Their rhapsodies about Hera are of similar tenor,
that without intercourse with her husband she
became the mother of a wind-child, Hephaestus, who,
however, is not in great luck, but works at the blacksmith’s trade over a fire, living in smoke most of the
time and covered with cinders, as is natural with a
forge-tender; moreover, he is. not even straightlimbed, as he was lamed py his fall when Zeus threw
him out of Heaven. In fact, if the Lemnians had
not obligingly caught him while he was still in the
air, we should have had our Hephaestus killed just
like Astyanax when he fell from the battlements. The notion that the Lemnians caught Hephaestus as he fell is Lucian’s own contribution. He expects his audience to be aware that he is giving them a sly misinterpretation of Homer’s ἄφαρ κομίσαντο πεσόντα (Iliad, 1, 594). 


 

But Hephaestus came off quite well beside Prometheus. Who does not know what happened to him
because he was too philanthropic? Taking him to
Scythia, Zeus pegged him out on the Caucasus and
posted an eagle at his side to peck at his liver every
day.
 

Prometheus, then, received a sentence and served
it out, but what about Rhea? One must surely speak
of this also. Does not she misconduct herself and
behave dreadfully? Although she is an old woman,
past her best years, the mother of so many gods,
nevertheless she still has a love affair with a boy and
is jealous, and she takes Attis about with her behind
her lions, in spite of the fact that he cannot be of
any use to her now. So how can one find fault with
Aphrodite for being unfaithful to her husband, or
with Selene for going down to visit Endymion time
and again in the middle of her journey?

 

Come, dismissing this topic, let us go up to Heaven
itself, soaring up poet-fashion by the same route as
Homer and Hesiod, and let us see how they have
arranged things on high. That it is bronze on the
outside we learned from Homer, who anticipated us
in saying so. But when one climbs over the edge,
puts up one’s head a little way into the world above,
and really gets up on the “back,” Plato, Phaedrus247 B. Cf. p. 147. the light is
brighter, the sun is clearer, the stars are shinier,
it is day everywhere, and the ground is of gold.
As you go in, the Hours live in the first house, for
they are the warders of the gate; then come Iris
and Hermes, who are attendants and messengers of
Zeus; next, there is the smithy of Hephaestus, filled
with works of art of every kind, and after that,


 

the houses of the gods and the palace of Zeus, all
very handsomely built by Hephaestus.

 
“The gods,
assembled in the house of Zeus” Iliad4, 1. —it is in order,
I take it, to elevate one’s diction when one is on
high—look off at the earth and gaze about in every
direction, leaning down to see if they can see fire
being lighted anywhere, or steam drifting up to
them “about the smoke entwined.” Iliad 1, 317. If anybody
sacrifices, they all have a feast, opening their mouths
for the smoke and drinking the blood that is spilt
at the altars, just like flies; but if they dine at
home, their meal is nectar and ambrosia. In days of
old, men used to dine and drink with them—Ixion
and Tantalus—but as they behaved shockingly and
talked too much, they are still undergoing punishment to this day, and there is now no admission
for human beings to Heaven, which is strictly
private.
 

That is the way the gods live, and as a result, the
practices of men in the matter of divine worship are
harmonious and consistent with all that. First they
fenced off groves, dedicated mountains, consecrated
birds and assigned plants to each god. Then they
divided them up, and now worship them by nations
and claim them as fellow-countrymen; the Delphians
claim Apollo, and so do. the Delians, the Athenians
Athena (in fact, she proves her kinship by her name),
the Argives Hera, the Mygdonians Rhea, the
Paphians Aphrodite. As for the Cretans, they not
only say that Zeus was born and brought up among
them, but even point out his tomb. We were mistaken all this while, then, in thinking that thunder



 

and rain and everything else comes from Zeus; if we
had but known it, he has been dead and buried in
Crete this long time!