GRGR(13) Notes (Pt 1)

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy,

--- RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com wrote:

> 281.11 "dragon's teeth" - from the Greek myth of Cadmus (though i
> can't quite
> remember what sort of oddysey / quest, if any, he was on).


Dragons Teeth

First s charming bit of Bullfinch.... "Our readers may thus at the same
time be entertained by the most charming fictions which fancy has ever
created, and put in posession of of information indispensible to every
one who would read with intelligence the elegant literature of his own
day." (1855 or thereabouts)

Jupiter carried off Europa, which irritated her father (grand high
muk-i-muk of Phoenicia), who ordered his son Cadmus to bring her back. 
Cadmus couldn't find her, was loath to return home in failure, and went
to consult Apollo's oracle.  Oracle sez "find a cow in a field, follow
it for a while, and build Thebes where it stops."  He did so.  Cow
stops near a grove with a nice spring. His men get killed while
fetching water by the serpent who lives in a cave by the pool.  Cadmus,
very annoyed, aveng'd his men by killing the serpent.  A voice told him
to draw the teeth of the worm, and sow them in the ground.  All of the
men were reborn, sort of, out of the earth, but being zombie warriors
shorn of human reason fell to fighting among themselves and all were
killed saving five, who helped Cadmus build Thebes.  As undead zombie
slaves?

I've read somewhere that as an element of some of their fortifications
the Germans built tank obstacles in the form of great vertical piers of
concrete.  These were called Dragon's Teeth (by the germans? by the
allies? by some overeducated war correspondent?).

Mark




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