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Hephaestus and Athena

Hephaestus is to the male gods as Athena is to the female, for he gives skill to mortal artists and was believed to have taught men the arts alongside Athena. At Athens, they had temples and festivals in common. Both were believed to have great healing powers, and Lemnian earth (terra Lemnia) from the spot on which Hephaestus had fallen was believed to cure madness, the bites of snakes, and haemorrhage; and priests of Hephaestus knew how to cure wounds inflicted by snakes.

He was represented in the temple of Athena Chalcioecus (Athena of the Bronze House) at Sparta, in the act of delivering his mother; on the chest of Cypselus, giving Achilles's armor to Thetis; and at Athens there was the famous statue of Hephaestus by Alcamenes, in which his physical disability was only subtly portrayed. He had almost "no cults except in Athens" and was possibly seen as a more approachable god to the city which shared her namesake. The Greeks frequently placed miniature statues of Hephaestus near their hearths, and these figures are the oldest of all his representations. During the best period of Grecian art he was represented as a vigorous man with a beard, and is characterized by his hammer or some other crafting tool, his oval cap, and the chiton.

Athena is sometimes thought to be the "soulmate" of Hephaestus. Nonetheless, he "seeks impetuously and passionately to make love to Athena: at the moment of climax she pushes him aside, and his semen falls to the earth where it impregnates Gaia."

In Athens, there is a Temple of Hephaestus, the Hephaesteum (miscalled the "Theseum") near the agora. An Athenian founding myth tells that the city's patron goddess, Athena, refused a union with Hephaestus. Pseudo-Apollodorus records an archaic legend, which claims that Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the dust, impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius, whom Athena adopted as her own child. The Roman mythographer Hyginus records a similar story in which Hephaestus demanded Zeus to let him marry Athena since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius. Nonnus refers to this tale of Erechthonius being born of the Earth after a "makeshift marriage", but says that Athena then nursed Erechthonius on her "manlike breast".