Vulcan- Roman GodDeity"Lord of Fire"

Cast Down

Juno bore Vulcan and was ashamed of him. He was lame. She threw him from Olympus. He fell for a full day and landed in the sea near Lemnos, where the nymphs Thetis and Eurynome pulled him from the surf. They raised him in an underwater cave, and there he taught himself to work metal. He made brooches and spiral bracelets for his foster mothers. Nine years he spent under the sea before he sent a gift to the mother who had thrown him away.

The Golden Throne

The gift was a golden chair. Juno sat in it. When she tried to rise, invisible chains held her fast. No force in heaven could break them.

The Olympians sent messengers begging Vulcan to release her. He refused. Finally Bacchus went down to his forge with wine, got him drunk, and brought him back to Olympus on the back of a donkey. Vulcan freed his mother. The price was Venus as his bride.

Under Etna

Vulcan set his forge beneath Mount Etna. The Cyclopes worked his bellows and hammers. In the Aeneid, Virgil gives them names: Brontes thundered at the bellows while Pyracmon swung the hammer. When Venus came to ask for armor for her son Aeneas, they were shaping a half-finished thunderbolt for Jupiter. They set it aside.

The mountain smoked when Vulcan was at his anvil. The earth shook when he struck. When Etna erupted, Vulcan was making something for the gods.

The Net

Venus was given to him as bride. She did not love him. She loved Mars, and went to Mars whenever Vulcan was at his forge. The Sun, who sees everything, told Vulcan.

In Ovid's telling, Vulcan forged a net of bronze chains so fine they were invisible, lighter than spider silk. He draped it over the bed and told Venus he was leaving for Lemnos. Mars came. The net fell. It held them naked and tangled while Vulcan called every god on Olympus to witness. Neptune brokered their release, but the damage was done. The gods had laughed. Several admitted they would have taken Mars's place.

Fire Outside the Walls

Romans kept Vulcan's sanctuary outside their city's sacred boundary. The Volcanal, an open-air precinct in the Forum, was among Rome's oldest sacred sites. Varro records that Romulus himself established worship there. An ancient lotus tree grew at the site, its roots running beneath the Forum.

His festival, the Volcanalia, fell on August 23, when the summer heat was at its worst and stored grain most at risk. Romans threw live fish from the Tiber into fires as substitutes for human lives. Families began their work before sunrise, by sunlight instead of lamp-flame. Bonfires burned through the night.

The god who could take a city in a single night received his worship in the open, away from anything that could catch.