Hephaestus make love to Athena: at the moment of climax she pushes him aside, and his semen falls to the earth where it impregnates Gaia." Hephaestus was associated by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus (of Mount Etna) and Vulcanus of the Lipari islands. The first-century sage Apollonius of Tyana is said to have observed, "there are many other mountains all over the earth that are on fire, and yet we should never be done with it if we assigned to them giants and gods like Hephaestus". In the Trojan war, Hephaestus sided with the Greeks, but
Hephaestus was based in Lemnos. Hephaestus' symbols are a smith's hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs. Hephaestus is probably associated with the Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscription , "A-pa-i-ti-jo", found at Knossos; the inscription indirectly attests his worship at that time because it is believed that it reads the theophoric name "Haphaistios" or "Haphaistion". The name of the god in Greek ("Hēphaistos") has a root which can be observed in names of places of Pre-Greek origin, like Phaistos ("Pa-i-to" in Linear B). Hephaestus is given many epithets. The meaning of each epithet is: Hephaestus had his own palace on Olympus,