Caught in His Own Net: Hephaestus, Aphrodite and Ares

Hephaestus was cast down from Olympus for his deformity and labours at his forge beneath a volcano. That same forge produces the craft that gives him his most famous act of revenge. In the Odyssey, the bard Demodocus sings of Hephaestus's marriage to Aphrodite and of the god Ares, who becomes her lover behind Hephaestus's back. Warned by Helios, who sees everything from the sky, Hephaestus does not confront the pair directly. He forges chains finer than a spider's web, invisible and unbreakable, and rigs them around his own marriage bed before pretending to leave for Lemnos. Ares and Aphrodite, believing themselves alone, are caught fast the moment they lie down together, unable to move. Hephaestus summons the other gods to witness the humiliation rather than punishing the pair by force, and Homer's telling turns the episode into open laughter among the gods rather than tragedy, Poseidon eventually persuading Hephaestus to release the pair. The scene is often read as comic entertainment within its own poem, but it is also the fullest surviving picture of Hephaestus using the one weapon no other god commands, his own smithcraft, to answer betrayal with cleverness rather than strength.