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Cadmean   Listen
adjective
Cadmean  adj.  Of or pertaining to Cadmus, a fabulous prince of Thebes, who was said to have introduced into Greece the sixteen simple letters of the alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon. These are called Cadmean letters.
Cadmean victory, a victory that damages the victors as much as the vanquished; probably referring to the battle in which the soldiers who sprang from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus slew each other. Similar to a Pyhrric victory.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cadmean" Quotes from Famous Books



... said, survives under the name given to it by Aristophanes, the Seven against Thebes: it opens with an exhortation by Eteocles to his Cadmeans that they should "quit them like men" against the onslaught of Polynices and his Argive allies: the Chorus is a bevy of scared Cadmean maidens, to whom the very sound of war and tramp of horsemen are new and terrific. It ends with the news of the death of the two princes, and the lamentations of their two sisters, Antigone and Ismene. The onslaught from without has been repulsed, but the ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus



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