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
Sintians Sintians The Sintians (; ), "the Raiders, the Plunderers", from Ancient Greek "sinteis", "destructive") were known to the Greeks as pirates and raiders; they are also referred to as a Thracian people who once inhabited the area of Sintice and the island of Lemnos which was also called in ancient times "Sinteis". The Sintians worshipped Hephaestus. They are mentioned in Homer: in the "Iliad" as the folk who had tended Hephaestus in Lemnos after the lame smith god was let fall to earth; the Sintians “of wild speech” (ἀγριόφωνοι "agriophonoi") also appear in the "Odyssey"; in the tradition reported by