Hephaestus on Foot in the Ceramicus

In the following pages I offer a new explanation of an iconographic contradiction in the Attic red figure vase representations of a myth widely referred to as "The Return of Hephaestus." In rivalry with Zeus, who has born Athena from his head in a seeming act of sexual self-sufficiency, Hera has conceived Hephaestus in a miraculous act of parthenogenesis, but Hephaestus is born lame-not the fully formed male ally Hera sought in her rivalry with Zeus. Accordingly, Hera hurls her unfit offspring from heaven. Hephaestus in response provides his mother with a cunningly devised throne: once she sits in it she cannot rise. Hephaestus at first resists releasing her, but under the influence of Dionysus's wine, his resistance is broken. The Attic vases show Hephaestus, attended by Dionysus and his satyrs, en route to Olympus to set Hera free. In these scenes, Hephaestus most often rides a donkey in token of his lameness (he cannot walk), but on a significant number vases, he proceeds on foot. I argue that this iconographic inconsistency expresses psychological conflict: when Hephaestus rides, he acknowledges Zeus's superior authority (indeed Zeus once before punished Hephaestus for allying with Hera against him), but when Hephaestus walks, he becomes the son his mother hoped for, a fully formed adult who can, literally and figuratively, stand up to Zeus. In psychological terms, Hephaestus, a mythic representative of young men in the city itself, is negotiating a troubled passage to manhood expressed in mutually exclusive impulses that, under the aegis of Dionysus, finds open expression in the vase representations of the Return of Hephaestus.