

  Fathers killing themselves because their daughters have brought shame to the family is common in patriarchal societies where women are seen as property. Antiope’s disobedience is threefold: through her relationships with Dionysus, Zeus and Epopeus.

  Antiope bears two sons: one divine and one mortal. Amphion is the son of Zeus while Zethus is the son of Epopeus. Amphion, the musician, is contemplative, while Zethus is the active herdsman. They are like the Dioscuri, two brothers, horsemen, worshipped as a pair for good luck and protection. The theme of a woman bearing twin children, one by god and one by man, one immortal and one mortal, is a popular theme in Greek mythology.

  Antiope, the Theban princess, mother of Amphion and Zethus, must be distinguished from Antiope, the Amazon, mother of Hippolytus.

  Amphion and Zethus

  Amphion and Zethus decided to build walls around Thebes. While Zethus, the herdsman, used his beasts of burden to carry the rocks, Amphion used his song and music to make rocks move. The wall that encircled Thebes was famous for its seven gates.

  Amphion married Niobe who bore him seven sons and seven daughters. Unfortunately, Apollo and Artemis killed them because Niobe dared to mock Leto, the mother of the twin Olympians, declaring that as she had borne more children she was more fertile than Leto. Driven by grief, Amphion attacked Apollo, and was also slain.

  Zethus married Thebe who bore him one son, but in a fit of madness, she killed her own son and then killed herself, driving Zethus to commit suicide.

  Thus the rule of the twin sons of Antiope came to an end.

  Lycus, now old, then sent for Laius, son of Labdacus, who had been raised in Pisa, in the House of Pelops, to return home and rule Thebes.

  The rivalry of Leto and Niobe over who has more children mirrors the rivalry seen in the Mahabharata between the two wives