The Cadmus Myth's "Mythemes" (Levi-Strauss 176-180)

Level 2: ahistorical langue Overrating Blood Relations Underrating Blood-Relations Monsters Slain Unable to walk/behave straight
Level 1: historical parole Kadmos seeks sister Europa ravished by Zeus   Kadmos kills dragon  
Level 1: historical parole   Spartoi born from earth from dragon's teeth kill each other   "Labdacos" (Laios' father) = Gk. lame
Level 1: historical parole   Oedipus kills his father, Laios   "Laios" (Oedipus' father) = Gk.  left-sided
Level 1: historical parole     Oedipus kills the Sphinx  
Level 1: historical parole Oedipus marries his mother, Jocasta Eteocles kills his brother, Polynices   "Oedipus" = Gk. swollen foot
Level 1: historical parole Antigone buries her brother Polynices, violating prohibition      

"The dragon is a chthonian [earth-born] being which has to be killed in order that mankind be born from the earth: the Sphinx is a monster unwilling to let men live.  The last unit reproduces the first one which has to do with the autochthonous origin of mankind.  Since the monsters are overcome by men, we may thus say that the common feature of the third column is the denial of the autochthonous origin of man.  [ . . . ]  In mythology it is a universal character of men born from the earth that at the moment they emerge from the depth, they either cannot walk or do it clumsily.  [ . . . ]  Then the common feature of the fourth column is: the persistence of the autochthonous origin of man.  It follows that column four is to column three as column one is to column two.  The inability to connect two kinds of relationships is overcome (or rather replaced) by the positive statement that contradictory relationships are identical inasmuch as they are both self-contradictory in a similar way.  [ . . . ] The Oedipus myth provides a kind of logical tool which . . . replaces the original problem: born from one or born from two? born from different or born from same?  [ . . . ]  Although experience contradicts theory, social life verifies the cosmology by its similarity of structure.  Hence cosmology is true" (179-80).