Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/108

 94 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY from the sowing of its teeth in the ground sprang up the brazen Sparti (' sown men ? ), i.e. the indigenous in- habitants of Thebes. After most of these had killed each other in the fratricidal war cunningly incited by Cadmus, he founded Cadmea with the help of the five survivors, i.e. the ancestors of the noble families of Thebes. Then he married Harmonia (< harmony '), who was the daughter of the Boeotian national god Ares and of Aphrodite, a myth that probably refers to the be- ginnings of political organization. Of their children, Ino and Semele were especially conspicuous. At last Cadmus and his wife, like other heroes, assumed the form of serpents, but both were removed by Zeus to Elysium. A later legend, emanating especially from Delphi, transfers the home of Cadmus to Phoenicia, and makes him a son of Agenor, king of Tyre. According to this version, Agenor sent Cadmus forth in company with his brothers, the national heroes, Phoenix, Cilix, and Thasus, to search for his sister Europa, who had been carried off by Zeus ; and in his wandering he reached Boeotia and founded Thebes. 124. Antiope ('the one looking toward you') was a Boeotian-Corinthian, perhaps closely akin to Selene. On the mountain Cithaeron she bore the Zeus-begotten twins Amphion and Zethus, who are probably, like the Laco- nian Dioscuri, to be regarded as divinities of light. When afterwards, being cruelly tormented by Dirce, the jealous wife of her uncle Lycus, she fled to Cithaeron, she met her sons, who had been reared by a shepherd. They did not recognize her. But on the occasion of a Diony- sus-festival she was again caught by Dirce and in punish- ment for her flight was about to be dragged to death,