407Then, when first rest had driven out sleep, in the middle course of night now passing away, at the time when a woman, whose lot it is to sustain life by the distaff and slender weaving, first wakes the ashes and the slumbering fires, adding night to her work, and keeps her maids at work by lamplight at a long task, so that she may keep her husband's bed chaste and raise her little sons: not otherwise, and no more sluggish at that hour, does the Lord of Fire rise from his soft bed to the work of the forge. 416An island rises beside the Sicanian coast and Aeolian Lipare, steep with smoking rocks, beneath which a cave and the Etnaean caverns, hollowed by the forges of the Cyclopes, thunder, and mighty blows on the anvils are heard echoing with groans, and bars of Chalybean steel hiss in the caverns, and fire pants in the furnaces: the home of Vulcan, and the land named Vulcania.
423Here then the Lord of Fire came down from high heaven.