Nurses and Caretakers of the Gods. Part II: Ares and Hephaistos.
(As always, if you know any more sourced versions, I'd love it if you let me know!!!) Part I here.
A quick overview of versions of his birth: he is almost universally the son of Zeus and Hera both (e.g. Hom. Il. 5.893, Hes. Th. 922–923; Apollod. 1.3.1), though he is also attested as solely born of Hera (in response to the birth of Athena after touching a prodigious flower from Olenos: Ovid. Fast. 5. 255), solely born of Zeus (after drinking the "male begetting" waters of the Nile: Schol. Aesch. Suppliant Women 855–856) or born of Enyo (Schol. Il. 5.156, Cornutus. Greek Theology. 21, see bellow, Enyo is curiously also attested as an epithet of Hera in Tzetzes ad Lycophron 493 and 519, perhaps in an attempt to reconcile both accounts). He is frequently said to have been born and/or raised in Thrace (e.g. Statius Thebaid 4.786). A fragment from a lost play by Aeschylus perhaps intends to paint a picture of his younger days:
DIKE: (...) Hera has reared a violent son whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to govern, an one whose mind knows no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with deadly arrows, and ruthlessly hacked ... with hooked spears ... he rejoiced and laughed ... evil ... scent of blood ... [Two lines unintelligible] ... is therefore justly called ..." (Aeschylus, Fragment 282. The passage likely seeks to etymologises the name Ares from ἀρή [bane, ruin, curse]) the vicious little psycho
1. Nursed by Thero (Beastly): "Of all the objects along this road the oldest is a sanctuary of Ares. This is on the left of the road, and the image is said to have been brought from Colchis by the Dioscuri. They surname him Theritas after Thero, who is said to have been the nurse of Ares. Perhaps it was from the Colchians that they heard the name Theritas, since the Greeks know of no Thero, nurse of Ares." (Paus. 3.19.7-8)
2. Nursed—among other things—by Enyo: "Accounts of Enyo differ; for some she is the mother of Ares, some his daughter, some his nurse" (Cornutus Compendium of Greek Theology, 21). Elsewhere she is also his sister (Quintus. Fall of Troy 424) or his lover, begetting Enyalios (Eustathius on Homer p.944) she is his everything, literally.
3. Raised and taught the arts of dance and war by Priapos (incredibly enough), a deity originally worshipped in the city of Lampsakos (in the northern Troad), who after spreading throughout the classical world was primarily known as a rustic god with massive genitals:
"According to a Bithynian legend, which agrees well with this Italian institution, Priapos, a war-like divinity (probably one of the Titans, or of the Idaean Dactyls, whose profession it was to teach the use of arms), was entrusted by Hera with the care of her son Ares, who even in childhood was remarkable for his courage and ferocity. Priapos would not put weapons into his hands till he had turned him out a perfect dancer; and he was rewarded by Hera with a tenth part of all Ares’s spoils." (Lucian. On Dance 21)
Versions of his birth are more or less split evenly between him being the son of both Zeus and Hera (e.g. Hom. Il. 1.578, 14.338, 18.396. Od. 8.312.) or solely of Hera (Hes. Theog. 929, Apollod. 1.3.5, Hygin. Fab. Praef.), likely in response to the birth of Athena, or else preceeding it due of an unexplained quarrel (Hes. Fragment 343 MW). Regarding detalis of his parthenogenic conception: "Hera, without any man, being lifted up by the wind gave birth to Hephaistos" (Lucian. De sacrificiis 6), and regarding details on the the birth, it's sometimes said to have been from her thigh (Serv. Aen. 8.454). A quaint tale that tries to reconcile both traditions (Schol.bT. Il. 14.296) claims that Zeus and Hera secretly slept together on the island of Samos before they were married. After being oficially given in marriage to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys, Hera bore Hephaistos, and to conceal their premarital dalliance she pretended that she'd birthed him without need of a father. To finish off, odd genealogies abound which I'm not really going to include, for example Paus. 8.53.5 or Cicero. De Nat. Deor. 3.22.
1. In most accounts he's raised for nine years by Thetis and Eurynome, after being thrown off Olympos at birth by Hera for being lame (main source is Hom. Il. 18.394-405):
"She [Thetis] saved me when I suffered much at the time of my great fall through the will of my own brazen-faced mother, who wanted to hide me for being lame. Then my soul would have taken much suffering had not Eurynome and Thetis caught me and held me, Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, whose stream bends back in a circle. With them I worked nine years as a smith, and wrought many intricate things; pins that bend back, curved clasps, cups, necklaces, working there in the hollow of the cave, and the stream of Okeanos around us went on forever with its foam and its murmur. No other among the gods or among mortal men knew about us except Eurynome and Thetis. They knew since they saved me." (Trans. Lattimore)
I ship them. Many later accounts confuse both versions of his fall (see below), and so sometimes Thetis and Eurynome recieve him after he's hurled off Olympus by Zeus, presumably as an adult (e.g. Apollod. 1.3.5). Also a variation is found where Hephaestus is raised by Thetis and the rest of the Nereids:
"But my son Hephaestus whom I
bare was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and disgrace to me in
heaven, whom I myself took in my hands and cast out so that he fell in the great sea. But silver-shod
Thetis the daughter of Nereus took and cared for him with her sisters: would that she had done other
service to the blessed gods!" (Homeric Hymn 3. 311-330)
2. According to the other main variant of his fall, Hephaistos is hurled off Olympos by Zeus after he tries to intervene on his mother's behalf during one of their quarrels (Homer, Iliad 1. 568), presumably to save her from a beating (Plato, Republic 378d), or specifically to free her after she'd been chained and hung from heaven (eg. Apollod. 1.3.5). In this version he falls on the island of Lemnos, and is nursed back to health by the tribe of Sintians (V. Fl. Argonautica. 2.8.5, Hom. Il. 1.590 is quoted below):
"There was a time once before now I was minded to help you [Hera], and he [Zeus] caught me by the foot and threw me from the magic threshold, and all day long I dropped helpless, and about sunset I landed in Lemnos, and there was not much life left in me. After that fall it was the Sintian men who took care of me." (Trans. Lattimore)
As mentioned before both versions were frequently mixed up, being basically doubles of eachother (either Hephaistos is cast out because he's lame or lame because he's cast out), so sometimes he is raised as a child by the Sintians (e.g. Serv. ad. Eclog. 4.62, where he is cast out by Jupiter because Juno rejects him at birth, and so comes to fall on Lemnos).
3. Finally, there is a version where he is entrusted by Hera to the obscure Kedalion, a daimon who had his workshop on the island of Naxos. Hephaistos apprenticed and learnt to work bronze under his tutelage (Eustathius ad Homer, Il. 14.296a). Elsewhere Kedalion is an assistant in Hephaistos' workshop, who is given as a guide to the blind giant Orion so that, standing on his shoulders, he may lead him to the Sun and be healed (Serv. Aen. 10.763, Ps. Eratosthenes. Catast. fr. 32, Orion = Hes. Ast. fr 4, Hyg. Ast. 2.34.3, Sophocles also told this tale in a lost satyr play that bore Kedalion's name).
4. (Edit) Not necessarily raising, but I thought the detail of the Kyklopes teaching him and Athena "all crafts, as many as the skies contain" is really cute (Orphic Fragment 179 Kern)
