A son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre in Phoenicia, Cadmus is sent in search of his sister Europa. Failing to find her and after consulting the Delphic oracle, he is ordered to follow a special cow; he is to build a city where the cow lies down. He founds Thebes (the Cadmeia) on that spot, marries Harmonia (in accounts linking him to Samothrace and the Kabeiroi), and establishes a ruling line whose descendants govern Thebes. Ancient historians and mythographers present him as a proto-civilizer whose genealogical links run back to figures such as Poseidon and Libya in order to connect his house to wider divine and royal networks.
Ancient sources and the summaries provided do not give a detailed contemporary physical portrait; literary and artistic traditions typically represent Cadmus as a princely, heroic figure of Phoenician origin and a founder-hero in the iconography of Greek myth. His narrative markers—Phoenician prince, husband of Harmonia, city-founder and monster-slayer—are the principal descriptors preserved in the sources rather than specific bodily features or attire in the excerpts available.
Cadmus functions as a mythic culture-transmitter and city-founder rather than a magical being: tradition credits him as founder of Thebes (following the Delphic oracle and the cow-omphalos sign), as slayer of a guardian water-dragon at the Ismenian spring (a prototypical monster-slaying episode that places him among early heroic figures such as Perseus and Bellerophon), and—according to Herodotus and later tradition—with introducing the Phoenician alphabet (or a foreign script) to the Greeks, explaining the presence of early 'Cadmean' inscriptions at Thebes. He is also a pilgrim figure who visits Samothrace and Delphi and whose marriage to Harmonia connects him to sacred rites and divine favor in the narrative tradition.
Weaknesses
- otherNo canonical supernatural weaknesses recorded in the provided sources
Wards
- otherNone recorded for Cadmus in the provided material (he is a founding hero, not a hostile spirit)
*Péh₂usōn (reconstructed)
Péh₂usōn is a hypothetical Proto‑Indo‑European pastoral guardian reconstructed by comparative scholars from parallels in Greek and Vedic traditions. Proposed as a Graeco‑Aryan ancestor‑figure, the reconstruction describes a protector of flocks, roads, and travellers rather than an attested historical cultic personality.
Aba (disambiguation / name-form)
Aba is a polyvalent name-form attested across many unrelated contexts (place names, personal names, animal names, and brief mythological listings). The provided sources do not support a single, coherent supernatural entity called "Aba" and offer no descriptive or ritual material for such a being.
Abarbarea
Abarbarea is a name attested in classical Greek and Roman sources for freshwater nymphs (naiads). The name appears for at least two individual mythic figures — a naiad wife of Bucolion and a naiad counted among ancestors of the Tyrians — and Hesychius records plural forms that may indicate the name was also used as a class-name (Abarbareai / Abarbalaiai).
Abas
Abas (Ancient Greek: Ἄβας, gen.: Ἄβαντος) is not a single mythic being but a recurring personal name borne by multiple mortals and minor mythic figures in Greek epic and genealogical traditions — kings, founders, seers, warriors, attendants, a centaur, and a youth transformed by a goddess. The name is glossed in the sources as 'guileless' or 'good-hearted' and appears across Argive, Theban, Trojan, Euboean, and other local cycles.
Abderus
Abderus (Ancient Greek: Ἄβδηρος, romanized Ábdēros) is a mortal heroic figure in Greek myth closely associated with Heracles, remembered as the youth left in charge of the Mares of Diomedes who was killed by them. He functions as an eponymous local/divine-hero ancestor for the city of Abdera and received funerary commemoration and athletic agones at his tomb.
Abomination of Desolation
An apocalyptic prophetic phrase originating in the Book of Daniel designating a profaning thing or act that renders the Jerusalem Temple cult desolate; later reused in the Synoptic Gospels as an eschatological sign prompting urgent flight. The term denotes ritual/cultic impurity (Hebrew shiqquts) and is variously interpreted as pagan offerings or altar, a foreign cult statue, or (in some New Testament readings) an acting agent.
Absyrtus
Absyrtus (Ancient Greek: Ἄψυρτος) is a Colchian prince in the Greek Argonautic cycle, son of King Aeëtes and brother or half-brother of Medea. He appears in variant traditions either as a companion taken by Medea during her flight with Jason and murdered/dismembered to delay pursuit, or as a pursuer sent by Aeëtes who is overtaken and slain by Jason; his death functions as a key narrative device in the escape from Colchis.
Acacallis
Acacallis (Ancient Greek: Ἀκακαλλίς; also Acalle) is a mythological princess of Crete in Greek tradition, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She functions primarily as a dynastic and etiological figure: in varying accounts she is mother, by gods such as Hermes (Mercury) or Apollo, of eponymous or founder-figures like Cydon (founder of Cydonia), Miletus, or Lydon/ Lydus.
Acacus
Acacus (Ancient Greek: Ἄκακος) is, in Arcadian Greek tradition, a mortal eponymous founder-king of Acacesium and is remembered as the foster-father who reared the infant Hermes (Mercury) in that local tradition. He is presented in genealogies as a son of Lycaon and functions as a local ancestral/onomastic figure rather than a supernatural spirit.
Academus
Academus (Greek: Akádemos / Hekádemos) is an Attic hero-eponym tied to a sacred grove (Akademeia) on the Cephissus near Athens. In myth he revealed where Helen was hidden to the Dioskouroi, an act said to have saved the city, and the place bearing his name became a long-lived sacred precinct, later the site of Plato's Academy.
Acamas
Acamas (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάμας) is a personal name recurrent in ancient Greek narrative traditions applied to multiple human characters (warriors, princes, suitors), once to a Cyclops, and once as a hound's name. Rather than a single supernatural entity, bearers of the name appear episodically across the Trojan War, Theseid, and Theban cycles as mortal actors whose deeds intersect with gods and fate.
Acantha
Acantha (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάνθα, 'thorn') is a late or secondary mythological figure known from modern retellings as a nymph transformed into the acanthus plant. The tale that she scratched Apollo and was changed into a spiny-leaved plant is not attested in surviving classical corpora and appears to be a modern compilation or invention rather than a firmly documented ancient myth.
Community Record
- [1]Cadmus — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Cadmus,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopediawiki
- [2]Cadmus (Wikidata entry). Wikidata Q21446534other
- [3]Archive: Kvarteret Cadmus, sid. 003 , Gråark. Archive item referencing Cadmus (archival collection)other
- [4]Archive: The work of the universities for the nation past and present (inaugural lecture). Archive item (1893 inaugural lecture)other