Hephaestus, the god of fire and of smithying among the Greeks, is represented by Homer as lame, walking with the aid of a stick, and panting as he goes. His character is good-tempered, affectionate, and compassionate (cf. Æsch. Prometheus Bound). There is also an element of the comic connected with him; his gait and ungainly figure provoke the laughter of the gods. On the other hand, he is himself given to practical jokes; he constructs a seat on which his mother sits down, but from which she is unable to rise. His mother was Hera, who (according to Homer) liked her lame child so little that she cast him far out from heaven. Another account of his fall from heaven is also given by Homer—that Zeus threw him out for siding with Hera against him. The story of the seat just mentioned is brought into connection with the former version of his fall; none but he could release Hera, nor would he help her until restored to his place in heaven. Mythologists interpret the fall of Hephaestus as the fall of lightning from the sky (= Hera, but see HERA). Amongst the myths in which Hephaestus is concerned we must mention that of the manufacture of the first woman, Pandora (by whom all evil came into the world); the birth of Athene from the head of Zeus, when Hephaestus with an axe acted as midwife; and the birth of Erichthonios, who claimed Hephaestus for father, and from whom the Athenians counted themselves as descended.
In discussing the origin and antiquity of Hephaestus it is necessary to bear in mind that this deity appears under two aspects, which would naturally come to be combined though they were not necessarily united from the first. Hephaestus is the god of smithying and also the god of fire. To begin with the latter aspect of the deity, there are so many points of resemblance between the divine smith of the Greeks and the Wayland Smith (q.v.) or Wieland or Volundr of the northern members of the Indo-European family of peoples that some comparative mythologists have felt justified in inferring that the divine smith was a conception known to the Indo-Europeans before their dispersion. On the other hand, it is maintained that the resemblances are due, not to the joint inheritance by different peoples of the same original myth, but to borrowing at a late period. The stories of Wieland were a conscious loan on the part of the Teutons, in the 6th century A.D., of various classic tales about Dædalus and Vulcan (W. Goltzer, Germania, xd. xxiii. 449). This latter view has in its favour the fact that the undivided Indo-Europeans were unacquainted with the metals, except copper, and totally ignorant of the art of smithying. The divine smith, therefore, is a mythological conception which must be posterior to the dispersion of the Indo-Europeans. Remains the question then whether the other aspect under which Hephaestus appears, that of the god of fire, goes back to primeval times. On the one hand, other Indo-European peoples have fire-gods of their own; the Hindus Agni, and the Norsemen Loki. But, unfortunately, there is no phonetic identity between the names of the various deities. We have therefore nothing beyond general considerations to guide us. The want of philological equivalence in the names of various fire-gods makes rather against the supposition that the primitive Indo-Europeans recognised a god of fire. On the other hand, there is no improbability inherent in the assumption that they were at least as far advanced as the Australian aborigines who worship fire. The fact that several members of the Indo-European family agree in the worship of a fire-god does not, of course, demonstrate that the worship was a joint inheritance, for the worshipper's idea of worshipping so useful an element occurs independently to peoples who cannot be supposed on any theory to be connected. Finally, the lameness of Hephaestus may be an expression of the unsteady, flickering motion of flame; but it is well to remember that amongst savages the people to whose lot it particularly falls to tend the fire are the lame.
Hephaestus was by the Romans identified with their own fire-god Vulcan (q.v.).