Hephaestus is the god of fire, the lame craftsman of Olympus. It was he who built the homes of the gods; but his skill was especially shown in the wondrous works he wrought in gold and silver. Such were the mixing-bowl which Phaedimus, the Sidonian king, gave to Menelaus;[29] wonderful automata, twenty golden tripods, which on occasion would go of their own accord to the assemblage of the gods and then return;[30] or the gold and silver dogs which guarded the palace of Alcinous.[31] Still more marvellous were the golden maidens endowed with reason, speech, and cunning knowledge, which supported their maker as he limped from his forge to his chair;[32] and above all the splendid armor wrought for Achilles.[33] Poseidon, the brother of Zeus, has as his special province the sea; but he appears on Olympus at the councils of the gods. In the Iliad he supports the Achaeans vigorously; no doubt from anger at the Trojans whose king Laomedon had once cheated him of the pay which was his due for building the walls of Troy;[34] in the Odyssey, angry at the blinding of his son, Polyphemus, he holds Odysseus far from Ithaca, until at last the Phaeacians bring him home. Then in wrath he turns their vessel into stone.[35] Such in brief are the eight great gods of the Homeric poems. Of these Zeus is easily the first, but in the first rank also are Athena and Apollo; Hera and Poseidon hold a second place; and Hephaestus, Ares, and Aphrodite belong to the third class. Many other divinities there are, but all of lesser rank, like Hermes whose duties are those of a higher servant or messenger. He is sent to escort King Priam to the tent of Achilles to ransom Hector’s body,[36] and he is despatched to Calypso’s isle to bid her let Odysseus go.[37] There are some indications that he is already the patron of thieves, as he is of servants. Dionysus and Demeter, so prominent in later Greece, have not yet won a place in the Olympic circle. There is no hint in the epics of the mysteries and the orgiastic cults which were afterwards of great significance. Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, holds as his realm the dark abode of the dead, where he reigns with Persephone as queen. His murky kingdom is now represented as beneath the earth, again as far out on the bounds of Oceanus. But Hades takes no active part in either poem. Besides these there is a host of divinities, some named but most unnamed, who cause all the phenomena of the visible world. In fact, the Homeric man could not conceive of a natural world obeying laws whose operation was fixed; on the contrary, he could only think of animated beings as the causes of all events. For him every occurrence was the manifestation of the will of some divinity; the natural and the miraculous were one.