The Iliad 1.586–594

Several times characters in the Iliad encourage others by reference to previous events that have a mythical status (e. g., 5.381–404; 9.524–99; 24.602–20). Hephaistos makes his own experiences into this kind of paradigmatic myth. Lemnos, a volcanic island in the northeastern Aegean not far from Troy, was associated with fire and the forges of the smith-god (although it has never possessed an active volcano, unlike other spots where Hephaistos was worshiped). The Sintians are an otherwise unattested people whose name derives from the verb “to harm.” Hephaistos tells a quite different story at 18.395–405, where it is Hera herself who threw him out of Olympos, ashamed of his lameness. Thetis at that time rescued and for nine years sheltered him—perhaps a cause for Hera’s apparent antagonism toward the nymph now.