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| | HEPHAESTUS - LoveToKnow Article on HEPHAESTUS (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25) |
 | | Once a year every fire was extinguished on the island for nine days, during which period sacrifice was offered to the gods of the underworld and the dead. |
 | | The fire, as an element, belongs to th Olympian Hephaestus; the Titan Prometheus, a more humar character, steals it for the use of man. Prometheus resembles the Polynesian Maui, who went down to fetch fire from th volcano of Mahuika, the fire-god. |
 | | Some mythologists have compared the hammer of Hephaestus with that of Thor, and have explained it as the emblem of a thunder-god; but it is Zeus, not Hephaestus, who causes the thunder, and the emblems of the latter god are merely the signs of his occupation as a smith. |
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