Spartoi

Cadmus sowed the teeth of the Ismenian dragon on Athena's instruction, and the earth began to move. First came the spear-points, breaking through the soil like bronze shoots. Then the crests of helmets. Then shoulders in armour, torsos, legs — complete warriors pulling themselves from the ground the way plants emerge from seed, except these plants were armed and immediately violent.

The Spartoi — the "sown men" — erupted from the furrows and found themselves in a field full of identical strangers. With no allegiance, no orders, and weapons already in hand, they did the only thing they knew: they fought. Cadmus, on Athena's further instruction, threw a stone into their midst. Each Spartos thought his neighbour had struck him, and the battle became general.

They killed each other with savage efficiency. From the full crop — dozens or hundreds, depending on the source — only five survived: Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus. These five, exhausted and bloodied, made peace with each other and with Cadmus. They became the founding aristocrats of Thebes, the original noble families from which the city's ruling class descended.

The myth repeated at Colchis, where Jason sowed dragon's teeth and faced his own crop of Spartoi. He used the same stone trick, learned from Medea, and the warriors destroyed each other while Jason watched.

Sown men from sown teeth — the Greeks encoded a truth in the metaphor: civilisation's foundations are violent, its founding families born from conflict, and the first instinct of the newly powerful is to destroy each other.