In Greek mythology, Capaneus was one of the Seven against Thebes, son of Hipponous and husband of Evadne (mother of Sthenelus). Huge, fierce, and proverbially arrogant, he boasted that not even Zeus could keep him from scaling Thebes' wall—and was blasted from the ladder by a thunderbolt. Evadne threw herself on his pyre.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Capaneus" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.One of the Seven
Capaneus was son of Hipponous by Astynome (daughter of Talaus) or Laodice (daughter of Iphis). With Evadne—or, in a minority notice, Ianeira—he fathered Sthenelus, who later fights at Troy among the Epigoni's sons. Ancient writers stress his size, strength, and open contempt for the gods.
Aeschylus gives him a shield device of an unarmored man with a torch and the boast "I will burn the city." Vegetius even makes him the first to use ladders in a siege. He assaults Thebes at the Ogygian (or Electran) gate in the canonical Seven.
II.Hubris and the thunderbolt
Standing under the wall he declared that Zeus himself could not stop his assault. As he mounted the ladder the god struck him dead with a thunderbolt—an emblem of hubris punished that tragedy and Statius' Thebaid elaborate. His widow Evadne leapt onto the funeral pyre.
The story is staged in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes and recalled in Euripides' Suppliants and Phoenician Women. Dante later places Capaneus among the blasphemers in Inferno, still defying Jove under a rain of fire.