Vulcan+The+God+of+Fire


 * __ Vulcan: The God of Fire __**


 * __Background__**
 * HEPHAESTUS was the great Olympian god of fire, metalworking, and the art of sculpture. He was usually depicted as a bearded man holding hammer  and tongs (the tools of a blacksmith) and riding a donkey.
 * Vulcan’s name is used by Greek and Roman poets as the same with fire.
 * His oldest shrine in Rome is called “Volcanal.”

__**Family**__
 * He was the son of Zeus and Hera.
 * During this period he made the golden chair which he used to punish his mother for her want of affection, and from which he would not release her, till he was overcome by Dionysus.
 * Although Vulcan remembered the cruelty of his mother, he was always kind and respective to her, once, while she was fighting with Zeus, he took her side, and that offended his father so much, that he grabbed him by the leg, and threw him down from Olympus.
 * Hephaestus fell for the whole day, and finally at night he came down on the island of Lemnos, where he was taken in by the Sintians.
 * Later traditions state that he had no father, and that Hera gave birth to him without Zeus because she was jealous of Zeus having given birth to Athena without her. This, however, is different than a another story stating that Hephaestus split the head of Zeus, and assisted him in giving birth to Athena, for Hephaestus is there represented as older than Athena. A further development of the later tradition is, that Hephaestus sprang from the thigh of Hera, and, being for a long time kept in ignorance of his parentage, he at length had recourse to a stratagem, for the purpose of finding it out. He built a chair, which those who sat on it were strapped down, and having trapped Hera, he wouldn’t let her get up until she had told him who his parents were.


 * __Modern Correlations__**
 * The well known modern day mining company, Vulcan, was named after this god.
 * Other businesses named after this god include:
 * Vulcan Equipment, which is a company which specializes in restaurant items such as ranges and other "heating" kitchen elements. Because of the connection to fire and heat, the company's name works well for the god.
 * Vulcan Materials- This is a company which offers stone and construction materials; again, this connects well to the god because of his forge and other heavy manual labor tasks.
 * Volcano also comes from Roman mythology, obviously because of the fire and heat association.

[] http://www.wikipedia.org
 * __ Links- __**