Harmonia

Harmonia was the Greek goddess of harmony and concord and the wife of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes. She is usually called the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. She is best known for her wedding, which the gods attended, and for the cursed necklace she received that day, which brought misfortune to later generations of her family.

Harmonia’s Biography

Name and Role

Her name is the Greek word for “joining” or “agreement”, and she embodies concord. In the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (194–196), Harmonia dances on Olympus with the Graces, the Seasons, Hebe and Aphrodite while Apollo plays the lyre.

Origins and Lineage

In Hesiod’s Theogony (933–937), Aphrodite bore Ares Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Fear) and Harmonia, whom Cadmus made his wife. Apollodorus agrees (Library 3.4.2). In another version, Diodorus Siculus (5.48) makes Harmonia a daughter of Zeus and Electra, one of the Atlantids, on the island of Samothrace, and a sister of Dardanus and Iasion.

The Wedding to Cadmus

Cadmus came to Boeotia in search of his sister Europa and killed the dragon that guarded the spring of Ares. To atone for the killing he served Ares for an “eternal year”; then Athena procured him the kingdom and Zeus gave him Harmonia as his wife. According to Apollodorus, all the gods left the sky and, feasting in the Cadmea, celebrated the marriage with hymns (Library 3.4.2). Pindar says that Cadmus heard the Muses singing in seven-gated Thebes when he married “ox-eyed Harmonia”, and that the gods feasted with him and brought gifts (Pythian 3.88–95). In Pausanias’ day the Thebans still pointed out the ruins of Harmonia’s bridal chamber and the spot in the market-place where the Muses were said to have sung (9.12.3), and the gods bringing gifts to her wedding were carved on the throne of Apollo at Amyclae (3.18.12). In Diodorus’ Samothracian version the wedding took place on Samothrace, where Cadmus, initiated into the mysteries, married the sister of Iasion (5.48.5–5.49).

Children

Hesiod names the children of Cadmus and Harmonia as Ino, Semele, Agave, Autonoe and Polydorus (Theogony 975–978). Their daughters’ stories are among the darkest in Theban myth: Semele became the mother of Dionysus, Ino was driven mad, Agave killed her own son Pentheus, and Autonoe was the mother of Actaeon. A later son, Illyrius, was born in Illyria (Library 3.5.4).

The Necklace and the Robe

Cadmus gave Harmonia a robe and a necklace, the latter wrought by Hephaestus (Library 3.4.2). Apollodorus records disagreement about where the necklace came from: some said Hephaestus gave it to Cadmus, Pherecydes said Europa had it from Zeus, and others said Athena gave both necklace and robe; Diodorus says Aphrodite gave the necklace to Harmonia (4.65.5). The Roman poet Statius (Thebaid 2.265–305) says that Hephaestus made it as Harmonia’s wedding ornament in lasting resentment at the love affair of his wife Aphrodite with Ares, working into it emeralds, adamant, Gorgon eyes, ashes of a thunderbolt and a hair from the Fury Tisiphone, and that Harmonia herself, turned into a serpent beside Cadmus, was the first to prove its power, followed by Semele and Jocasta.

Generations later Polynices took the necklace to Argos and used it to bribe Eriphyle to persuade her husband, the seer Amphiaraus, to march against Thebes, although he knew he would die there (Library 3.6.1–2). Their son Alcmaeon avenged his father by killing his mother and was himself killed in a quarrel over the necklace. In the end the necklace and the robe were dedicated at Delphi by the sons of Phegeus (Library 3.7.5–7). Pausanias saw a necklace at Amathus in Cyprus that was said to be Harmonia’s, “called the necklace of Eriphyle”, and notes that the one dedicated at Delphi had been carried off by the tyrants of Phocis (9.41.2). The story of the necklace is told in full on the pages of Amphiaraus and Polynices.

Harmonia at Thebes

Pausanias records three very ancient wooden images of Aphrodite at Thebes, said to be offerings of Harmonia made from the figure-heads of Cadmus’ ships. Harmonia was said to have given the goddess her three Theban titles, Heavenly, Common and Rejecter, for pure love, bodily union and the rejection of unlawful passion (9.16.3–4).

Cadmus and Harmonia as Serpents

In Euripides’ Bacchae, Dionysus foretells that Cadmus will become a dragon and that Harmonia, Ares’ daughter, “whom you though mortal held in marriage”, will be changed into a serpent too. They will drive a chariot of heifers at the head of a barbarian army, and Ares will save them and settle them in the land of the blessed (Bacchae 1330–1339).

Apollodorus says that Cadmus and Harmonia left Thebes and went to the Encheleans, who were being attacked by the Illyrians. An oracle told the Encheleans they would win if they had Cadmus and Harmonia as leaders. They did, and Cadmus ruled the Illyrians. Afterwards he and Harmonia were turned into serpents and sent by Zeus to the Elysian Fields (Library 3.5.4). Ovid tells the transformation in the Metamorphoses (4.563 ff.).

Harmonia Sources

The main sources are Hesiod’s Theogony (933–937, 975–978), the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (194–196), Pindar’s Pythian 3 (88–95), Apollodorus’ Library (3.4.2, 3.5.4, 3.6.1–2, 3.7.5–7), Euripides’ Bacchae (1330–1339), Diodorus Siculus (4.65.5, 5.48–49), Pausanias (3.18.12, 9.12.3, 9.16.3–4, 9.41.2), Statius’ Thebaid (2.265–305) and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4.563 ff.).

See Also: Ares, Aphrodite, Cadmus, Thebes, Hephaestus, Semele, Polynices, Amphiaraus