Evadne Leaps onto Capaneus’s Pyre

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/247-euadne-pyre-capaneus-euripides

Cycle: Heroes — Seven against Thebes aftermath / Euripidean *Suppliants*

Version line: Euripidean — widow’s suttee at Eleusis against her father’s will

Sources: Euripides, *Suppliants* 980–1113; Apollodorus, *Library* 3.7.1 (Capaneus’s death by thunderbolt; Evadne not narrated)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/247-euadne-pyre-capaneus-euripides.md

Characters

Evadne — wife of Capaneus; leaps onto the pyre
Iphis — Evadne’s father; opposes the leap
Parthenopaeus — dead husband; blasted earlier by Zeus
Theseus — surrounding funeral context

Places

Capaneus’s pyre — place of the leap
Eleusis — Euripidean scene of the pyres

Themes

Marriage

Narrative

After Theseus of Athens recovered the bodies of the Seven for burial, Capaneus’s corpse was set on a pyre. His widow Evadne (Euadne), daughter of Iphis, appeared above in bridal adornment. Ignoring her father’s pleas, she proclaimed her resolve to die with her husband and leapt into the flames, mingling her body with his as the pyre blazed. The leap is Euripides’ spectacular emblem of wifely devotion and of the human cost of Capaneus’s blasphemy. Catalogue it apart from the thunderbolt itself and apart from the wider Athenian recovery of the Argive dead.