Manual of Mythology; In Relation to Greek Art (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 Excerpt: ...reproduced in fig. 69) calls her, Nesidora--a clumsy half-lifeless figure like an unfinished statue, the arms adhering to the sides. Hephaistos, here depicted as a goodly youth, stands to Fig 68.-HePhaistos (com the right, his mallet in one of Lipara). hand; with the other he all but touches the head of Pandora, on which he seems to have placed the metal wreath. On the other side is Athena, the fellowworker of Hephaistos, who shared with him the work of the creation and adornment of Pandora. The vase is important, as embodying this peculiarly Athenian conception of the partnership of Athena and Hephiastos, and also as giving a noble youthful type of the craftsman-god, with no hint whatever of deformity. Hephaistos and his mallet played an important part in the birth of Athena; on vase-paintings he is a constant actor in the scene, and is usually represented as starting aside with amazement after he has cleft the head of Zeus, Another subject represented on vases is the story of Hephaistos' return to Olympus. In revenge for his fall from Olympus, he had sent to Hera a chair, on which the goddess had no sooner seated herself than she found herself chained fast by some invisible mechanism. The intervention of Dionysus was necessary to bring Hephaistos back to Olympus, and induce him to set Fig. 69.--Hephaistos at birth of Pandora, cylix (British Museum). his mother free. Several vase-paintings show Dionysus bringing Hephaistos back among the Olympians.1 Very brief mention must here be made of the spirits of subterranean fire, the Kabeiroi, whom tradition regarded as sons of Hephaistos. The chief seats of their worship were at Lemnos, where their sanctuary was 1 In addition to those cited in Roschcr's Lexicon, Hephaistos, a fine representation of the scene has ...