Hephaestus

In Homer, Hephaestus is the divine craftsman, the lame god of the forge who builds Achilles’s shield, Zeus’s thunderbolts, the automata that roll around Olympus. He is everywhere in the metalwork that fills the epic. In this retelling he stays unnamed. The gold and silver guard dogs at the threshold of Alcinous’s palace are his work in the source, immortal and tireless, and they sit in the chapter as marvels without their maker getting credit. The retelling keeps the divine cast tight. Demodocus’s second song in Homer is also Hephaestus’s most personal scene, the one where he catches his wife Aphrodite in bed with Ares and traps them in an invisible net for the gods to laugh at. The retelling skips the song. The smith god stays in the wings.