Hephaestus (Vulcan)

Called Vulcan by the Romans, Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire and, therefore, of metals and metalworking. For Homer he was the son of Zeus and Hera, but it was sometimes said that Hera had generated him alone, through parthenogenesis, out of her anger over the birth of Athena, who had emerged from Zeus' head and not the womb of a woman.
Unlike the other gods of Olympus, all beautiful and of remarkable proportions, Hephaestus was born so frail and ungainly that his mother immediately threw him down from the heights of Olympus out of embarrassment at his appearance. He fell into Oceanus, where he was taken in by Thetis and Eurynome, who looked after him for nine years. He then went to live in an undersea grotto, where he made jewelry for them.

The relationship between Hephaestus and his mother was ambivalent. To take his revenge for his rejection by Hera, he bound her to a throne that he had constructed for her, but then took her side several times during the frequent disputes she had with Zeus. On one occasion his interference earned him a second fall; Zeus seized him by one foot and flung him from Olympus. His flight lasted one day and ended on the island of Lemnos, where the god was picked up and revived by the inhabitants. He was crippled by his impact with the ground, but it was also said that he was lame at birth.

His work as a blacksmith gave Hephaestus great muscular strength in his arms and great manual skill. He took part in the struggle against the Giants, but was also capable of creating extremely sophisticated mechanisms, such as the net that trapped Aphrodite and Ares and the fire-breathing bulls of Aeëtes, not to mention the form that he was able to give to Pandora. As well as Olympus, where forty bellows were operated on his orders, his forges were located under volcanoes, where the Cyclopes worked as his assistants.

In spite of his appearance, his shy and surly character, it seems that Hephaestus was able to attract women of great beauty. Two of the Charities were supposed to have been his wives, but most astounding of all was his marriage to Aphrodite, the epitome of beauty. Various sources also mention Athena as one of his wives, granted to him by Zeus in gratitude for the help the smith gave him in bringing her into the world. However, at the moment of their union Athena vanished without becoming his wife, and from Hephaestus' seed that spilled on the earth was born Erichthonius, the legendary hero of the Athenians. Other sons of Hephaestus included Palaemon, one of the Argonauts, and the celebrated sculptor Ardalus, who inherited his father's manual dexterity. With Periphetes, an infamous brigand killed by Theseus, he passed on the dark side of his character.

Last Edited On: 08/13/99

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