Ovid Projects

    This painting depicts the many parts of the Story of Cadmus in detail. It was painted by Hendrik Goltzius in 1615. Hendrik Goltzius of Germany painted many other scenes of Roman history and mythology. To list a few, he has painted Horatius Cocles, Icarus, Hercules, and Jupiter. In this one, Goltzius stitches multiple points of time together to tell a story as you scan from left to right. On the far left of the painting, there is the tree around which Cadmus fights the serpent, who is the son of Mars. On it the serpent is pinned to the tree because the battle ends with Cadmus skewering the serpent with a spear into hard oak. Scanning to the right, the next scene is of a god coming down with an owl flying next to them. This god is Minerva, whom the owl is associated with as a symbol of knowledge, and she comes to Cadmus after the serpent dies. Minerva instructs him to take the teeth of the serpent and plant them, so the painting depicts Cadmus pulling the teeth out of the serpent's mouth. Some of them can be seen on the ground near the tail of the serpent. On the bottom right, the last scene of the painting is when the planted teeth are coming out of the ground as a race of warriors. These warriors are children of Mars as they were born from the serpent. The warriors are shown fighting each other as they come out of the ground, which aligns with Ovid’s telling of the story. If there were another scene, it would depict the final five warriors making peace with each other and helping to found the city of Thebes with Cadmus.

    While this painting is very close to Ovid’s story, a few details changed over the centuries. First, Cadmus is portrayed as an old man. In Ovid’s story, Cadmus is still young. I am not completely sure why this changed, but it could be in order to portray the founder of Thebes as a wiser man than a youth, as that is Cadmus’s better known achievement. Second, the painting doesn't show all of Cadmus’s comrades who the serpent murdered or the spring they were looking to get pure water from. By omitting these, Goltzius is removing all context for the battle and only focusing on the aftermath. This may be because his painting is meant to show the dramatic lead up to the founding of Thebes rather than an full and accurate telling of the Story of Cadmus.

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