Hephæstia

, the capital town of Lemnos.――A festival in honour of Vulcan ( Ἡφαιστος ) at Athens. There was then a race with torches between three young men. Each in his turn ran a race with a lighted torch in his hand, and whoever could carry it to the end of the course before it was extinguished, obtained the prize. They delivered it one to the other after they finished their course, and from that circumstance we see many allusions in ancient authors who compare the vici itudes of human affairs to this delivering of the torch, particularly in these lines of Lucretius bk. 2 : Inque brevi spatio mutantur sæcla animantum, Et quasi cursores vita i lampad a tradunt.