| Hephaestus | |
|---|---|
 Hephaestus at the Forge by Guillaume Coustou the Younger ( Louvre) |
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| God of Technology, Blacksmiths, Craftsmen, Artisans and Volcanoes | |
| Symbol | Hammer, Anvil or Tongs |
| Consort | Aphrodite |
| Parents | Hera (alone or Hera and Zeus) |
| Children | Eros, See Below |
| Roman equivalent | Vulcan |
Hephaestus (8 spellings; pronounced /həˈfɛstəs/ or /hɨˈfɛstəs/; Ancient Greek Ἥφαιστος Hēphaistos) was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. His mother was Hera. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Like other mythic smiths but unlike most other gods, Hephaestus was lame, which gave him a grotesque appearance in Greek eyes. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and he was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly in Athens. The center of his cult was in Lemnos.[1] Hephaestus's symbols are a smith's hammer, an anvil and a pair of tongs, although sometimes he is portrayed holding an axe.
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Hephaestus was identified by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus of Mount Etna and Vulcanus of the Lipari islands. His forge was moved there 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".[2]
An Athenian founding myth tells that Athena refused a union with Hephaestus because of his unsightly appearance and crippled nature, and that when he became angry and forceful with her, she disappeared from the bed. His ejaculation landed 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. Hyginus made an imaginative etymology for Erichthonius, of strife (Eri-) between Athena and Hephaestus and the Earth-child (chthonios). There is a Temple of Hephaestus, the Hephaesteum miscalled the "Theseum", located near the Athenian agora, or marketplace.
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 with Ares and have a child named Eros.
Hephaestus 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' winged helmet and sandals, the Aegis breastplate, Aphrodite's famed girdle, Agamemnon's staff of office,[3] Achilles' armor, Heracles' bronze clappers, Helios' chariot as well as his own due to his lameness, 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 to man, the woman Pandora and her pithos. Being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus.[4]
In Iliad i.590, Hephaestus refers to the occasion when Zeus threw him from Olympus. Hephaestus had released his mother Hera, who Zeus, after an argument, had suspended by a golden chain between earth and sky. Hephaestus fell all day before landing on the island of Lemnos, where the resident Sintians nursed him back to health; there he grew to be a master craftsman.
Hephaestus is given many epithets, some of which include:[5]
Hephaestus (Vulcan in Roman mythology) is the only Olympian god to have been exiled from Olympus and to have returned. In a Homeric version of Hephaestus's myth, Hera, mortified to have brought forth such grotesque offspring, promptly threw him from Mount Olympus. He fell nine days and nights and landed in the ocean,[6] where he was brought up by the Oceanids Thetis (mother of Achilles) and Eurynome.
Hephaestus was reported in myth as cholōs, "lame",[7] and depicted with crippled feet, said to be halting (ēpedanos) and misshapen, whether from birth or as a result of his fall; in the vase-paintings, Hephaestus is shown lame and bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, his feet sometimes back-to-front: Hephaistos amphigyēeis. He walked with the aid of a stick. The Argonaut Palaimonius, "son of Hephaestus"— which is to say a bronze-smith— was also lame.[8] Other "sons of Hephaestus" were the Kabeiroi on the island of Samothrace; they were identified with the crab (karkinos) by the lexicographer Hesychius, and the adjective karkinopous, "crab-footed" signified "lame", Detienne and Vernant[9] have observed: the Kabeiroi were seen as lame too.[10] In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping him overcome his lameness while showing the other gods his skill.[11] In the Illiad it is said that Hephaestus built some bronze human machines to help him get around.
Hephaestus’s physical appearance is taken by some to indicate arsenicosis, low levels of arsenic poisoning, resulting in lameness and skin cancers. In place of less available tin, arsenic was added to copper in the Bronze Age to harden it; most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic workplace poisoning, and the mythic image of the lame smith is widespread.[12]
In an archaic story,[13] 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.[14] The other gods begged Hephaestus to return to Olympus to let her go, but he refused, saying "I have no mother".[15]
At last Dionysus, sent to fetch him, shared his wine, intoxicating the smith, and took him back to Olympus on the back of a mule accompanied by revelers, a scene that sometimes appears on painted pottery of Attica and in Corinth,[16] as well. In the painted scenes the padded dancers and phallic figures of the Dionysan throng leading the mule show that the procession was a part of the dithyrambic celebrations that were the forerunners, in Athens, of the satyr plays of the fifth century.[17]
The theme of the return of Hephaestus, popular among the Attic vase-painters whose wares were favored among the Etruscans, may have carried this theme to Etruria.[18] As vase-painters portrayed the procession, Hephaestus was mounted on a mule or a horse, accompanied by Dionysus, who held the bridle and carried Hephaestus' tools, which include a double-headed axe.
The traveller Pausanias reported seeing a painting in the temple of Dionysus in Athens, which had been built in the 5th century but may have been decorated at any time before the 2nd century CE, when Pausanias saw it:
"There are paintings here – Dionysus bringing Hephaestus up to heaven. One of the Greek legends is that Hephaestus, when he was born, was thrown down by Hera. In revenge he sent as a gift a golden chair with invisible fetters. When Hera sat down she was held fast, and Hephaestus refused to listen to any other of the gods save Dionysus – in him he reposed the fullest trust – and after making him drunk Dionysus brought him to heaven."[19]
| Greek Deities Series | ||||||||||||
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| Primordial deities | ||||||||||||
| Titans (predecessor deities) | ||||||||||||
| Greek sea gods | ||||||||||||
| Chthonic deities | ||||||||||||
| Muses (personified concepts) | ||||||||||||
| Other deities | ||||||||||||
| The Twelve Olympians | ||||||||||||
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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.
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 so small as to be invisible 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. Hephaestus states in the Odyssey that he would return Aphrodite to her father and demand back his bride price: this is the one episode that links them.
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.[20] 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.
The Thebans told that the union of 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.[21] 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.
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 comparatively few epithets. One was Hephaestus Aetnaeus, owing to his workshop supposedly being located below Mount Aetna.[22]
The minor planet 2212 Hephaistos discovered in 1978 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh is named in his honor.[23]
| Greek deities series |
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| Primordial deities · Titans · Aquatic deities · Chthonic deities |
| Twelve Olympians |
| Zeus · Hera · Poseidon · Hestia · Dionysus · Demeter · Aphrodite · Athena · Apollo · Artemis · Ares · Hephaestus · Hermes |
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HEPHAESTUS, in Greek mythology, the god of fire, analogous to, and by the ancients often confused with, the Roman god Vulcan; the derivation of the name is uncertain, but it may well be of Greek origin. The elemental character of Hephaestus is far more apparent than is the case with the majority of the Olympian gods; the word Hephaestus was used as a synonym for fire not only in poetry (Homer, Il. ii. 426 and later), but also in common speech (Diod. v. 74). It is doubtful whether the origin of the god can be traced to any specific form of fire. As all earthly fire was thought to have come from heaven, Hephaestus has been identified with the lightning. This is supported by the myth of his fall from heaven, and by the fact that, according to the Homeric tradition, his father was Zeus, the heaven-god. On the other hand, the lightning is not associated with him in literature or cult, and his connexion with volcanic fires is so close as to suggest that he was originally a volcano-god. The connexion, however, though it may be early, is probably not primitive, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Hephaestus was a general fire-god, though some of his characteristics were due to particular manifestations of the element.
In Homer the fire-god was the son of Zeus and Hera, and found a place in the Olympian system as the divine smith. The Iliad contains two versions of his fall from heaven. In one account (i. 590) he was cast out by Zeus and fell on Lemnos; in the other, Hera threw him down immediately after his birth in disgust at his lameness, and he was received by the sea-goddesses Eurynome and Thetis. The Lemnian version is due to the prominence of his cult at Lemnos in very early times; and his fall into the sea may have been suggested by volcanic activity in Mediterranean islands, as at Lipara, and Thera. The subsequent return of Hephaestus to Olympus is a favourite theme in early art. His wife was Charis, one of the Graces (in the Iliad) or Aphrodite (in the Odyssey). The connexion of the rough Hephaestus with these goddesses is curious; it may be due to the beautiful works of the smith-god (xapLEVTa Epya), but it is possibly derived from the supposed fertilizing and productive power of fire, in which case Hephaestus is a natural mate of Charis, a goddess of spring, and Aphrodite the goddess of love. In Homer, the skill of Hephaestus in metallurgy is often mentioned; his forge was on Olympus, where he was served by images of golden handmaids which he had animated. Similar myths are found in relation to the Finnish smith-god Ilmarinen, who made a golden woman, and the Teutonic Wieland; a belief in the magical power of metal-workers is a common survival from an age in which their art was new and mysterious. In epic poetry Hephaestus is rather a comic figure, and his limping gait provokes "Homeric laughter" among the gods. In Vedic poetry Agni, the fire-god, is footless; and the ancients themselves attributed this lameness to the crooked appearance of flame (Servius on Aen. viii. 814), and possibly no better explanation can be found, though it has been suggested that in an early stage of society the trade of a smith would be suitable for the lame; Hephaestus and the lame Wieland would thus conform to the type of their human counterparts.
Except in Lemnos and Attica, there are few indications of any cult of Hephaestus. His association with Lemnos can be traced from Homer to the Roman age. A town in the island was called Hephaestia, and the functions of the god must have been wide, as we are told that his Lemnian priests could cure snakebites. Once a year every fire was extinguished on the island for nine days, during which period sacrifice was offered to the gods of the underworld and the dead. After the nine days were passed, new fire was brought ,from the sacred hearth at Delos. The significance of this and similar customs is examined by J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. ch. 4. The close connexion of Hephaestus with Lemnos and especially with its mountain Mosychlus has been explained by the supposed existence of a volcano; but no crater or other sign of volcanic agency is now apparent, and the "Lemnian fire" - a phenomenon attributed to Hephaestus - may have been due to natural gas (see LeMNos). In Sicily, however, the volcanic nature of the god is prominent in his cult at Etna, as well as in the neighbouring Liparaean isles. The Olympian forge had been transferred to Etna or some other volcano, and Hephaestus had become a subterranean rather than a celestial power.
The divine smith naturally became a "culture-god"; in Crete the invention of forging in iron was attributed to him, and he was honoured by all metal-workers. But we have little record of his cult in this aspect, except at Athens, where his worship was of real importance, belonging to the oldest stratum of Attic religion. A tribe was called after his name, and Erichthonius, the mythical father of the Attic people, was the son of Hephaestus. Terra-cotta statuettes of the god seem to have been placed before the hearths of Athenian houses. This temple has been identified, not improbably, with the so-called "Theseum"; it contained a statue of Athena, and the two deities are often associated, in literature and cult, as the joint givers of civilization to the Athenians. The class of artisans was under their special protection; and the joint festival of the two divinities - the Chalceia - commemorated the invention of bronze-working by Hephaestus. In the Hephaesteia (the particular festival of the god) there was a torch race, a ceremonial not indeed confined to fire-gods like Hephaestus and Prometheus, but probably in its origin connected with them, whether its object was to purify and quicken the land, or (according to another theory) to transmit a new fire with all possible speed to places where the fire was polluted. If the latter view is correct, the torch race would be closely akin to the Lemnian fire-ritual which has been mentioned. The relation between Hephaestus and Prometheus is in some respects close, though the distinction between these gods is clearly marked. The fire, as an element, belongs to the Olympian Hephaestus; the Titan Prometheus, a more human character, steals it for the use of man. Prometheus resembles the Polynesian Maui, who went down to fetch fire from the volcano of Mahuika, the fire-god. Hephaestus is a culture-god mainly in his secondary aspect as the craftsman, whereas Prometheus originates all civilization with the gift of fire. But the importance of Prometheus is mainly mythological; the Titan belonged to a fallen dynasty, and in actual cult was largely superseded by Hephaestus.
In archaic art Hephaestus is generally represented as bearded, though occasionally a younger beardless type is found, as on a vase (in the British Museum), on which he appears as a young man assisting Athena in the creation of Pandora. At a later time the bearded type prevails. The god is usually clothed in a short sleeveless tunic, and wears a round close-fitting cap. His face is that of a middle-aged man, with unkempt hair. He is in fact represented as an idealized Greek craftsman, with the hammer, and sometimes the pincers. Some mythologists have compared the hammer of Hephaestus with that of Thor, and have explained it as the emblem of a thunder-god; but it is Zeus, not Hephaestus, who causes the thunder, and the emblems of the latter god are merely the signs of his occupation as a smith. In art no attempt was made, as a rule, to indicate the lameness of Hephaestus; but one sculptor (Alcamenes) is said to have suggested the deformity without spoiling the statue.
Authorities.-L. Preller (ed. C. Robert), Griech. Mythologie, i. 174 f. (Berlin, 1894); W. H. Roscher, Lex. der griech. u. rim. Mythologie, s.v. "Hephaistos" (Leipzig, 1884-1886); Harrison, Myth. and Mon. of Ancient Athens, p. 119 f. (London, 1890); O. Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie u. Religionsgesch. p. 1304 f. (Munich, 1906); O. Schrader and F. B. Jevons, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan People, p. 161, &c. (London, 1890); L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. (1909). (E. E. S.)
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Categories: HEP-HES | Greek deities
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From Ancient Greek Ἥφαιστος (Hēphaistos).
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Singular |
Plural |
Hephaestus
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Main Page
Cladus: Eukaryota
Supergroup: Unikonta
Cladus: Opisthokonta
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Cladus: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclassis: Osteichthyes
Classis: Actinopterygii
Subclassis: Neopterygii
Infraclassis: Teleostei
Superordo: Acanthopterygii
Ordo: Perciformes
Subordo: Percoidei
Superfamilia: Percoidea
Familia: Terapontidae
Genus: Hephaestus
Species: H. adamsoni -
H. carbo - H. epirrhinos -
H. fuliginosus -
H. habbemai - H. jenkinsi -
H. komaensis - H. lineatus -
H. obtusifrons -
H. raymondi - H. roemeri -
H. transmontanus -
H. trimaculatus -
H. tulliensis
Hephaestus De Vis, 1884
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