What is "cadmus"

n. (context Greek mythology English) A Phoenician prince, son of king Agenor of Tyre. Was sent by his royal parents to seek and return his sister Europa after being abducted from Phoenicia by Zeus. Credited with founding Greek city of Thebes and inventing Greek alphabet.

In Greek mythology, Cadmus ; Kadmos), was the founder and first king of Thebes. Cadmus was the first Greek hero and, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. Initially a Phoenician prince, son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa, he was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores of Phoenicia by Zeus. Cadmus founded the Greek city of Thebes, the acropolis of which was originally named Cadmeia in his honour.

Cadmus was credited by the ancient Greeks ( Herodotus is an example) with introducing the original Alphabet or Phoenician alphabet—Φοινίκων γράμματα Phoinikōn grammata, "Phoenician letters"—to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their Greek alphabet. Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BC. Herodotus had seen and described the Cadmean writing in the temple of Apollo at Thebes engraved on certain tripods. He estimated those tripods to date back to the time of Laius the great-grandson of Cadmus. On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which, as he attested, resembled Ionian letters: (" Amphitryon dedicated me [don't forget] the spoils of [the battle of] Teleboae.").

Though later Greeks like Herodotus dated Cadmus's role in the founding myth of Thebes to well before the Trojan War (or, in modern terms, during the Aegean Bronze Age), this chronology conflicts with most of what is now known or thought to be known about the origins and spread of both the Phoenician and Greek alphabets. While a Phoenician origin for the Greek alphabet is certain, the earliest Greek inscriptions match Phoenician letter forms from the late 9th or 8th centuries BC—and, in any case, the Phoenician alphabet properly speaking was not developed until around 1050 BC (or after the Bronze Age collapse). The Homeric picture of the Mycenaean age betrays extremely little awareness of writing, possibly reflecting the loss during the Dark Age of the earlier Linear B script. Indeed, the only Homeric reference to writing was in the phrase "γράμματα λυγρά", grámmata lygrá, literally "uneducated", when referring to the Bellerophontic letter. Linear B tablets have been found in abundance at Thebes, which might lead one to speculate that the legend of Cadmus as bringer of the alphabet could reflect earlier traditions about the origins of Linear B writing in Greece (as Frederick Ahl speculated in 1967). But such a suggestion, however attractive, is by no means a certain conclusion in light of currently available evidence. The connection between the name of Cadmus and the historical origins of either the Linear B script or the later Phoenician alphabet, if any, remains elusive. However, in modern-day Lebanon, Cadmus is still revered and celebrated as the 'carrier of the letter' to the world.

According to Greek myth, Cadmus's descendants ruled at Thebes on and off for several generations, including the time of the Trojan War.

Cadmus or Cadmos , was the ancient name for a river that flowed from Mount Cadmus, in ancient Phrygia. The river, probably the modern Gieuk Bonar (in Aydın Province, Turkey), which flows into the Lycus, a tributary of the Maeander. (Hamilton, Researches, &c., vol. i. p. 513.)

Cadmus or Kadmos can have a number of meanings:

Cadmus is a genus of leaf beetles which are commonly called case bearing leaf beetles in the subfamily Chrysomelinae. They are widespread throughout Australia and include 5 subgenera and 68 species.

Case bearing leaf beetles produce eggs encased in faecal material and larvae when hatched feed on leaf litter while housed in this protective home. The adults feed on Eucalyptus including Eucalyptus globulus but rarely become a major problem for forestry.