Whereas male protagonists in Greco-Roman antiquity fight dragons, as demonstrated in the previous chapter, female protagonists do not. Rather, as this chapter and the following two chapters contend, female protagonists communicate and collaborate with dragons, becoming fused with them. This relationship is represented through the motif of the woman and the dragon. This motif includes three different types, which all feature a woman and a dragon together with a recurrent set of attributes, and in relation to particular settings. The following discussion centers on the type I describe as “the holy woman,” which serves as the basis for the two other types. It examines the symbolic analogy between woman, dragon and cave, with an emphasis on scenarios charged with sacred, oracular, protective, and healing properties. More specifically, the discussion focuses on the etiological myths of Cadmos and of Apollo and Python, which are both establishing foundation myths (terminus ante quem). The foundations for the investigation of the Cadmos myth and the Apollo and Python myth were first laid by Joseph Fontenrose's Python, which is complemented by Neil Forsyth's The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Both scholars investigated the origin and development of the dragon-slayer topos, and related it to the symbolism of the cave. However, neither of these studies attends to the feminine aspects of this metaphorical setting, which will be elaborated upon below.