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
The Birth-Mark he undertakes to perform unpleasant tasks in order to free Aylmer to 'cultivate delusions of transcendence'". Judith Fetterley suggests that "Aminadab symbolizes the earthly, physical, erotic self that has been split apart from Aylmer". Critic Evan Lang Pandya contends that Aminadab, whose characterization hearkens after that of the Greek god Hephaestus, represents pagan elements in Puritan New England culture. The Birth-Mark "The Birth-Mark" is a short story by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The tale examines obsession with human perfection. It was first published in the March 1843 edition of "The Pioneer" and later appeared in "Mosses from an Old Manse",