Sophocles, in particular, repeatedly mention the "city of Cadmus" and "Cadmeans", relating Thebes with Cadmus. Also Euripides linked Thebes with Cadmus, but he was one of the earliest authors and the only tragedian to mention "Cadmus the Tyrian". Herodotus refers to Cadmus the Tyrian, and he was the first to mention Cadmus' 'Phoenician' origins, but he certainly was not the initiator of this transformation, as his Histories provides evidence that the myth was already widespread. Since Herodotus Cadmus has been commonly described as a prince of Phoenicia. According to Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), Cadmus had Theban origins. Modern historian Albert Schachter has suggested that Cadmus was a fictitious hero named after the Thebean acropolis and was made 'Phoenician' due to the influence of immigrants from the East to Boeotia. According to M. L. West the myth of Cadmus and Harmonia at Thebes originated from 9th or 8th century BC Phoenician residents in the city. According to Jason Colavito, although modern scholars have debated on whether the myth came from Phoenicia, there is evidence that the core of Cadmus's myth originated in Near Eastern stories of the battle between a hero and a dragon. The myth of Cadmus the Phoenician was not a literal reinterpretation of an original Phoenician myth, although being probably inspired by one, rather it was the Greeks' interpretation of the Phoenician civilization and the benefits they acquired from it, specifically the alphabet. According to archaeologist John Boardman, the "Phoenicians" who came with Cadmus, were not "Phoenicians", but rather Greeks who had lived in the Near East for a while and had returned to teach what they had learned there, including the alphabet. Given the absence of a Phoenician colony in Thebes, several hypotheses arguing against Cadmus' eastern origin have been proposed by modern scholars: Mycenaean hypothesis According to historian Frederick M. Ahl, scholarly suggestions that Cadmus was a Mycenaean must be taken into account against Cadmus' Phoenician origin, as for him it is becoming harder and harder to reconcile literary and archaeological evidence, not to mention epigraphical difficulties. Ahl rather suggest that "Cadmus was a Mycenaean, and the writing he brought to Thebes was Linear B, which may have been known to Greek-speaking peoples then or later as φοινικήια γράμματα." Cretan hypothesis Henry Hall set forth an hypothesis, arguing that Cadmus and the Cadmeians came from Crete. There are a number of difficulties involved in this