Having left the reader with Europa being abducted by the white bull that is Jupiter, when Ovid opens Book 3 of his Metamorphoses he just mentions in passing that the pair travelled to the island of Crete. If the reader was expecting any account of Europa’s rape there, they’re disappointed. She then acts as a link to her brother Cadmus, who’s sent on an unsuccessful mission to find her.

Presumably unable to return home to report his failure, he consults the oracle at Delphi as to where he should settle. He’s told to follow a cow which he will meet in a lonely land, and wherever it settles, to found a city in Boeotia, in central Greece.

He does this, and kisses the ground in thanks for guidance to the site of his new city. Intending to make a ritual sacrifice to Jupiter, he sends his men off to find a spring to provide water for that purpose. After they enter ancient forest they find a cave with a spring, but it’s occupied by a huge and fearsome draconian serpent, which promptly starts killing the men.

Cadmus is puzzled by the delay in their return, so enters the forest to find them. He walks into their bodies, with the serpent towering proudly over them. Cadmus swears to avenge their deaths, and throws a huge rock at the serpent, which isn’t even grazed by the blow. Cadmus then throws his javelin at the monster, which impales it against the trunk of an old oak. Driving the javelin deeper into its throat, he kills the serpent.

Cornelis van Haarlem’s Two Followers of Cadmus Devoured by a Dragon from 1588 shows a very dragon-like monster killing and eating two of Cadmus’ men. Look carefully into the distance, though, and you’ll see the same beast being impaled by Cadmus with his javelin: it thus uses multiplex narrative to show two distinct moments of time in the same image.

Francesco Zuccarelli’s Landscape with the Story of Cadmus Killing the Dragon (1765) is a faithful depiction of the ancient woodland with its source of water, and Cadmus piercing the serpent’s throat against the trunk of the old oak. The artist spares us any mutilation of the bodies on the ground, and the otherwise glorious landscape is perhaps a little too dominant. When first exhibited, James Barry praised this as a landscape, not a narrative painting at all.

That cannot be said of Hendrik Goltzius’ Cadmus Slays the Dragon (1573-1617), which is a fine account of spirited dragon-slaying. While one of its three heads (a slight exaggeration from the text) gets on with eating one of Cadmus’ men, the hero is thrusting his spear deep into the throat of another head. There are some apocryphal arrows embedded in the monster’s body, but the overall account is faithful to Ovid’s text.

As Cadmus stares at the dead serpent, a voice utters the prophecy that, one day, he too will be a serpent and will be stared at. While that might make little sense here, Ovid returns to that prediction later.

Next, Minerva appears and directs Cadmus to sow the dragon’s teeth in the soil to generate a new race of men. Within minutes, those teeth germinate and a whole army erupts from the earth. Those warriors transformed from the serpent’s teeth then fight one another in a miniature civil war, until just five are left, among them Echion. They and Cadmus then proceed to build that city in Boeotia, which was to became Thebes. That forms the introduction to Ovid’s account of the Theban cycle.

Rubens’ workshop is credited with the excellent oil sketch of Cadmus Sowing Dragon’s Teeth from between 1610-90. Cadmus stands at the left, Minerva directing him from the air. The warriors are shown in different states, some still emerging from the teeth, others killing one another. Behind Cadmus is the serpent, dead and visibly edentulous.

Jacob Jordaens’ finished painting of Cadmus and Minerva shows an identical scene, and may well have been made from the oil sketch above.

Ovid moves on to tell one of the most famous of the myths in his Metamorphoses, concerning the tragic end to Cadmus’ grandson, in what might best be described as the worst hunting accident ever.