After the kidnapping of Europa, the king Agenor sent his three sons Phoenix, Cylix and Kadmos to look for her. Phoenix and Cylix gave up pretty soon. Afterwards each founded their own Empire, one the Phoenician in Africa and the other the Cilicians.

Kadmos, who was searching for Europa together with his mother, came at some point to Samothrake, where his mother died. After the funeral he went to see the Oracle of Delphi. This told him that he would better forget to find Europa, as the Oracle knew who had kidnapped her. Instead of this, he should just wait until the day he would find a herd of cows. If one of them would have a moon-shaped sign on its ass, then he should kick the cow and follow the animal to there where it would die. There he should found a city.

So he did, founding the city of Thebes and creating the Theban Saga. Nearby, next to a fountain, there lived a dragon. Kadmos did not think twice and killed the beast. What he did not know was that the dragon belonged to the war god Ares.

To stop the rage of Ares, Athena advice him to take the teeth of the dragon and to sow them as if they were regular seeds. From the teeth grew men that, as soon as they were out of the earth, started to fight against each other. He named them Spartoi, and these were the ancestors of the Spartans. Even then, Kadmos still had to serve Ares for eight years and to do all kinds of trifles for him. But still he managed to keep one of the dragon teeth, the one that would create the so-called “killer machines”.

After the 8 years of serving Ares, Kadmos was given Harmonia as a wife. Harmonia was the daughter of the war god and Aphrodite. This is by the way the only time that a human got a goddess as a wife, and to their wedding came naturally all the gods of the Olympus.

Harmonia gave Kadmos a son, Polydoros, and four daughters: Autonoe, Ino, Semele and Agaue. Kadmos and Harmonia were very happy together and they went to live to Elysium, outside Hades. However, things did not go so good for their children, who experienced misfortunes and disasters.