Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, had been queen of Lemnos when the Lemnian women killed their men; she spared her father and, when the crime was later exposed or when the women feared discovery, was sold into slavery (or fled). The Argonauts’ sojourn—when she loved Jason and bore Euneus (and sometimes Thoas the younger)—belongs to that earlier Lemnian chapter. By the time of the Seven she is a slave at Nemea, nurse to King Lycurgus’s son Opheltes. When Adrastus’s army needs water, she guides them to a spring and, in leaving her charge, becomes the unwilling cause of Opheltes’ death by the serpent. Condemned by the child’s father, she is saved by the Argive chiefs; Euripides’ play stages recognition with her grown sons, who arrive in time to prove her identity and win her release. Thus the Lemnian queen’s arc runs from Argonautic hostess to Nemean slave-nurse to rescued mother—binding the Argonaut cycle to the Theban march through one woman’s exile.