of the Fabulous History of Greece. Gl 



the larger of those noxious reptiles which, as much infesting 

 the adjacent parts, Cadmus, in clearing the country for his 

 new settlement, had but a short time before destroyed. The 

 ambiguity of the word mraplov, also, which etymologically may 

 signify anything sown, contributed to spread the error. The 

 genista having been sown in drills, as in an oziery, with its 

 upright form and spear-like branches very naturally presented 

 an appearance somewhat like that of a battalion of armed men, 

 to which the imagination would find a still further resemblance 

 in the helmet- shaped carina of its papilionaceous flower. In 

 accordance therefore with this view, the cutting down of the 

 plant for the purposes of manufacture would be represented 

 as a mutual combat amongst the offspring of the dragon's 

 teeth, ignorance, credulity, and fear, coupled with a lively 

 imagination, easily converting the strenuous labours of the 

 workmen into a mutual assault of combatants. The survivor 

 or survivors, as the fable has it, were clearly the labourers 

 employed by Cadmus, who having been at first concealed by 

 the standing broom, and afterwards becoming visible on its 

 being cut down, were imagined to be the remains of the crop 

 of armed men ; and these same workmen, as being his ordi- 

 nary attendants, probably themselves also Phoenicians, further 

 assisted Cadmus in building the walls of Thebes. I am aware 

 that this fable has been otherwise explained, as resting altoge- 

 ther upon the ambiguity above remarked, of the Phoenician 

 word DPI:, which signifies both a serpent and brass, as though 

 the dragon referred to a king armed in brass who was over- 

 come and killed in battle by Cadmus, and the seed of the 

 dragon's teeth to the scattered troops of the slain monarch's 

 subjects, that rose up in arms of the same brazen materials 

 upon his death. That, however, the explanation I have given 

 is more correct, will be evident from the similar achievement 

 of Jason, where we have, besides the account given of the very 

 preparation of the ground for the seed by the labours of the 

 oxen, a circumstance completely confirmatory of its being an 

 agricultural rather than a military exploit. What gives greater 

 weight to the argument derived from this source is the close 

 connection in every point of view between this feat of Jason 

 and that of Cadmus, notwithstanding the interval of time that 



