Hephaestus.
    The Greek god of fire and crafts, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno); but, in some versions Hera conceives Hephaestus parthenogenically. Crippled at birth, he was thrown down from Olympus by his mother, who was ashamed of his deformity. Falling into the ocean, Hephaestus was resuced by Thetis and Eurynome, two Nereids. He later took revenge on his mother by trapping her in a throne of his own devising; there she remained imprisoned until Dionysus inebriated him and forced him to release her. In an alternate legend, Hephaestus was hurled to earth by Zeus for siding with Hera in a quarrel about Heracles; he landed on the island of Lemnos, an important center of his cult in the fifth century BCE.
    As the fire god and divine blacksmith, Hephaestus labored in a workshop located either in heaven or on Olympus, although Virgil, for example, placed it in a cave on an island near Sicily. A master craftsman, the god forged the armor that Thetis requested for Achilles and the arms that Venus implored him to create for Aeneas. He also fashioned the chains that bound Prometheus to the rock, the necklace of Harmonia, and, with the assistance of the Cyclopes, Zeus’s thunderbolts. According to Hesiod, he created Pandora, the first woman, and in some accounts acted as midwife in the birth of Athena (Minerva) by splitting Zeus’s head with an axe to release the goddess. Hephaestus was sometimes said to be the husband of Aglaia, one of the Graces, but in most myths he was married to the ever-unfaithful Aphrodite (Venus). When he discovered her affair with his brother Ares (Mars), he ensnared the lovers in a net and exposed them to the ridicule of the gods. Hephaestus’s own pursuit of the virgin Athena failed, but from his spilled semen Erichthonius, legendary king of Athens, was born.
    Vulcan, the early Roman god of fire, assumed many of the attributes of Hephaestus, but his importance in the Roman pantheon was far greater than that of his Greek counterpart. To the Romans, Vulcan was also a god of destructive fire, deserving of attention in an era when uncontrollable fires and volcanic eruptions spelled disaster. More than just a fire-god, the Hellenized Vulcan was accorded a creative side, recognized by the epithet “Mulciber” (“he who tempers”). He was said to be the father of Cupid (Amor) by Venus, and was also associated with the goddess Maia, an obscure Italian vegetation deity.
    
    Classical representations of Hephaestus focus on his return to Olympus, his assistance in the birth of Athena, and his delivery of Achilles’ armor to Thetis. He also figures prominently in gatherings of Olympians. Postclassical depictions of these themes are also common, as are scenes of Venus visiting Vulcan’s forge, either as his wife or as supplicant for Aeneas’s armor. Vulcan and his forge are also depicted as symbols of winter and of the element Fire.
    
    
     See also: Achilles, Return to Battle; Aeneas, in Latium; Ares and Aphrodite; Cyclopes; Gods and Goddesses; Pandora; Prometheus, Bound