Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Capaneus.
The gallery
Capaneus (Illustrations to Dante's Inferno)
William Blake, c. 1824–1827
Blake's watercolour for Inferno XIV sets Capaneus under the rain of fire — Dante's blasphemer still scorning Jove, the Theban who climbed the walls and was struck by lightning.
Head of Capaneus the Blasphemer
Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, c. 1800
Girodet's study isolates the defiant face Dante memorialized — Capaneus as the type of the blasphemer who will not bend even in Hell's burning sand.
Capaneus Struck by Zeus (Etruscan urn relief)
Unknown (Etruscan), Hellenistic / late Etruscan
An Etruscan ash-urn relief (Würzburg) shows Capaneus blasted from the Theban wall — Zeus' bolt answering the hero who said even the gods could not stop him.
In play
Inferno
Dante Alighieri
Dante seats Capaneus among the blasphemers in the seventh circle — still cursing Jove under the flakes of fire, the Seven Against Thebes rewritten as eternal defiance.
Seven Against Thebes
Aeschylus
Aeschylus makes Capaneus the loudest of the seven: the giant-hearted attacker whose ladder and blasphemy Zeus answers with lightning at the gate.
Capaneus
Son of Hipponous, one of the Seven Against Thebes — struck by Zeus for boasting that not even the gods could keep him from the wall.