Cadmus & the Dragon's Teeth
The founder who sowed a slain dragon's teeth and reaped a city's first citizens — and ended his days a serpent himself.
Seeking his abducted sister, Cadmus slays the dragon of Ares guarding the spring of Thebes-to-be. Athena instructs him: sow the dragon's teeth. From the furrows spring armed men — the Spartoi, 'the sown' — who fight until five remain: the ancestors of Theban nobility. The city is built by dragon-seed. But the god's dragon has a price; after a lifetime of founding, Cadmus cries out that if the gods so love serpents, let him become one — and he and his wife Harmonia are transformed, gently, into serpents and led to the Isles of the Blessed. The slayer completes the circle by becoming what he slew.
The SGE Reading
Integration's long arc: what you defeat you inherit; sow its teeth and citizens grow; live long enough, and you become it — in peace.
Canon Resonance
The series' founder-figures: every institution grows from dragon-seed, and its builders end kin to the dragon.
A Micro-Practice
Take one conquered difficulty and 'sow its teeth': write five capacities it seeded in you. Those are your Spartoi.
Sources & Respect
Ovid, Metamorphoses III–IV; Apollodorus on the founding of Thebes.