After the Labdacid disasters gathered round the city they had founded, Cadmus and Harmonia quit Thebes for Illyria — and there, in Ovid's telling, the founder prayed to become a serpent and both were changed to crested snakes; Apollodorus has them lead the Encheleans to victory, reign, and at last be turned to serpents and sent by Zeus to the Elysian Fields.1
Flight from Thebes
Apollodorus says Cadmus and Harmonia quitted Thebes and went to the Encheleans. Ovid tells how Agenor's son, depressed by sorrow and unnumbered woes, fled the city he had built — as though fatalities that gathered round that city grieved him deeper than the fate of his own family — and at last arrived the confines of Illyria, in exile with his wife, bowed down with years.2
Leaders of the Encheleans
As the Encheleans were being attacked by the Illyrians, the god declared by an oracle that they would get the better of the Illyrians if they had Cadmus and Harmonia as their leaders. They believed him, made them their leaders against the Illyrians, and got the better of them. Cadmus reigned over the Illyrians, and a son Illyrius was born to him.3
The sacred dragon
In Illyria their minds recalled the time when first disaster fell upon their house. Cadmus spoke: was that a sacred dragon that his spear impaled when, on the way from Sidon's gates, he planted in the earth those dragon-teeth, unthought-of seed? If haply it is the gods whose rage unerring gives him to revenge, he only prayed that he might lengthen out as any serpent. Even as he spoke he saw and felt himself increase in length; his body coiled into a serpent's form, bright scales enveloped his indurate skin, and azure macules enriched his glowing folds.4
Harmonia's change
Some time his arms remained; stretching them forth while tears rolled down his human face, Cadmus called his unhappy wife to touch his hand before the serpent-form should cover him — but suddenly his tongue became twin-forked and only hissing escaped. Harmonia bewailed and smote her breast: his feet, shoulders, and hands were gone; his manly form and very colour gone — and she prayed the celestial gods to transform her likewise to a serpent-shape. Cadmus caressed her with his tongue and embraced her; when as crested snakes the twain appeared in brightly glistening mail, their attendants' grief was lightened, and the pair, enwreathed in twisting coils, sought a covert in the nearest grove — gentle serpents conscious of the past.5
The Elysian Fields⚖
Apollodorus tells a different end: afterwards Cadmus was, along with Harmonia, turned into a serpent and sent away by Zeus to the Elysian Fields — after the oracle-led victory and the birth of Illyrius, not in the immediate grief of exile Ovid narrates.6
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Ovid's close of the Theban books — Cadmus praying to become a serpent, Harmonia joining him — fixes the founders' end as metamorphosis, not mere exile.
Cadmus
The Phoenician founder who sowed dragon's teeth and later left Thebes for Illyria — Harmonia's consort until both wear crested scales.
Harmonia (mythology)
Ares and Aphrodite's daughter, bride of Cadmus — concord that ends as twin serpents after the Labdacid disasters gather round their city.