So Cadmos finished his voyage to Hellas, with the inspired voice in his mind stinging like a gadfly; and the inspired word of Zeus ever ran unerring in his ears and drove him on. There he was to newer gifts to All Hellenes, and to make them forget the lifebringing art of Danaos the master-mischiefmaker, Danaos the water-bringer : for what good did he do for the Achalans, if once he had dug the ground with his brazen pickaxes, and pecking at the flooded hollow of the gaping earth quenched the thirst of Argos if he made wet the steppings of their feet for his dusty people, and brought up a streamlet from the deep caves—the stranger’s gift of water? But Cadmos brought gifts of voice and thought for all Hellas ; he fashioned tools to echo the sounds of the tongue, he mingled sonant and consonant in one order of connected harmony. So he rounded off graven model of speaking silence ; for he had learnt the secrets of his country’s sublime art, an outside Intruder into the wisdom of Egypt, while Agenor dwelt nine years in Memphis and founded hundred-gated Thebes. There he pressed out the milk of the holy books ineffable, scratched their scratches across with back-faring hand and traced their rounded circles. And he showed forth the Bulan secrets of Osiris the wanderer, the Egyptian Dionysos. He learned the nightly celebration of their mystic art, and declaimed the magic hymn in the wild secret language, intoning a shrill alleluia. While a boy in the temple full of stone images, he had come to know the inscriptions carved by artists deep into the wall. With much-pondering thought he had measured the Flaming arch of the innumerable stars, and learnt the sun’s course and the measure of the earth, turning the intertwined fingers of his flexible hand He understood the changing circuits of the moon as she comes back and back again—how she changes her returning shape in three circles, new-shining, half-moon, and gleaming with full face ; how her splendour now touching, now shrinking back, at the male furnace of father Helios brought to birth without a mother, as she filches the father’s self-begotten fire ever lighted again,
Such was Cadmos. Quickly he set out for the - Achaian cities, and left his seafaring. With Harmonia he conveyed a swarm of seawandering companions turned travellers by land, in horse-carriages and laden wagons, on the way to the oracular sanctuaries. Then he reached Delphi, and asked an oracle from the midnipple axle of never-silent Pytho; and the Pythian axle speaking of himself uttered oracles of sense, resounding about in hollow tone : Cadmos, in vain you travel round and round with wandering steps. You seek a bull which no cow ever calved ; you seek a bull which no mortal knows how to find. Renounce Assyria, and take an earthly cow to guide your mission ; search not for a bull of Olympos.
Europa’s bridegroom no drover knows how to drive ; he frequents no pasture, no meadow, obeys no goad, is ordered by no whip. He knows how to bear the dainty harness of Cypris, not the plows yoke-band ; he strains his neck for Love alone, and not for Demeter. No, let pass your regret for your Tyrian father, and abide among foreigners ; found a city with the name of Egyptian Thebes your home, in the where the cow of fortune shall sink and rest heavy-knee foot.”
So speaking he lulled the tripods’ wild voice : the ridges of Parnassos quaked, when they heard the noise of their neighbour Phoibos Castalia marked it, ’ and her inspired water bubbled in oracular rills,
The god spoke : and Cadmos gave place. Near the temple he saw a cow, and went beside her as she walked. His men followed, and made sparing pace, equal to the slow-obeying hoof of the unerring cow, sedulous servants. On the way, Cadmos espied from the road a sacred place conspicuous ; the place where the Pythian had noticed on a hill the nine-circling coil of the dragon’s back, and put to sleep the deadly poison of the Cirrhaian serpent. Then the wanderer left the heads of Parnassos and trod the neighbouring soil of Daulis, whence comes the tale I hear of the dumb woespinner Philomela and her talking dress, whom Tereus defiled, when Hera, queen of wedlock, turned her back on the wedding among the mountains with no wedding dances ; how the girl mourned over the undecked pallet of a bride-bed on the common road ; how the girl tongue-shorn bewailed this Thracian rape ; and how voiceless Echo copied her tears and groaned too, bewailing the bed-shy maiden Philomela, as the blood of her maiden hood ran mingling with the red stream from her new-severed tongue.
He saw too the city of Tityos, where that bold son of Earth marching through the fair-leafy woods of Panopeus lifted the sacred robe of Leto and attempted violence. He set a footstep on Tanagra bottom ; and passing from Coroncia to the soil of Haliartos, he came near to the city of Thespiai, and Plataiai in its deep ravines, and Aonia on the Boiotian ground. This is the place where Orion the lovesick son of Earth was brought low, great as he was, by the Scorpion, who came to help the hard-hearted Archeress : he was in the act of lifting the lowest edge of the tunic of the unmated goddess, when crawling slow came that earthy horror, hit his adversary’s heel and pierced it with freezing sting.
the land of Chaironeia, where the cow’s hoof was whitened in cutting the silvery dust, and following the many winding circuits of the rocky path it shook off the white dirt from its dusty feet.
Then the oracular hoof of the cow gave way, and she sank to the ground foretelling the city to be. Now that the divine utterance out of the Pythian cave was fulfilled, Cadmos brought the sacred cow beside an altar smoking with incense, and sought for a rill of spring water, that he might cleanse his ministering hands and pour the pure water over the sacrifice; for as yet there were no wine-planted gardens to show the delicate fruit of their ripening crop. He stayed his feet beside dragon-breeding Dirce : and stood amazed when he saw the speckle-back serpent, Ares’ child, appear from one side and girdle the spring with snaky coil. The serpent scared away the great company who followed Cadmos, biting one under the chest with his flashing jaws, rending another with a stroke of bloody tooth, tearing another’s lifesaving liver when he showed fight and laying him dead: a rough mane slipping out of the dank head ran down disorderly over his neck, Another he scared leaping above the man’s temples, ran up another’s chin irresistible to strike his eye with poison-shooting dew, and darkened the sparkling gleam of the closing orb. One he caught by the foot and held it in his jaws, tearing it with his bite—spat out green foam from his teeth upon the lad’s body, and the greenish poison froze the body livid like steel. Another panted under the strokes of the jaws, and the membranes of the brain billowed throbbing out of the head at the poisonous bite, while a stream of matter ran down through the drenched nostrils out of the melting brain. bonds ; then raising his body high above him with a mounting lurch of his limbs, darted at the round midnipple of the oxhide shield. The man with his legs enclosed by those slanting rings was exhausted by the heavy weight of the long trailing snake—a horrible burden but the wearied bearer still stood upright, until the serpent dragged him to the ground and opened his cruel mouth—the monster gaped, and the bloody portal of his raw-ravening throat yawned wide : he turned his head sideways, and with shaking hood curved his neck backwards stretched high over the middle of his coils.
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