VULCAN

In Mythology, the Latin name for the divinity called by the Greeks Hepha's tus, the god who presided over the working of metals. He was also called Buc- Mulciber. He was the son of Jupiter, who, Incensed at his interference on the part of his mother Juno, cast him out of heaven: he fell in the isle of Lemnos, and broke his leg in the fall. His feats as the patron of armourers and workers in metal, his marriage with Venus, and her infidelities, form the subjects of many of the best known cla ical stories. (See Bryant, Jinc. Myth, vi., 115.) There the the is about the character of Vulcan much of the usual confuarc sion belonging to Greek mythology. Cicero mentions three Vulcans, besides the son of Jupiter: one, the child of Uranus: another, of Nil us, who reigned in Egypl; a third, in of Ma-nalius. A peculiarity attending the worship of Vulcan was, that the victims were wholly consumed, in re [s. 1334]