Hephaestus, whom Jupiter cast from Olympus, from its divine threshold, having fallen on Lemnos, practiced the art of working in brass, maimed in his feet:--
"His tottering knees were bowed beneath his weight." [891]
You have also a doctor, and not only a brass-worker among the gods. And the doctor was greedy of gold; Asclepius was his name. I shall produce as a witness your own poet, the Boeotian Pindar:--
"Him even the gold glittering in his hands,
Amounting to a splendid fee, persuaded
To rescue a man, already death's capture, from his grasp;
But Saturnian Jove, having shot his bolt through both,
Quickly took the breath from their breasts,
And his flaming thunderbolt sealed their doom."
And Euripides:--
"For Zeus was guilty of the murder of my son
Asclepius, by casting the lightning flame at his breast."
Clement of Alexandria in Print
