Cadmus.
Son of Agenor, king of Tyre, Cadmus was sent to seek his sister, Europa, after she was abducted by Zeus. He consulted the oracle at Delphi, which led him to settle at the site of Thebes, where he built a citadel. In order to supply the town with water, he sent his companions to a nearby spring, where they were devoured by the dragon that guarded it. Cadmus killed the dragon and then, on the advice of Athena (Minerva), planted its teeth on the plain. From the teeth sprang up a crop of armed men, ready for batde. Cadmus enticed them to fight each other, and in the ensuing melee all but five were killed. These “Spartoi” (“sown men”) became his allies and the ancestors of the Theban nobility.
Cadmus married Harmonia (also called Her-mione), daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and gave her many gifts. (One of these was a necklace that would bring disaster to its later owner, Eriphyle.) Cadmus and Harmonia had five children — a son, Polydorus, and four daughters, Agave, Autonoë, Ino, and Semele—all of whom met tragic fates. In old age, sick with loss and grief, Cadmus and Harmonia went to Illyria, where they were transformed into serpents; they were finally sent to Elysium.
Cadmus was honored in Thebes as its founder. He was also credited with introducing the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks.

Classical Sources. Hesiod, Theogony 937ft. Herodotus, History i.i66ffi, 2.49, 4.147. Euripides, The Bacchae; The Phoenician Maidens 939ft. Diodorus Siculus, Biblioteca 5.49.1-6, 58.2. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.1—136, 4.561—603. Strabo, Geography 9.2.3. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.4.1-2, 5.2—4. Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.24-3, 9.5.1-3,12.1—3. Hyginus, Fabulae 6.