Book XVIII

.

Vulcan willingly consented to make the armor as Thetis requested, for she had been his friend and had protected him in his infancy, when his mother Juno threw him out of heaven into the sea. Juno did this because Vulcan was not a good-looking child. He was, in fact, so ugly that his mother could not bear the sight of him, and so she cast him out of Olympus. But Thetis and her sister Eu-ryn'o-me received him in their arms as he fell, and for nine years they nursed and took care of him in their father's palace beneath the waves. Gladly, therefore, Vulcan set to work at the request of his old friend. In his workshop were immense furnaces, and he had plenty of precious material in store.

Upon the fire He laid impenetrable brass, and tin, And precious gold and silver; on its block Placed the huge anvil, took the ponderous sledge, And held the pincers in the other hand.

BRYANT, _Iliad_,