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Updated: April 30, 2025
In doing so we cannot hold to national lines as we have done in the preceding two chapters, though the efforts of the two great scientific nations just considered will enter prominently into the story. The familiar Greek legend assures us that a Phoenician named Kadmus was the first to bring a knowledge of letters into Europe.
Some say that the cow which was given by the Pythian Apollo as a guide to Kadmus appeared there, and that the place was so called from her; for the Phœnicians call the cow Thor. As Sulla was approaching Chæroneia, the tribune who was stationed in the city led out the soldiers under arms, and met him with a chaplet of bay.
These studies tended to authenticate the essential fact on which the legend of Kadmus was founded; to the extent, at least, of making it probable that the later Grecian alphabet was introduced from Phoenicia though not, of course, by any individual named Kadmus, the latter being, indeed, a name of purely Greek origin.
Their principal seat is Kadmus, which is Kedemoth in the land of Sihon. They are faithful to each other, but a source of terror to their neighbours, killing even kings at the cost of their own lives. The extent of their land is eight days' journey.
The significance of this is that the art of writing was known in Europe long before the advent of the mythical Kadmus. But since the early Cretan scripts are not to be identified with the scripts used in Greece in historical times, whereas the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent from the Phoenician alphabet, the validity of the Kadmus legend, in a modified form, must still be admitted.
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