Hephaistos

Hephaistos was a beloved member of the Olympian pantheon by the eighth century, but his popularity was expressed primarily though poetry and the visual arts, not cult. He is unique among the Olympians in his physical imperfection, which to the Greek mind made him by turns comic and pathetic. A favorite of Homer, who describes both his awesome skills as a craftsman and his role as a peacemaker among the gods, Hephaistos’ origins lie in the Bronze Age sacralization of metalworking. His name is certainly not Greek, and most likely his worship was brought to mainland Greece from Anatolia via Lemnos, an ancient seat of his cult where the capital city was called Hephaistia. The pre-Greek Lemnians, known to Homer as Sinties, were credited with the invention of fire and the technique of forging weapons. Hephaistos is similar to craft-related daimones like the Telchines of Rhodes, the Idaian Daktyloi, and the Kyklopes who forged Zeus’ thunderbolts, though his individual personality is more fully developed. In certain myths he is a craftsman-magician, creator of fabulous animated statues with talis-manic and apotropaic powers. Corresponding rituals intended to imbue real statues with such powers are unattested for our period in Greece, but were well known in Assyria, Anatolia, and Egypt.10

Yet Hephaistos is also an elemental deity whose name functions (e. g. Hom. II. 2.426) as a synonym for fire. He is perhaps the god of the famous yearly fire festival at Lemnos, which involved the extinguishing of all fire on the island for nine days, until a ship brought new fire from which all the domestic hearths and forges could be kindled anew and purified. In the time of Philostratus of Lemnos (c. 215 ce), our source for this festival, the fire was brought from Delos, but if the festival existed in the Classical period, the new fire may have been the gift of the island’s patron deity. In Sophocles’ Philoctetes (986), the title character stranded on Lemnos cries out to “Lem-nian earth and the all-powerful flame wrought by Hephaistos.”11

The major locus of Hephaistos’ cult outside Lemnos was Athens, where the god was integrated very early into the local pantheon and had a special affinity with Athena. The two were honored in the Chalkeia (Bronzework) festival as patrons of craft workers. As a fire deity, Hephaistos was particularly important to those who worked with forges and kilns. People set up clay statues and plaques of the god beside hearths and kilns as an “overseer” of the fire. Local legend also held that the birth of the primordial king Erech-theus from the Earth came about as a result of a comically unsuccessful rape attempt by Hephaistos, who had conceived a passion for Athena. Hephaistos therefore was ancestral to the people and had an altar in the Erechtheion.

Figure 12.1 Temple of Hephaistos in the Athenian agora. Erich Lessing: Art Resource.

During the Apatouria, the festival at which a man’s sons were presented for enrollment as citizens, certain Athenians dressed in magnificent clothing and lit torches “from the hearth” while singing hymns for Hephaistos.12 A fragmentary decree of 421/20 (IG I3 82) shows that the Hephaisteia was reorganized in that year as a large-scale celebration including a torch race, sponsored by the tribes, and an interesting contest of “ox-lifting” to be performed by two hundred chosen youths, with the oxen subsequently sacrificed to the god.13 In the same year, Alkamenes began work on the cult statues for the new temple of Hephaistos, which overlooked the busy commercial center of the city and, uniquely, was destined to survive into modern times almost fully preserved. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the bronze cult statues, one of Athena and one of Hephaistos, though later copies give us clues to their appearance. Ancient visitors praised this statue of the god because it minimized his deformity.14