CADMUS 



1041 



CAESAR 



ginians, and in the Second Punic War it sur- 

 rendered to the Romans. In 1587 Sir Francis 

 Drake entered Cadiz harbor and destroyed the 

 warships collected there, a feat which he 

 jokingly described as "singeing the King of 

 Spain's beard." Population in 1910, 67,174. 



CADMUS, kad'mus, a Greek hero to whom 

 legend gave the honor of having introduced 

 the Phoenician alphabet into Greece. His 

 name has been made proverbial through the 

 familiar 



"May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, 

 the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that first 

 invented books." 



He was the son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, 

 and the brother of Europa (which see). 



When his sister was carried off by Jupiter in 

 the form of a bull, Cadmus was directed by his 

 father to hunt for her and not to return without 

 her. With his brothers, he set forth on the 

 long quest. One by one the brothers became 

 tired and stopped by the wayside, but Cadmus 

 kept on until told by an oracle that his search 

 was useless. This oracle also directed him to 

 follow a cow which he should shortly meet; 

 and where she should lie down there he was 

 to found a city. He carried out these instruc- 

 tions, and the city which he founded was Thebes 

 in Boeotia. After killing a dragon which 

 guarded a fountain near the site of his pro- 

 posed city, Cadmus sowed the teeth of the 

 dragon and there sprang up a group of armed 

 men. These men contended with one another 

 until all but five of them fell, and these five 

 became, with Cadmus, the first inhabitants of 

 the new city. 



CAEDMON, kad'mun, a poet of early Eng- 

 land, sometimes called the "Anglo-Saxon Mil- 

 ton." He lived in the latter half of the seventh 

 century, and in his early years toiled as a 

 laborer on the abbey lands at Whitby. What 

 is known of his life is derived from the Ec- 

 clesiastical History of the Venerable Bede, in 

 which it is told that a vision appeared to 

 Caedmon one night commanding that he sing 

 the praises of God. Thereupon he began to 

 sing verses the words of which he had never 

 heard before. After he awakened he remem- 

 bered the words he had sung, and added others 

 to them. When the Abbess Hilda, of the 

 monastery at Whitby, learned of his gift, he 

 was admitted into the abbey and made one 

 of the brethren. Several Anglo-Saxon poems 

 are attributed to him, but critics doubt that 

 he was the author of all of them. The most 

 important of these is the so-called Paraphrase, 

 66 



giving the story of Genesis, Exodus and a part 

 of Daniel. Many passages in this remarkable 

 specimen of Old English literature suggest 

 strongly the poetry of Milton. 



CAEN, kahN, a city in old Lower Nor- 

 mandy, on the banks of the Orne ten miles 

 from the bay at the mouth of the Seine. It 

 is the capital of the department of Calvados, 

 and is 150 miles from Paris. Among its inter- 

 esting buildings are the castle which William 

 the Conqueror ordered to be built, and several 

 churches in the Norman style, among them 

 Saint Pierre, famous for its spire. It has a 

 university, a public library with more than 

 100,000 volumes, and a museum. The sur- 

 rounding district has fertile fields and vine- 

 yards, and its quarries produced the stone of 

 which Winchester and Canterbury cathedrals 

 are built. This stone is especially suitable for 

 carving. Its export, and that of Caen's manu- 

 factures of lace, woolen and cotton goods, 

 crepe and cutlery, are facilitated by a canal 

 which extends to the sea. The population of 

 the city is nearly 50,000. 



CAESAR, see'z'r, a title of highest political 

 authority, originally the family name of the 

 first five Roman emperors. So great was the 

 fame of Caius Julius Caesar (which see) that 

 after the death of Nero, the last of that 

 imperial family, the name was adopted by 

 succeeding Roman emperors as a kingly title. 

 This practice continued, and the same title is 

 now found in the German form of kaiser, and 

 in the czar of Russia. 



CAESAR, see'z'r, CAIUS JULIUS (100-44 B.C.), 

 one of the greatest men not only in the history 

 of Rome but of all the world. With Alexander 

 the Great and Napoleon he stands as one 

 of those military commanders who built up a 

 great empire by conquest. But he was not 

 only a general; as a statesman he stood pre- 

 eminent among the men of his time, showing 

 a remarkable grasp of the broad principles of 

 statecraft. As an orator he ranked second 

 only to Cicero. Nor were his abilities as an 

 historian less noteworthy; for his Commen- 

 taries on the Gallic War, known to every stu- 

 dent of Latin, is used everywhere as a text- 

 book not simply because it is written in Latin, 

 but because it presents in unusually simple 

 and vigorous style a straightforward account 

 of events, and is therefore a model of historic 

 writing. 



Beginnings of His Rise to Fame. This great- 

 est of the Romans, who "moved through life 

 calm and irresistible like a force of nature," 



