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22 August 2010 06:00 PM
This event begins 08/22/2010 and repeats every year until 08/22/2020
Vulcan (Latin: Vulcanus), aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology. He was worshipped at an annual festival on August 23 known as the Volcanalia.
The god belongs to the most ancient stage of Roman religion: Varro citing the Annales Maximi, recalls that king Titus Tatius had dedicated altars to a series of deities among which Vulcan is mentioned.
Vulcan was identified with the Greek god of fire and smithery, Hephaestus.
Vulcan's oldest shrine in Rome, called the "Volcanal", was situated at the foot of the Capitoline in the Forum Romanum, and was reputed to date to the archaic period of the kings of Rome, and to have been established on the site by Titus Tatius, the Sabine co-king, with a traditional date in the 8th century BC. It was the view of the Etruscan haruspices that a temple of Vulcan should be located outside the city, and the Volcanal may originally have been on or outside the city limits before they expanded to include the Capitoline Hill. The Volcanalia sacrifice was offered here to Vulcan, on August 23.[8] Vulcan also had a temple on the Campus Martius, which was in existence by 214 BC.
The Romans identified Vulcan with the Greek smith-god Hephaestus, and he became associated like his Greek counterpart with the constructive use of fire in metalworking. A fragment of a Greek pot showing Hephaestus found at the Volcanal has been dated to the 6th century BC, suggesting that the two gods were already associated at this date. However, Vulcan had a stronger association than Hephaestus with fire's destructive capacity, and a major concern of his worshippers was to encourage the god to avert harmful fires. His festival, the Vulcanalia, was celebrated on August 23 each year, when the summer heat placed crops and granaries most at risk of burning. During the festival bonfires were created in honour of the god, into which live fish or small animals were thrown as a sacrifice, to be consumed in the place of humans. Vulcan was among the gods placated after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. In response to the same fire, Domitian (emperor 81
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