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LIST OF CHAPTERS
PREFACE
The purpose of this little book is to show that one, at least, of the gods of Hellas has survived the flood which swept away the most entertaining company of gods and goddesses ever created by man’s imagination. As I propose to set him in the august place vacated by the death of Zeus, a few biographical details may not be out of place.
Hephæstus was the son of Hera (Juno), but not of Zeus (Jupiter). How his mother put him into the world is not precisely known. Neither Zeus nor any other male god had anything to do with it. Yet it would be inappropriate in the case of such a confirmed matron as Hera to speak of parthenogenesis. Some extraordinary event had to take place before the great home-goddess could be driven to spite her lord and master by producing a son without his co-operation. And such an event had indeed occurred, for Zeus had suddenly reverted to one of the oldest forms of propagation known to biology, viz., propagation by budding. A fully-armed young goddess, severe of countenance and lithe of limb, had sprung forth from his head, thenceforth and for ever to lead and dominate the world of thought. It was up to Hera to match Pallas Athene by some equally important contribution to the evolution of gods, and so by some mysterious process, into which Greek historians did not care to pry, she produced Hephæstus, whom the Romans called Vulcan, now the only surviving representative of that lively and enterprising clan which once ruled the world from the summit of Mount Olympus.
Like many another product of inspiration, Hephæstus was at first regarded as a failure. He was undersized and weak-chested, and Hera had to suffer much from the gibes of her peers and peeresses. So one day she dropped him down the slope of the mountain and he fell into the sea. He was picked up by two of those charming and motherly sea-goddesses which at that time abounded in sea-water, and was brought up in a grotto under the ocean. In return for their kindnesses he made them pretty ornaments of coral and mother-of-pearl.
At the age of ten, or thereabouts, he set out to find his mother. It was some time before Hera recognized in the lame boy, with the spinal curvature and the swarthy but pleasant face, the child she had so mercilessly cast off. But a spark of mother-instinct revived under the flame of the child’s filial devotion, and they soon became lasting friends and allies.
Hephæstus, naturally, owed no allegiance to Zeus, and in the frequent marital disputes between him and Hera he invariably took his mother’s part, and so successfully that the redoubtable Father of the Gods took him by his lame leg and flung him into space. He fell for a whole day[1] and eventually alighted, like a meteorite, on the island of Lemnos, where he was worshipped as many a meteorite has been worshipped before and since. He put up with this for a while, but the blood of the Olympians asserted itself, and he painfully climbed home once more. This time he succeeded in planting his unequal feet firmly on his native rock, and he soon became a favourite among his divine relations. He undertook the reconstruction of the Olympian dwellings, and for this purpose established a wonderful workshop with a huge anvil and twenty bellows, all of which would work at his mere behest. The workshop was made of fire-proof materials, and shone “like a star in the night.”