Homeric Hymn 20: To Hephaestus

About the Poem

The twentieth Homeric Hymn is a complete 8-line hymn to Hephaestus, the divine smith and craftsman. Like Hymn 11’s Athena, this hymn presents Hephaestus in his civilizing role: together with bright-eyed Athena, he taught humanity the crafts — the skills of metalwork, pottery, weaving, and building — that lifted human beings from lives like wild beasts in mountain caves to peaceful, comfortable existence in their own houses throughout the year.

This is one of the hymn collection’s clearest statements of the Promethean/Hephaestean theology of civilization: the idea that fire, craft, and technology are divine gifts that separate humans from animals and make civilized life possible. The same idea appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days (the Prometheus myth) and Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound (where Prometheus/fire/craft civilization is the central theme).

Complete Text

Greek (Homeric)

Ἥφαιστον κλυτόμητιν ἀείδεο, Μοῦσα λίγεια, ὃς μετ’ Ἀθηναίης γλαυκώπιδος ἀγλαὰ ἔργα ἀνθρώπους ἐδίδαξεν ἐπὶ χθονός, οἳ τὸ πάρος περ ἄντρεσιν ναιετάασκον ἐν οὔρεσι θηρσὶν ὁμοῖοι· νῦν δὲ δι’ Ἥφαιστον κλυτοτέχνην ἔργα δαέντες ῥηιδίως αἰῶνα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν εὐκήλως ἐν δώμασιν ἰδίοισι νέμονται. ἀλλ’ ἵληθι, Ἥφαιστε· δίδου δ’ ἀρετήν τε καὶ ὄλβον.

(Full Greek text at Perseus Digital Library, link below.)

English (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914 — public domain)

[1] Sing, clear-voiced Muses, of Hephaestus famed for inventions. With bright-eyed Athene he taught men glorious gifts throughout the world, — men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round.

Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me success and prosperity!

Hephaestus and Athena: The Craft Partnership

The pairing of Hephaestus and Athena as joint teachers of civilization appears elsewhere in Greek tradition. In Athens, both were worshipped at the Hephaisteion (the temple overlooking the Agora) and shared a festival called the Hephaistheia. In Plato’s Protagoras (320c–322a), Protagoras’ myth gives Hephaestus and Athena credit for giving humans craft and fire — the gifts that allow civilization — while Prometheus is the vehicle of delivery.

The description of humans before craft as “dwelling in caves like wild beasts” (ἄντρεσιν ναιετάασκον θηρσὶν ὁμοῖοι) reflects a theory of human prehistory as gradual progress from animal-like existence through the acquisition of technology — a remarkably proto-anthropological conception for archaic Greek thought.

Hephaestus: The Lame God

Hephaestus is the only Olympian deity with a physical disability — he is lame, having been thrown from Olympus either by his mother Hera (who was ashamed of him) or by Zeus in a quarrel. His lameness embodies a paradox: the most unattractive of the gods produces the most beautiful objects — the armor of Achilles, the palaces of Olympus, the automata (golden maidens and bellows-operated tripods) described in Iliad XVIII. Craft and beauty are born from physical limitation.

Citations

• Evelyn-White, H. G. (trans.). Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Loeb Classical Library 57. Harvard University Press, 1914. Public domain. https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomericHymns3.html
• Plato, Protagoras 320c–322a (Protagoras’ myth of Hephaestus, Athena, and civilization). Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0178:text=Prot.:page=320
• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (fire/craft and civilization). Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0015
• Perseus Digital Library, Homeric Hymns (Greek text): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0137:hymn=20