Hephaistos (Vulcan).—The fire god, according to Homer, was son of Jupiter and the queenly Juno; or, according to another account of Juno alone, the goddess being jealous over the manner of Minerva’s birth from the cleft-skull of her spouse. The little Vulcan was so ill-looking and lame that the proud mother thought to cast him out of their palace, disowned. But though so cruelly treated he always showed some regard for her, and once took her part in a quarrel she had with the king. Jupiter, enraged at this, caught him by the foot and hurled him from the awful height of Olympus. He was a whole day falling, but in the evening alighted on the island Lemnos,[9] where he was kindly received and nourished for years in a deep grotto of the sea, by Eurymone[10] and Thetis, and afterward, in return for their kindness, he made them many ornaments. Later mythical writers mention his lameness as a consequence of that fall. But Homer, whose authority we follow, represents him as lame from his birth.
Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” evidently alludes to this Grecian myth, though he makes a different application of it:
“From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer’s day; and, with the setting sun,
Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the Ægean isle.”
When or how he was restored to Olympus we are not informed, nor whether the time required for the ascent equaled or exceeded that of the fall. Enough, that his presence and useful offices there are subsequently recognized. He may have become mediator between his parents; and at times humorously assumed the role of cup-bearer at the feasts of the Olympians, causing them much merriment as he busily hobbled from one to another presenting the cups of nectar.[11]
It is probable that their first conception of Hephaistos was that of the god of fire, simply. But as fire is the efficient agent employed in smelting and working metals, he was afterward, and very naturally, regarded as the inventor of furnaces, foundries and forges, including all workshops where skillful artisans wrought in iron and the other metals. With his workmen of skill and Cyclopic strength he constructed all the shining palaces for the immortals on Olympus, and also his own immense workshop with the huge anvils and “twenty bellows” that, at his bidding, worked automatically. He designed and executed numberless articles, both useful and ornamental, suitable for the abodes of either gods or men; and some of their mythical poems and stories are enriched with descriptions of the exquisite workmanship they display. Later accounts mention his workshop as no longer on Olympus, but on some volcanic island where his forges glow with heat and his workmen are equal to any demands made on their skill or strength. Hephaistos, like Athena, gave skill to mortal artisans, and they too were believed to have taught men all things suitable to embellish or adorn their habitations.