Polydorus
Πολύδωρος
Cadmus's only son, who quietly carried the Oedipus line beside his sisters' loud tragedies.
He is the only son of Cadmus and Harmonia.
He had four sisters — Semele, lover of Zeus; Agave, who tore her son apart in madness; Ino, who threw herself into the sea; Autonoe, who lost her son to his hounds. Their stories are so loud that the only son's place is quiet.
That quiet son's grandson is Laius; his great-grandson, Oedipus. The curse of the Theban royal house ran not through the loud sisters but down the quiet son's stem.
SourcesApollodorus, Library
Commonly confused
Not the Polydorus of the Trojan War, youngest son of Priam and Hecuba — the boy of Euripides' Hecuba — who is a different figure.