The Legend of Cadmus and the Logographi Author(s): A. W. Gomme Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 33 (1913), pp. 53-72 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/624086 . Accessed: 17/01/2015 11:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 17 Jan 2015 11:11:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE LEGENDIOF CADMUS AND THE LOGOGRAPHI. I. 1.-FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE PHOENICIAN THEORY. IN an article in the Annual of the British School at Athens 1 I have endeavoured to show that the geography of Boeotia lends no support to the theory that the Cadmeans were Phoenicians. Yet from the fifth century onwards at least, there was a firmly established and, as far as we know, universally accepted tradition that they were-a tradition indeed lightly put aside by most modern scholars as unimportant. If the arguments from geography are sound, then this tradition must be learned theory, and theory only. That this is so cannot of course be proved; for the authors by whom it was established, if it was established, are lost to us. We cannot even show, for this theory itself, that it is probable; for the methods even of Herodotus, and his reasons for his theories, are often obscure. But if we can show that it is a possibility-and not a bare possibility, but a very natural one-then the arguments brought forward in the Annual can be allowed their full weight. We must trace, if possible, the first notice of the Cadmeans as Phoenicians: bound up with this question is that of the first connexion of Cadmus with Europa. It may be as well first to give the genealogy and the main points of the complete story as it is told by the later mythographers, so that the fragments of the earlier authors may relate themselves to it more easily. The genealogy in Apollodorus 2 is as follows:- 1 B.S.A. xviii. (1911-2). nor). The ' Genealogy of the Catalogues' given 2 ii. 10 ff. (ed. Wagner, Teubner, 1894) by Crusius, p. 833, as from Apollodorus and (Story of the descendants of Belus as far as the the Hesiodic fragments, is mere contaminatio, Heracleids), iii. 1 ff. (the descendants of Age- and altogether unjustified by the evidence. 53 This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 17 Jan 2015 11:11:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 54 A. W. GOMME Inachus Io Neilus Epaphus = lMemphis Poseidon = Libya Telephassa= Agenor (goes to Phoenicia) Belus (remains in Egypt)= Anchirrhoe II Europa Cadmus Phoenix Cilix Aegyptus Danaus Cepheus Phineus = Harmonia (ace. to Eur?2ides) Minos, Polydorus Illyrius Thasos sons = daughters Sal pedon, I (ace. to Rhada- Labdacus, Pherccydes) manthys etc. Heracles The chief variations are two: Phoenix is often the brother of Agenor (both sons of Belus) and Europa, Cadmus and the rest his children (Europa, Cilix, and Phineus, children of Phoenix and Cassiepea); and Harmonia is the daughter either of Ares and Aphrodite in Thebes (all the earlier authorities apparently), or of the Atlantid Electra and Zeus in Samothrace, and sister of Eation and Dardanus, and connected with the Cabiri there (already in the fifth century3). The main features of the story are: the rape of Europa from Sidon; the search, in which Phoenix, Cilix, Thasos, and Cadmus take part, and the consequent naming of the Phoenicians, the Cilicians, and Thasos; the journey of Cadmus (first, according to some, to Thrace, with Telephassa, who dies there) to Delphi, the famous oracle, and the founding of Thebes; his fight with the dragon; the Sparti, seed of the dragon's teeth; his marriage with Harmonia, to which all the gods came; and the final exile of Cadmus and Harmonia into Illyris. Subsidiary to the story is the in- vention of the alphabet, or its introduction into Greece from Phoenicia, by Cadmus. (a) The Epic. As is well known, Cadmus is only once mentioned in Homer, incident- ally, as the father of Ino Leucothea ; but the KasLpetoLor Kapetlwove appear frequently, and always as the inhabitants of Thebes till the expedition of the Epigoni.5 Europa is referred to once as '(olvCKOS KotptJ T77XEKXeL- 3 See Roscher's Lexikon, s.Mv.Agenor, Phoi- richt,' and that the sources of the tragedians nix, Harmonia, etc. are the epic poets, not the logographers, his 4 Od. v. 333. Most of the references in this article is an admirable statement of the evi- chapter are to be found in the articles by dence. But both his premisses I dispute. Helbig and Crusius in Roscher, s.vv,. Europa S-11. iv. 385, x. 288, xxiii. 680, etc.; Od. xi. and Kadmos. My arrangement and use of 276. (It is noticeable that Homer always speaks them is somewhat different. The latter of of the inhabitants as Cadmeans, and of the course I follow in his main conclusion; and, town as Thebes. Aeschylus must indeed be granted his two chief premisses, that the Theo- following an old version of the story of the gony gives us our oldest 'ausfiihrliche Nach- Seven, if it is to the point that he calls the This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 17 Jan 2015 11:11:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE LEGEND OF CADMUS AND THE LOGOGRAPHI.-I 55 Toto,6 but her kinship with Phoenix does not, of course, mean necessarily that she was regarded as Phoenician. Semele too is mentioned once, and as resident in Thebes, and the mother of Dionysus.7 The fact that Europa and the Cadmeans are not called Phoenicians may be accidental, but is perhaps significant in view of the way in which Homer on occasions speaks of the Sidonians and their relations with the Achaeans or Trojans. The Epic cycle gives us much the same evidence as Homer. Oedipus is, in the Thebais, the heir Kadi3oto 9~edpovol,s and the Ka3.e4otc are the inhabitants of Thebes.9 But no positive argument either for or against the Phoenician theory can be drawn from these scanty fragments. In 'Hesiod' we reach a wider field. In the Theogony, indeed, we hear only of Cadmus as the husband of Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and father by her of Ino, Semele mother of Dionysus, Agave, Autonoe whom Aristaeus married, and Polydorus Uo-rTe0Ev i•v 0/30P.1?8 These lines, says Crusius, 'wtirzeln ganz in thebisch-boiotischen Verhilt- nissen.' Only in Thebes do we find these gods and heroes together. 'Das boiotische Gedicht vertritt boiotische Ueberlieferung.' 11 But there is little reason, beyond the agreement of scholars to support one another, to suppose that this series of poems, 'Catalogues,' and the like, belongs particularly to Boeotia, or represents Boeotian tradition,12 or that Boeotian tradition is more valuable than other traditions, as Crusius implies by his argument. Even if the Theogony is really by Hesiod (that is, by the author of the Works and Days, which is Boeotian,13) or by a fellow-countryman, we still have no reason at all to assume that he followed wholly, or specially, the local tradition. The Theogony, and the fragments, are cosmopolitan. However, from these few references Crusius assumes that in the oldest saga Cadmus was found in Boeotia only. 'Von der folgenschweren Verbindung des Kadmos mit Kreta und den weitgreifenden genealogischen Beziigen zu Phoinix, Belos, Neilos findet sich keine Spur; auch scheint die Schwester town , KaSpela only, never OeBaL (Verrall, ed. 9 Epigoni, fr. 2. Septem). In the Iliad the adjective O0Ba^os 10 937, 940 if., 975 ff. Hesiod, fr. 233 (ed. only occurs once, of the Asiatic Thebes: in the Rzach, 1902), &'yaAXa= 'pior, has been sup- Odyssey (x. 492, 565, xi. 90, 165, xii. 267, posed to refer to the necklace given by Athena xxiii. 323) always in the phrase ?falaovU or some other god (authorities differ) to Har- monia, at the wedding (Crusius, p. 832). It Tetpe•lao.) 6 II. xiv. 321-2. 'Die Bd. i. Sp. 1410 von may do so. Helbig angefiihrte Iliasstelle gehdrt bekanntlich 11 Op. cit., p. 825. zu den spatesten Interpolationen,' says Crusius 12 The whole of this theory ultimately goes (Roscher, ii. p. 826, n.). To the later, ex- back to the problem that occupied the ancient purgated editions of Homer ? But these critics, Why did Homer begin his Catalogue of dogmas are not allowable. Aristophanes and Ships with the Boeotians ? A difficult question Aristarchus also rejected this passage, which is sufficiently answered by Aristarchus, that he of the kind referred to always as 'diese schon had to begin somewhere. von den Alten athetisierten Verse'. There is 13 The reason given for the expedition of the much virtue in 'schon' ; as though this fact Seven--phXwv iveC' O1t$rd8ao(v. 163)-is echt. proved anything except that modern are like boiotisch (and pointedly different from the object ancient scholars.