Vulcan (mythology)
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Vulcan (in Latin, Volcānus, Volchanus, Volkanus) is the Roman god of fire, as well as patron of the trades related to ovens in the religion of Ancient Rome. It comes from the oldest phase of Roman religion; in fact, Marco Terencio Varrón pointed out, citing the Annales pontificum , that King Tito Tacio had dedicated altars to a series of divinities among which was Vulcan.
The direction of his cult corresponded to the Flamen Vulcanalis and his festival was on August 23, the date on which the Vulcanalia were celebrated. His main temple in Rome was the Volcanal, located on the Roman Forum. His cult in the city of Ostia was also particularly relevant.
Over time, Vulcan underwent a process of identification with the Greek god Hephaestus until, in the classical period, he assimilated his characteristics. For this reason, his genealogy in the Latin tradition is complicated. According to the different versions of the myth, he has been considered the father of Céculo, Caco, Servio Tulio, Jupiter and Perifetes; son of Juno and Jupiter; and lover of the slave Ocresia and the goddesses Maya, Mayesta, Fortuna and Feronia.
Etymology
The etymology of its name is unclear. Terence Varro, in De lingua latina, maintained that it came from some Latin terms related to lightning (fulgere, fulgur, fulmen), which, in a way, is related to fire. It is common to find his name accompanied by three epithets: Mulciber (qui ignem mulcet) –“he who softens metals”– and Quietus and Mitis –both mean "calm"– which were used to try to win the favor of the god by avoiding his destructive action, for example, in fires.
Until the middle of the XX century, it was not thought to be a Latin word. The first etymological explanations of his name were given for phonetic reasons: Arthur Bernard Cook, a specialist in the history of religions, related it to the Cretan Velkhanos, god of nature and the underworld; a theory that was refuted by the linguist specializing in Indo-European Wolfgang Meid in 1961. In 1994, the French author Gérard Capdeville recovered this etymological possibility after finding a continuity between Velkhanos and the Etruscan Velchans: in this case, the Minoan god would be a young deity, lord of fire and companion of the Goddess Mother. Another hypothesis is that of the linguist and mythographer Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h, who proposed to relate it to the Irish anthroponym Olcán (in ogamic spelling, Ulccagni, in genitive).
For his part, the Soviet linguist Vasili Abáyev compared it to the Ossetian Wærgon, a variant name of Kurdalægon, a mythological blacksmith from the Nart saga. In this regard, the French philologist Georges Dumézil pointed out that the form Kurdalægon is stable and has the meaning of "blacksmith of the Alaeg family" (kurd, "blacksmith" + -on "of the family" + Alaeg, name of one of Nartic families), but considered Abáyev's theory unacceptable, since although Kurdalægon and Wærgon are the name of the same god, the latter form has only been found recorded once. That is, according to Dumézil, the fact that the form Kurdalægon is frequent and that Wærgon is the exception suggests that Abáyev's theory is wrong.
Nature
The true nature of the god is not precisely known because, on the one hand, his origins are not clear, as is the case with the etymology of his name, and on the other, in the classical period, Vulcan assimilated the characteristics of the Greek god Hephaestus. In a general way, it can be affirmed that Vulcano was the god of fire but also of the elaboration of metals. In Crete Velkhanos, god of nature and the underworld, was venerated. The possibility has been raised that Vulcan came from Crete, from the eastern Mediterranean through Etruria, so his original nature would be that of Velkhanos.
According to Georges Dumézil, the true nature of Vulcan was explained by the theory of the three fires of the Vedas, which proposed that three bonfires should be lit to celebrate a sacrifice. One was known as "fire of the master of the house", represented the subject who made the sacrifice and served to light the other fires. Another was the "fire of offerings," which carried the sacrifice to the gods through smoke. The last was the "fire of the defense" or "fire from the right" or "from the south", which was situated on the edge of the area destined for sacrifice and served as a bulwark against the attack of evil spirits. Dumézil noted that this tradition was also preserved in Rome, where the first two fires represented Vesta while the third was Vulcan. In this way, Vulcan would constitute the fire that devours and destroys, directed towards hostile powers. This theory answered the question that Plutarch asked himself, that is, why the temples of Vulcano had to be built outside or on the outer limit of the walls, as is the case, for example, of the Volcanal. In addition, he also managed to explain why Vulcano was given the weapons and the remains of the enemy taken from the battlefield, which were burned to be annihilated; He was also given the weapons of the survivors of the Devotio.
Vulcano is the patron of the trades related to ovens, such as cooks, bakers and pastry chefs. There are written records of this patronage in Plautus; in Apuleius, when the cook appeared at the wedding of Amor and Psyche; and in the Vespa poem present in the Latin Anthology, which narrated a contest between a baker and a cook.
Genealogy
Vulcano has been attributed the paternity of some characters of the Roman and Latin tradition: Céculo, the founder of Præneste; Caco, an archaic and monstrous being that lived in the area of Rome, and Servius Tullius, the penultimate king of Rome.
Cato, in his work Origins, affirmed that some virgins who had gone to look for water found Céculo in the middle of the fire and for this reason it was thought that he was the son of Vulcan. in the Aeneid to Vulcan as the father of Ceculus and Cacus. On the other hand, Ovid recounted in the Fasti that Servius Tullius had been conceived by the slave Ochresia, who she had sat on a phallus that had appeared in a bonfire. According to the text, Vulcan recognized his paternity by making a fire surround the child's head without harming him.Pliny the Elder narrated the same story, but attributing the paternity of Servius Tullius to the family hearth, instead of to Vulcan.
The Roman religion researcher Jacqueline Champeaux and the professor of History of Rome at the University of Verona Attilio Mastrocinque supported the hypothesis that Vulcan is the unknown god who in the oldest Latin mythology had impregnated a virgin and mother goddess, which corresponded to the Rhea of the Greek religion, the goddess Fortuna in the city of Præneste and the goddess Feronia in the city of Anxur. In such a case, Vulcan would have been the father of Jupiter.
When comparing the various mythological accounts, the archaeologist Andrea Carandini considered that Caco and Caca were the sons of Vulcano and a local deity or virgin, in the same way as Céculo. According to Carandini, Caco and Caca represented, respectively, metallurgical fire and domestic fire, projections of Vulcano and Vesta. These mythological accounts would go back to the pre-urban period of Latium and would establish a double genealogy: on the divine level, Vulcan impregnated a virgin goddess and fathered Jupiter, the divine sovereign; on the human plane, Vulcan impregnated a local virgin, probably a princess, and fathered a chief. The first attestation of a ritual association between Vulcan and Vesta dates back to the lectisternium of 217 BC. C. Other clues that seem to confirm this link are the proximity between the two sanctuaries and the affirmation of Dionysus of Halicarnassus that both cults had been introduced in Rome by Tito Tacio to fulfill a vow that he had made in battle.
Vulcan is also related to two ancient female divinities, Stata Mater, who is probably the goddess who stops fires, and Maya, whose name according to the Hellenist H. J. Rose derived from the root MAG, so it should be interpreted as the goddess who controlled growth, perhaps that of the crops. Macrobius made reference to the opinion of Cincio to defend that Vulcan's companion was Maya, justifying this statement based on the fact that the flamen Vulcanalis made a sacrifice to Maya during the calendas of May; while according to Piso the companion of the god was not Maya but Mayesta Finally, Gelio also associated Vulcan and Maya, based on the prayer books that were used in his time.
Worship and presence
The cult of Vulcan was assigned to the lesser flamen, called Flamen Vulcanalis. Its presence and importance varied according to the territory.
Temples in Rome: the Volcanal and the temple of Circo Flaminio
The main and oldest temple of Vulcan in Rome was the Volcanale, located in the area Volcani, an open-air area at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, in the northwestern corner of the Roman Forum, where an altar dedicated to the god and a perennial fire were located. According to Roman tradition, Romulus made the Vulcanal and there he placed a bronze chariot for Vulcan, a war trophy won after the defeat of the Fideneans sixteen years after the founding of Rome —although according to Plutarch the war in question was against Cameria—. Romulus also placed a statue of himself with an inscription written in Greek characters that included a list of his successes. In this last statue, according to Plutarch, Romulus was crowned by the goddess Victoria. In addition, the king would have planted in the sanctuary a sacred lotus tree, which still existed in the time of Pliny the Elder and was said to be as old as the city itself. The temple has been hypothesized to date back to the time when the Forum was still outside of the city. Tito Livio mentions the Volcanal twice in connection with some strange rains of blood, the first in 183 BC. C. and the second in 181 a. C.
The area Volcani, probably a locus substructus, that is, a place built underground, was located five meters higher than the Comitium due to the morphology of the land at that time. For this reason it was the place from which the king and the magistrates of the first Republic spoke to the people before the rostra were built. In the Volcanal there was also a statue in bronze by Horace Cocles, which had been transferred there from the Comitium, an inferior locus, that is, an underground place, after having been struck by lightning. According to Aulo Gelio, that the lightning struck the statue meant that the Romans had to expiate guilt before the gods with sacrifices. For this reason they called some Etruscan augurs to analyze the event and find out how to act, but these, moved by their hatred towards the Romans, advised them to move the statue to a lower place, where the sunlight would never reach. Evidently, the augurs advised the Romans the opposite of what they really believed they had to do, which was to place the statue in a higher place. When the Romans discovered the deception, the augurs were executed and the statue was transferred to the area Volcani, which, indeed, is located at a higher altitude. In the Volcani area, Gnaeus Flavius built a temple to Concordia. Little by little, as the archaeologist Samuele Ball Platner pointed out, the Volcanal was surrounded by buildings until it was completely covered by new constructions. Despite all these new buildings, a dedication by Augustus from the year 9 B.C. C. shows that on that date the Volcanal was still a place of worship for the Romans.
At the beginning of the XX century, remains of foundations built in volcanic tuff were found behind the Arch of Septimius Severus and probably they belonged to the Volcanal, as well as the remains of a kind of rocky platform 3.95 meters long and 2.80 meters wide, which had been covered with cement and painted red. Its upper surface was undermined with small channels and in front of it were found the remains of a drainage channel made of tuff ballast. The hypothesis was raised that it was the altar of Vulcano. The rock showed signs of damage and repairs and on the surface there were some round and out-of-square cavities that bore a certain resemblance to tombs and have been considered as such by some authors. The German archaeologist Friedrich Von Duhn, after the discovery of ancient cremation tombs in the Forum, defended that the Volcanal was originally the place where corpses were burned.
Another temple to Vulcan was also erected before 215 BC. C. in the Field of Mars, in the Circus Flaminio where the games were held in his honor during the Vulcanalia. Vitruvius stated that the Etruscan augurs also prescribed in their books that the temples to Vulcan be built outside the walls of the cities to prevent the fire from going towards the houses.
Worship in Ostia
In Ostia, the cult of Vulcan was the most important in the city, as was its priest, called Pontifex Volcani et Aedium Sacrarum, who had control of all the sacred buildings in Ostia. the city and granted or denied permission for the erection of statues dedicated to oriental divinities. Vulcan's pontiff was appointed for life, probably by the board of decurions, and his position corresponded to that of the highest pontiff of Rome. Likewise, he was the highest position in the administrative career of the city of Ostia. In fact, he was chosen from people who had already held public office at the city or imperial level. The Vulcan pontiff was the only authority that had a certain number of assistants, more specifically, three praetors and two or three aediles, religious positions that, although they shared the name with the civil positions of praetor and aedile, had different functions. Based on a fragmentary inscription found at Annaba, the ancient Hippo Regius, the writer Suetonius is considered likely to have held the office of Pontifex Volcani.
Vulcano in other territories
There are other references to Vulcan outside of Rome. Thanks to Strabo, it is known that in Pozzuoli there was an area called Agora of Hephaestus in Greek (Forum Volcanoes in Latin), a plain characterized by numerous outlets of volcanic steam, where the Solfatara is located. Pliny the Elder indicated that in the vicinity of Modena fire came out of the earth on the days dedicated to Vulcano.
Vulcanalia
The festivity dedicated to the god was the Vulcanalia, which was celebrated on August 23, that is, the tenth day before the Kalends of September. That day the Ludi Piscatorii were held, games in honor of Vulcano that were carried out by the fishermen of the Tiber on the bank of the river opposite the city. In the festivities, live minnows that had been caught in the river were sacrificed in the fire of the Volcanal, in substitution of human souls. It also seems to be a tradition of the day that people hung their clothing and cloth in the sun. According to Dumézil, this ritual practice could reflect a theological link between Vulcan and the Sun god. Another common practice was to start working with the light of a candle, probably in an attempt to make beneficial use of the fire linked to the god.
Regarding the date of August 23, the historian Apiano recounted how on August 23, 153 B.C. C. the first confrontation took place between the Roman army, under the command of Quinto Fulvio Nobilior, and the Celtiberian army of Segedenses and Numantinos under the command of Caro de Segeda. The result of this first battle was favorable to the Celtiberians and since then Rome declared this day as disastrous and they decided to avoid fighting on that date. Since 2002, in the Aragonese municipality of Mara, the ancient Segeda, a recreation of that historic battle, called, precisely, Vulcanalia.
Identification with Hephaestus
Vulcan was assimilated to the Greek god Hephaestus and assumed his characteristics. In the Classical Age he also acquired his genealogy; he began to be considered the son of Jupiter and Juno and the husband of Venus. Already the poet Lucio Accio in his Philocteta Lemnius called Lemnos, the island of Hephaestus, with the nickname of Vulcania.
In the Aeneid, Virgil mixed archaic Roman themes with other Hellenistic ones: on the one hand, Vulcan identified himself with the fury of the fire that burns ships or with the sparks that flash in the torches following the Roman tradition, and on the other, he was identified with the Greek god Hephaestus by being called "the god of Lemnos". The same work also revealed another Hellenizing episode in which the goddess Venus seduced Vulcan to convince him to supply Aeneas with weapons. The god accepted and ran to the island of Lipari under which the Cyclops forged weapons for the gods.. Vulcan ordered them to stop work and devote themselves entirely to making weapons for Aeneas, among which was a shield on which the main events of Roman history from Romulus to Augustus were engraved.
Also in Ovid there was a similar mix between Roman and Greek myth: in The Metamorphoses, Vulcan was associated with the violence of fire and with the flames that came out of the noses of mythological bulls that Jason had to fight to obtain the golden fleece, themes of Roman origin; while later the paternity of Perifetes, son of Hephaestus, was attributed to him.
In the Latin literature of the third century, Vulcan was already fully identified with Hephaestus. This is the case of De concubitu Martis et Veneris by Reposiano, a poem contained in the Latin Anthology, which recounts the Homeric episode of the discovery of the betrayal of Venus by Mars. That is, the Greek myth was narrated with the only exception that the gods received their Roman name instead of the original Greek. Vulcan's unity with Hephaestus remained in the following centuries. It is recognizable, for example, in the numerous representations of Vulcano in the art of the Renaissance and in the art of the Modern Age such as La forge of Vulcano, a painting by Diego Velázquez (1630) or in some works burlesque epic of Italian literature such as La rete di Vulcano by Ferrante Pallavicino, published in 1640 or the work with the same title by Domenico Luigi Batacchi, published in 1812. In all of them the Greek myth is recounted. of Aphrodite's infidelity to Hephaestus.
Vulcano in Alabama
In the 20th century, the American city of Birmingham erected a cast-iron statue of Vulcan that stands on the top of the Red Mountain ("Red Mountain"), inside the Vulcan Park, from which you can see the city. It measures seventeen meters, and is located on a 38-meter pedestal, in such a way that it constitutes the largest cast iron statue in the world and has become a symbol of the city.
It is the work of Giuseppe Moretti (1857-1935), an Italian sculptor, who designed it for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition as a symbol of the city's industrial activity. Following the event, she was returned to Birmingham. In 1936 it was placed in its current location. Over the years the statue began to show signs of deterioration and, above all, rust formation, so between October and November 1999 it was disassembled into several pieces and subjected to a restoration financed by the community. The disassembly operation was made difficult by the presence of the cement that had been placed on the legs of the statue to stabilize it. The restoration project received an award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2006. Following the restoration, the statue was returned to its place in 2003, and in the centenary year of 2004, Vulcan Park reopened. to the public.
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