o this temple was
guarded by dogs, which possessed the extraordinary faculty of being able to
discriminate between the righteous and the unrighteous, fawning upon and
caressing the good, whilst they rushed upon all evil-doers and drove them
away.

Hephaestus is usually represented as a powerful, brawny, and very muscular
man of middle height and mature age; his strong uplifted arm is raised in
the act of striking the anvil with a hammer, which he holds in one hand,
whilst with the other he is turning a thunderbolt, which an eagle beside
him is waiting to carry to Zeus. The principal seat of his worship was the
island of Lemnos, where he was regarded with peculiar veneration.

VULCAN.

The Roman Vulcan was merely an importation from Greece, which never at any
time took firm root in Rome, nor entered largely into the actual life and
sympathies of the nation, his worship being unattended by the devotional
feeling and enthusiasm which characterized the religious rites of the other
deities. He still, however, retained in Rome his {101} Greek attributes as
god of fire, and unrivalled master of the art of working in metals, and was
ranked among the twelve great gods of Olympus, whose gilded statues were
arranged consecutively along the Forum. His Roman name, Vulcan, would seem
to indicate a connection with the first great metal-working artificer of
Biblical history, Tubal-Cain.

POSEIDON (NEPTUNE).

Poseidon was the son of Kronos and Rhea, and the brother of Zeus. He was
god of the sea, more particularly of the Mediterranean, and, like the
element over which he presided, was of a variable disposition, now
violently agitated, and now calm and placid, for which reason he is
sometimes represented by the poets as quiet and composed, and at others as
disturbed and angry.

[Illustration]

In the earliest ages of Greek mythology, he merely symbolized the watery
element; but in later times, as navigation and intercourse with other
nations engendered greater traffic by sea, Poseidon gained in importance,
and came to be regarded as a distinct divinity, holding indisputable
dominion over the sea, and over all sea-divinities, who acknowledged him as
their sovereign ruler. He possessed the power of causing at will, mighty
and destructive tempests, in which the billows rise mountains high, the
wind becomes a hurricane, land and sea being enveloped in thick mists,
whilst destruction assails the unfortunate mariners exposed to their f