Cadmus

Sent from Tyre to find his sister Europa and told by Delphi to follow a cow instead, Cadmus founded Thebes where she lay down, slew the war-god’s dragon, and sowed its teeth: armed men sprang up, fought, and the five survivors — the Spartoi, “sown men” — fathered the Theban nobility. Tradition credits him with bringing the Phoenician letters to Greece. His line runs to Oedipus; his own end, transformed with his wife into serpents, is as strange as his beginning.