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.”
[1] This must be a mistake, as it would put the summit of Olympus
somewhere beyond the orbit of the moon.
He solved the housing question by building a separate palace for
each of the gods and goddesses, replete with all the comforts and
refinements of civilization. Nor did his amiability end there.
Sometimes, at their daily assemblies, he would give Ganymede a day off
and would himself hand round the nectar, producing roars of laughter
by the contrast between his hobbling gait and the deportment of the
graceful young cup-bearer.
He became so popular that at last he was able to marry Aphrodite
herself, the goddess of Love and Beauty, whom the Romans called Venus,
and who was born of the foam of the sea somewhere off Cyprus. But this
union of Beauty and the Beast was far from being a happy one. Venus was
not satisfied with a “lame mechanic” as she called him, and hankered
after the dashing Ares, alias Mars, the god of war. Having been warned
by Helios, the sun-god, of the progress of the intrigue――after it had
already reached its climax――Hephæstus lay in wait for the guilty pair
with an invisible net, and having caught them, dragged them before the
other gods amid Homeric laughter produced by their struggles in the
invisible meshes. And when a daughter was born, whom they miscalled
Harmonia, Hephæstus had his revenge by presenting her with a necklace
which brought disaster to her and all its later possessors until it
was finally laid to rest in the temple of Athene.
Meanwhile, the fame of his works spread far and wide. King Aetes
of Colchis ordered the construction of two bronze bulls capable of
breathing fire through their nostrils, and when Achilles, the Greek
champion before Troy, decided to kill Hector and avenge his friend
Patroclus, he went to Hephæstus with an introduction from Thetis, the
sea-goddess, and prevailed upon him to make him a marvellous shield on
which all heaven and earth were figured in bronze, and which was quite
impervious to mortal spear and battle-axe.
And so he dwelt and worked on Olympus for three thousand years or so,
establishing branch works on Lipari and in Sicily which kept working
at full blast until Paul of Tarsus came with his claim to have found
the Unknown God who was to establish a new Roman dominion to take the
place of the mighty Empire of the Cæsars, and was incidentally to sweep
away the gods of Rome and Greece alike and establish the worship of a
tripartite God who never smiled.
So the light-hearted company of Mount Olympus died, all but Hephæstus,
who hobbled through many lands seeking a place where he might work and
set his bellows blowing once more. For centuries he wandered, despised
and jeered at by monks, hermits, and anchorites. But his courage never
failed him. It survived the desolation of the Olympian palaces as it
had survived his two falls from the summit.
And now he has come back into his own, and his power is spreading like
a conflagration. The God of Fire is the supreme master of the earth.
His furnaces are roaring. He has dispelled the clouds of Asiatic
mysticism which obscured his native mountain. He has girdled the world
with hoops of steel. He has found strength
“To break this sorry scheme of things entire,
And mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
And his victorious progress is only beginning to take effect. How it
has come about, and what will be the eventual result of his domination
of our planet, it is the purpose of what follows to elucidate.