Hephaestus

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e Greek deities series

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Twelve Olympians

Zeus	Hera
Poseidon	Hermes
Hestia	Demeter
Aphrodite	Athena
Apollo	Artemis
Ares	Hephaestus

Hephaestus (pronounced /hɪˈfiːstəs/ or /hɪˈfεstəs/; Greek Ήφαιστος Hēphaistos) was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan; he was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals and metallurgy, and fire. He was worshipped in all the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, especially Athens identified by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus of Mount Etna and Vulcanus of the Lipara islands, and his forge moved here by the poets.

The first-century sage Apollonius of Tyana is said to have observed, "there are many other mountains all over the earth that are on fire, and yet we should never be done with it if we assigned to them giants and gods like Hephaestus".^[1]

1 Family
2 Hephaestus's craft
3 Additional information
4 Legacy
5 Notes
6 Sources
7 External links

[edit] Family

Hephaestus and his brother Ares were sons of Hera, with or without the cooperation of Zeus. In classic and late interpretations Hera bore him alone out of jealousy for Zeus's solo birth of Athena. In other tellings of Athena's birth, the goddess enters the world only after Zeus' head has been split open by a hammer-wielding Hephaestus. Either way, in Greek thought, there is a definite link between the fates of the goddess of wisdom and war (Athena) and the god of the forge that makes weapons of war. In Attica Hephaestus was honored at Hephaistia festival, and in conjunction with Athena Ergane (Athena as patroness of craftsmen and artisans) at a festival called Chalceia on the 30th day of Pyanepsion. Hephaestus crafted much of Athena's weaponry, along with those of the rest of the gods, and even of a few mortals who received their special favor.

Image:Hephaistos.temple.AC.02.jpg

The Doric temple of Hephaestus, Agora of Athens – western face

An Athenian founding myth tells that Athena refused a union with Hephaestus, and that when he tried to rape her she disappeared from the bed. Hephaestus ejaculated on the earth, impregnating Gaia, who subsequently gave birth to Erichthonius of Athens; then the surrogate mother gave the child to Athena to foster, guarded by a serpent. Hyginuds made an etymology of strife (Eri-) between Athena and Hephaestus and the Earth-child (chthonios). Some readers may have the sense that an earlier, non-virginal Athena is disguised in a convoluted re-making of the myth-element. At any rate, there is a Temple of Hephaestus (Hephaesteum or the so-called "Theseum") located near the Athens agora, or marketplace. (illustration, right).

On the island of Lemnos, his consort was the sea nymph Cabeiro, by whom he was the father of two metalworking gods named the Cabeiri. In Sicily, his consort was the nymph Aetna, and his sons two gods of Sicilian geysers called Palici.

Homer makes Charis the wife of Hephaestus. However, according to most myths, Hephaestus is a husband of Aphrodite, who commits adultery against him with Ares.

[edit] Hephaestus's craft

Hephaestus also crafted much of the other magnificent equipment of the gods, and almost any finely-wrought metalwork imbued with powers that appears in Greek myth is said to have been forged by Hephaestus: Hermes's winged helmet and sandals, the Aegis breastplate, Aphrodite's famed girdle, Agamemnon's staff of office,^[2] Achilles' armor, Heracles' bronze clappers, Helios' chariot, the shoulder of Pelops, Eros' bow and arrows. Hephaestus worked with the help of the chthonic Cyclopes, his assistants in the forge. He also built automatons of metal to work for him. He gave to blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide. In one version of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestus's forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave man, the woman Pandora and her pithos.

In Iliad i.590, Zeus threw Hephaestus from Olympus because he released his mother Hera who was suspended by a golden chain between earth and sky, after an argument she had with Zeus. Hephaestus fell for nine days and nights before landing on the island of Lemnos where he grew to be a master craftsman and was allowed back into Olympus when his ability and usefulness became known to the gods.

Image:Andrea Mantegna 045.jpg

Haphaestus in his forge, by Andrea Mantegna (1431)-(1506).

Hephaestus was quite ugly; he was crippled and misshapen at birth (though some believe it was a result of his fall): in the vase-paintings, his feet are sometimes back-to-front. In art, Hephaestus was shown lame and bent over his anvil. He walked with the aid of a stick. Another Homeric version of Hephaestus's myth has that Hera, mortified to have brought forth such grotesque offspring, promptly threw him from Mount Olympus. He fell many days and nights and landed in the ocean,^[3] where he was brought up by the Oceanids Thetis (mother of Achilles) and Eurynome. (Hephaestus’s physical appearance indicates arsenicosis, low levels of arsenic poisoning, resulting in lameness and skin cancers.^{[citation needed]} Arsenic was added to bronze to harden it and most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic workplace poisoning.)

Hephaestus gained revenge against Hera for rejecting him by making her a magical golden throne which, when she sat on it, did not allow her to leave it. The other gods begged Hephaestus to return to Olympus to let her go but he repeatedly refused. Dionysus got him drunk and took him back to Olympus on the back of a mule. Hephaestus released Hera after being given Aphrodite, the goddess of love, as his wife. In another version of the myth, Hephaestus, being the most unfaltering of the gods, was given Aphrodite’s hand in marriage by Zeus in order to prevent conflict over her between the other gods.

In either case, Hephaestus and Aphrodite had an arranged marriage and Aphrodite, disliking the idea of being married to unsightly Hephaestus, began an affair with Ares, the god of war. Eventually, Hephaestus found out about Aphrodite’s promiscuity from Helios, the all-seeing Sun, and planned a trap for them during one of their trysts. While Aphrodite and Ares lay together in bed, Hephaestus ensnared them in an unbreakable, chain-link net and dragged them to Mount Olympus to shame them in front of the other gods for retribution. However, the gods laughed at the sight of these naked lovers and Poseidon persuaded Hephaestus to free them in return for a guarantee that Ares would pay the adulterer's fine. The couple may also have been divorced, as suggested by Hephaestus's statement in Homer that he would return Aphrodite to her father and demand back his bride price.

[edit] Additional information

The Thebans told that the union with Ares and Aphrodite produced Harmonia, as lovely as a second Aphrodite.^{[citation needed]} But of her union with Hephaestus, there was no issue, unless Virgil was serious when he said that Eros was their child.^[4] Although later authors might explain this statement when they say the love-god was sired by Ares but passed off to Hephaestus as his own son.

In Homer's Iliad the consort of Hephaestus is a lesser Aphrodite, Charis "the grace" or Aglaia "the glorious", the youngest of the Graces, as Hesiod calls her.^[5] Hephaestus fathered several children with mortals and immortals alike. One of those children was the robber Periphetes. With Thalia, Hephaestus was sometimes considered the father of the Palici.

Hephaestus's symbols are a smith's hammer, an anvil and a pair of tongs. Sometimes he holds an axe.

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" with which to move around, thus helping him overcome his lameness while showing the other gods his skill.^[6]

Hephaestus was somehow connected with the archaic, pre-Greek Phrygian and Thracian mystery cult of the Kabeiroi, who were also called the Hephaistoi, "the Hephaestus-men," in Lemnos. One of the three Lemnian tribes also called themselves Hephaestion and claimed direct descent from the god. He had a follower who named himself Hephacules after him.

Hephaestus had comparatively few epithets. One was Hephaestus Aetnaeus, owing to his workshop supposedly being located below Mount Aetna.^[7]

[edit] Legacy

The minor planet 2212 Hephaistos discovered in 1978 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh is named in his honor.^[8]

[edit] Notes

^ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, book v.16.
^ its provenance recounted in Iliad II
^ as he tells it himself in the Iliad (xviii.395)
^ Aeneid i.664
^ in his Theogony 945
^ Jay Dolmage, "'Breathe Upon Us an Even Flame': Hephaestus, History, and the Body of Rhetoric," Rhetoric Review Vol. 25, No. 2 (2006), 119-140. 120.
^ Aelian, Hist. An. xi. 3
^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, 5th, New York: Springer Verlag, p. 180. ISBN 3540002383.