Annis Wiltshire is a 20-year-old undergrad studying Classics at Wadham College, University of Oxford. Although their main research interests revolve around the Roman Republic, their involvement in work for disability and neurodiversity awareness and accessibility has led them to an interest in disability studies across the whole field of Classics.
To the ancient Greeks, the anthropomorphised gods represented the epitome of human form. They were considered physically perfect, divinely created to a sublimity which transcends human conceptualisation. As one of the Olympians, Hephaestus is defined by this characteristic of divine beauty, just as he is defined by his skills of craft as the god of blacksmithing, craftsmanship, and technology. However, the physical characteristic of Hephaestus that is often focused on – both in ancient literature and its reception – is his disability. He is generally depicted with impaired mobility, the specifics of which are usually not described in great detail. The most common depiction is Hephaestus with a limp or as lame, and as a result, his associated anthropomorphic form strays from the conventional standards of beauty of the time. But as a god, Hephaestus still possesses the divinely perfect form. If the sublime beauty of the gods is considered an entirely objective truth, the divinity and perfection of Hephaestus’ beauty cannot be negated by his disability. His disability is perfection and a paragon of human form, just as the non-disabilities of the other gods are. As a result, what turns his disability into an imperfection is not a natural law which sets the able body up as ‘perfect’ or ‘neutral’. Instead, it is the societal framework that prioritises certain physical and cognitive abilities as the ideal form.
The gods can be considered in two forms – their divine ‘true’ form, and their mortal disguised form. The divine form of the gods was considered their true, eternal, and idealized state. In this, they were ageless, immortal, and possessing physical perfection. They were considered to possess an otherworldly beauty that transcended the limitations of mortal existence. The mortal body was employed by the gods in the event that they needed to interact with mortals, as, in most mythic traditions, their divine forms were so powerful that they would cause the death of a mortal who viewed it, such as in the death of Semele when she is tricked into forcing Zeus to show her his true divine form. This distinction between the forms of the gods leads us to question in what form Hephaestus’ disability can be located. Is it a part of his abstract divine form or is it a part of his tangible mortal form? If Hephaestus’ disability is considered a part of his divine form, it becomes an intrinsic feature of his divinity – the divine form is the true form, and for that idealised and transcendent form for Hephaestus is a disabled one. If Hephaestus’ disability is an element of his mortal form, it is an active presentation of the divine beauty of the gods at a level which mortals can understand, and that happens to be a form which includes a disability.
However, this entire line of questioning is undermined by the fact that it conforms to the binary that originates with Émile Durkheim’s sacred-profane dichotomy – a concept which does not effectively map onto Ancient Greek religion. The sacred-profane dichotomy argues for a clear distinction between the ‘sacred’ which is everything divine and transcendent, and the ‘profane’ which is the ordinary, mundane, and secular. Other thinkers such as Jack Goody have pointed out that this binary perspective which clearly distinguishes between these two elements is specific to a strand of Western thought informed predominantly by Christianity. Many religions – including the Ancient Greeks – did not have such a binary and mutually exclusive conception of the divine and the mortal.
This can be exemplified if we begin to attempt to locate Hephaestus’ disability within the restraints of the sacred-profane dichotomy. As there is no reference to Hephaestus appearing to a human in a mortal disguise, we must look at Hephaestus’ aetiology myths in order to locate his disability. In one strand of Hephaestus’ origin myths, he is cast from Olympus and his fall to the human world is what causes his disability. By following the sacred-profane dichotomy, Hephaestus’ disability is a direct element of his mortal form as it occurs when he interacts with the mortal world. However, the issue can be seen clearly here – the gods do not become mortal when they manifest in the human world, they retain their divine nature and are just disguised to conform to the mortal world.
It is more productive to consider Hephaestus’ disability in the contrast between his anthropomorphised form and his abstract form. Divine manifestation is not restricted to corporeal appearances of the gods to mortals, it also includes more abstract expressions, such as divine inspiration or a mortal excelling at a skill which can be attributed to a certain god. The pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes argues against the anthropomorphism of the gods. He argues that the conceptualisation of the true form of the divine is impossible to be conceived of by the human imagination. As a result, what humans imagine to be the form of the gods is an attempt to create something recognisable out of the abstract and intangible ‘true’ divine. In this way, the divine form that humans imagine can only be mediated through human representations which are inherently dependent on cultural and societal conventions. So where does this leave Hephaestus’ disability – how can an incorporeal being have a corporeal characteristic?
Hephaestus is disabled in every anthropomorphic form he takes, whether that is an imagined human-like divine form or a mortal disguise. It is clear in our surviving myths that the anthropomorphism of the gods – according to Xenophanes’ theory of human imagination – has the tradition of Hephaestus as disabled. But what does this tell us? Is it an ableist narrative which seeks to make the gods more conceivable to humans by giving them human traits which are perceived as flaws? Or can it be that the gods are imagined in the perfect human form and that Hephaestus’ having a disability doesn’t negate that fact.