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For the lofty palace shone aloft in the sun, with walls of plated brass, from the threshold to the innermost chamber, and the doors were of silver and gold. And on each side of the doorway sat living dogs of gold, who never grew old or died, so well Hephaistus had made them in his forges in smoking Lemnos, and gave them to Alcinous to guard his gates by night.
But Daidalos came safe to Sicily, and there wrought many a wondrous work: for he made for King Cocalus a reservoir, from which a great river watered all the land, and a castle and a treasury on a mountain, which the giants themselves could not have stormed; and in Selinos he took the steam which comes up from the fires of AEtna and made of it a warm bath of vapor, to cure the pains of mortal men; and he made a honeycomb of gold, in which the bees came and stored their honey; and in Egypt he made the fore-court of the temple of Hephaistus, in Memphis, and a statue of himself within it, and many another wondrous work.
All that night, in the house of the Immortals, resounded the clang of hammer on anvil as Hephaistus, the lame god, fashioned new arms for Achilles. Bronze and silver and gold he threw in his fire, and golden handmaidens helped their master to wield the great bellows, and to send on the crucibles blasts that made the ruddy flames dance.
No fairer shield was ever borne by man than that which Hephaistus made for Achilles. For him also he wrought a corslet brighter than a flame of fire, and a helmet with a golden crest. And in the morning light did Thetis dart down from snowy Olympus, bearing in her arms the splendid gift of a god.
Fire was everywhere in the East a sacred symbol though it cannot be implicitly believed that the Vulcan or Hephaistus of the Greeks has his prototype or original in the Egyptian Phta or Phtas. The Jews themselves connected the element with their true Deity. It is in fire that Jehovah reveals himself.
But Theseus came on steadily, and asked, "And what is your name among men, bold spider? and where are your spider's fangs?" Then the strange man laughed again, "My name is Periphetes, the son of Hephaistus and Anticleia the mountain nymph. But men call me Corynetes the club-bearer; and here is my spider's fang." And he lifted from off the stones at his side a mighty club of bronze.
Hadrian mourned for Antinous with unspeakable pain and "womanly tears." Now he was Achilles by the corpse of Patroklus, or Alexander by the pyre of the dead Hephaistus. He had the youth splendidly buried in Besa. This most extraordinary intermezzo of all Nile journeys supplied dying heathendom with a new god, and art with its last ideal form.
"Bold fly, know you not that these glens are the web from which no fly ever finds his way out again, and this down the spider's house, and I the spider who suck the flies? Come hither, and let me feast upon you, for it is of no use to run away, so cunning a web has my father Hephaistus spread for me, when he made these clefts in the mountains, through which no man finds his way home."
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