the subject of this god as he appears in the myths and in art says,[1]—"The heavenly fire, represented by Hephaistos, can originally have been nothing else than the lightning. It was only with the knowledge of metal-work that Hephaistos became a divine smith. The transition is easily explained by the resemblance that imagination readily detects between what occurs in a smithy and during a thunderstorm, especially at a time when the working of metals still seemed something wonderful, requiring the assistance of the gods to be possible. No great stretch of imagination was needed to associate the flashes of lightning with sparks from the forge, and the claps of thunder with the hammer's sounding strokes against the anvil, or to look upon the thunderstorm itself as the work in a heavenly smithy."
Lycurgos also, the Thracian sun god, carried a double axe, and the mallet of Heracles was perhaps originally such a weapon, because Heracles is the oriental sun god who has been transplanted into Greece, and in his own country is usually represented with an axe.
An ancient writer[2] tells us the names of the four horses that drew the chariot of Apollo. One of these names means lightning, and another thunder. This fact proves that the god of the sun and that of thunder were in Greece, as elsewhere, looked upon as one and the same god. The same conception of the two gods we also find in the legend relating how Apollo with lightning and thunder drove away the Gauls who threatened Delphi.
The gods of Italy correspond to those of Greece. Vulcanus with his hammer is the same as Hephaistos, and Hercules with his mallet was known also by the
- ↑ W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, vol. i. col. 2047 (Leipzig, 1886).
- ↑ Hyginus, Fab. 183. (Cf. Roscher, op. cit., col. 2006.) "Bronte, quæ nos tonitrua appellamus," and "Sterope, quæ fulgitrua." Another writer has the names Bronte and Astrape (lightning). (Roscher, op. cit., col. 2007.)
