stylistic:tone, structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:voice_change
Other lovers and children

According to most versions, Hephaestus's consort is Aphrodite, who is unfaithful to Hephaestus with a number of gods and mortals, including Ares (see Hephaestus and Aphrodite, above). However, some sources say that Hephaestus is married to one of the Charites. In Book XVIII of Homer 's Iliad, the consort of Hephaestus is Charis ("the grace"), with whom he lives in a bronze-wrought home on Olympus, a name used later in Nonnus 's Dionysiaca. However, Hesiod names the member of the Charites who is married to Hephaestus as Aglaea, and the Orphic Fragments compiled by Otto Kern say that by Hephaestus, Aglaea became mother of Eucleia ("Good Repute"), Eupheme ("Acclaim"), Euthenia ("Prosperity"), and Philophrosyne ("Welcome"). Some scholars conclude that these references refer to the same goddess under different names, although in the Dionysiaca both Aglaea and Charis appear as separate characters (Aglaea refers to Charis as a separate attendant of Aphrodite when speaking to Eros).

Károly Kerényi notes that "charis" also means "the delightfulness of art" and supposes that Aphrodite is viewed as a work of art, speculating that Aphrodite could also have been called Charis as an alternative name, for in the Odyssey Homer suddenly makes her his wife.

On the island of Lemnos, Hephaestus' consort was the sea nymph Cabeiro, by whom he was the father of two metalworking gods named the Cabeiri. In Sicily, his consort was the nymph Aetna, and his sons were two gods of Sicilian geysers called Palici, who are elsewhere called the sons of Zeus by Aetna, or of Zeus by Thalia (another daughter of Hephaestus), or of Adranos.

Hephaestus fathered several children with mortals and immortals alike. One of those children was the robber Periphetes.

In addition, the Romans claim their equivalent god, Vulcan, to have produced the following children: