Cadmean victory (kad-MEE-uhn VIK-tuh-ree) noun

A victory won at as great cost to the victor as to the vanquished.

[After Cadmus, a Phoenician prince in Greek mythology who introduced writing to the Greeks and founded the city of Thebes. Near the site where Cadmus was to build Thebes he encountered a dragon. Even though he managed to kill the dragon, only five of his comrades survived with whom he founded the city.]

A couple of months back we looked at the term Pyrrhic victory named after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose devastating losses in trying to defeat the Romans made him lament, “One more such victory and we are lost.” Today’s term Cadmean victory is a near synonym of the former. And this too is an eponym, a word or phrase coined after a person’s name whether from history or fiction.