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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



... passing with strange cries, And Sphinx-like shapes about the ruined lands, And the red reek of parricidal hands And intermixture of incestuous eyes, And light as of that self-divided flame Which made an end of the Cadmean name. ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne



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