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On this page: Cadmus – Caduceus – Cadus – Caecilius Statius or Statius Caecilius – Caelius

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CADMUS——C/ELIUS.

open the cave, and, after a fearful struggle, slew Cacus with his club. Upon this he built an altar on the spot to Jupiter, under the title of Pater Inventor ("the discoverer"), and sacrificed one of the cattle upon it. The inhabitants paid him every honour for free­ing them of the monster, and Evander, who was instructed by his mother Carmentis in the lore of prophecy, saluted him as a god. Hercules is then said to have established his own religious service, and to have in­structed two noble families, the Potltii and the Pinarii, in the usages to be observed at the sacrifice. This sacrifice was to be offered on the Ara Maxima, which he him­self had built on the cattle market (Forum Boarium) where the cattle had been pas­tured.

Cadmus (Gr. JfadmOs). (1) Son of Agenor king of Phoenicia, and of TelSphassa. His sister Europa being carried off by Zeus, Cadmus, with his brothers Phoenix and Cllix, was sent out with the command to look for her and not to return without her. In the course of his wanderings he came to Thrace. Here his mother, who had accompanied him so far, breathed her last; and Cadmus applied for counsel to the Delphic oracle. He was advised not to seek his sister any more, but to follow a cow which would meet him, and found a city on the spot where she should lie down. The cow met him in Phocis, and led him into Boaotia. He was intending to sacrifice the cow, and had sent his companions to a neighbouring spring to bring the necessary water, when they were all slain by a ser­pent, the offspring of Ares and the Erlnys Tilphosa, which guarded the spring. After a severe struggle, Cadmus destroyed the dragon, and, at the command of Athene, sowed its teeth over the neighbouring ground. A host of armed men sprung up, who immediately fought and slew each other, all except five. The survivors, who were called Spartoi (" sown "), helped Cad­mus to build the Cadmea, or the stronghold of what was afterwards Thebes, which bore his name. They were the ancestors of the Theban aristocracy; and one of them, Echion, or " the serpent’s son," became the husband of Cadmus’ daughter Agave. Cad­mus did atonement to Ares for eight years for the slaughter of the dragon. Then Zeus gave him to wife Harmfinla, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, who bore him a son Polydorus, and four daughters, : Autonoe, Ino, Agave, and SfimSIe. (See ‘ harmonia and semele.) Crushed by the :

terrible doom which weighed upon his

home, he afterwards sought retirement among the Enchelei in Illyria, a country which he named after his son Illyrius, who was born there. He resigned the kingdom to Illyrius ; and then he and his daughter Harmonia were changed into serpents, and carried by Zeus to Elysium.

Hermes was worshipped in Samothrace as the ancestral god of the inhabitants under the name of Cadmus or Cadmilus (Kadmllds); and it is therefore natural to conjecture that the Theban Cadmus was originally an ancestral god of the Thebans, corresponding to the Saraothracian deity. He was regarded as the inventor of agri­culture, of working in bronze, and of civili­zation in general; and it is to be remarked at the same time that the oldest Greek poets know nothing of his migration from the East or from Egypt, or of the Phoenician origin of Thebes. When once the later story of his Phoenician descent had taken shape, his name was naturally connected with the introduction of the alphabet, for which the Greeks well knew that they were indebted to the Phoenicians.

(2) A Greek historian. See logographi.

CaducSus. See hermes (conclusion).

Cidns. See vessels.

Caecllius Statius or Stating Csacilius. A writer of Latin comedy. He was a Gaul, of the race of the Insubrians, who were settled in Upper Italy. He was brought to Rome, probably about 194 b.c., as a prisoner of war. He was set free by one of the Csecilii, became very intimate with Ennius, and died not long after him, b.c. 166. It was long before he could obtain a footing on the stage; but, this once achieved, he won a considerable reputation, and was numbered among the masters of his craft. The influ­ence of Ennius seems to have been apparent in the comparative care and regularity with which his pieces were constructed. Cicero, however, finds fault with his defective Latinity; and we must therefore infer that, being of Gaulish extraction, he never suc­ceeded in fully mastering the niceties of colloquial Latin. The titles of some forty of his plays have survived; the contents he mostly borrowed from Menander.

Cfelius. (1) Cirlius AnttpStcr; see annalists.

(2) Marcus Ccvlius Rtifus, a Roman orator, born 82 b.c. He was a man of great gifts, but dissolute life, as even his advocate Cicero was forced to admit in the speech which he made in his defence.