Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

434 From Daimon to Olympian [ch.
the old snake ? Well, he had better be killing it. So he was.
He was Pythoktonos as he was Sauroktonos.
The Kadmos myth tempts to another conjecture. It must
frankly be admitted that it is only a conjecture—but I hope
a probable one—that Kadmos who is a snake-slayer is also
himself a snake. When, at the close of the Bacchae 1
,
bids Kadmos depart from Thebes, he says to him
' For thou must change and be a Serpent Thing
Strange, and beside thee she whom thou didst bring
Of old to be thy bride from Heaven afar,
Harmonia, daughter of the Lord of War,'
:
Dionysos
and Kadmos knows that the dragon-shape is upon him ; he says
to Agave, ' I must
lead my spouse, mine own
Harmonia, Ares' child, discorporate
And haunting forms, dragon and dragon mate.'
We know now what lies behind these metamorphoses. A
man is turned into what he really was. Kadmos is turned into
a snake because he was a Snake-man, the snake-man, head and
king of a Snake-group. The snake was the blazon of the Spartoi.
Pausanias 2 saw the grave of Epaminondas at Mantinea, and thus
describes it
:
Over his tomb stands a pillar and there is a shield on it upon which is
wrought a dragon.
The Spartoi of Thebes were the ' sown men,' that earth-born
dragon's brood from which Pentheus sprang, set always, as we
shall later see, when moralized, in some sort of antithesis to the
Olympians. So in the Bacchae*
Dark and of the dark impassioned
Is this Pentheus' blood : yea fashioned
Of the Dragon, and his birth
From Echlon child of Earth.
He is no man, but a wonder ;
Did the Earth-Child not beget him
As a red Giant to set him
Against God, against the Thunder ?
And now we see that the mysterious sequel to the dragonslaying
is quite simply explained. Both Kadmos and Jason, when
they have slain the dragon, sow his teeth, and up from the earth
springs a crop of armed men. The Spartoi had the snake for
1 v. 1330 ft'.
2 viii. 11. 8.
3 v. 537 ft.