Sheepy Dalek / Introducing Vulcanus

Vulcanus is a Roman God of fire lightning and the blacksmith of the gods. His roman ancestry and many sagas are similar with those of the Greek God Hephaistos. The  namesake to all volcanoes of the world.

Image: Wikimedia commons Louvre.

Vulcanus was born as a son of Jupiter and Juno, the king and queen of gods in the Roman world. He was supposedly so very ugly that his own mother kicked him out of the Olympus as soon as she set eyes on him. Vulcanus was lame, ever since. The god started working as backsmith and, being a god, his work exceeded those of ordinary men by far. So as gratitude to Vulcanus, for forging his splendid lightning bolts, Jupiter assigned Venus, the most beautiful goddess, as wife to the ugliest of gods.

But this is just one side of the story. Another version tells that Jupiter threw his son out of his home, and later gave him the beauty Venus as a wife to make up for it.
With his assistant, a one eyed Cyclopes, Vulcanus forged many pieces of very special armor or weapons for the gods and half-gods.
Vulcan’s oldest shrine in Rome, called the Vulcanal, was situated at the foot of the Capitoline in the Forum Romanum. His temples were situated outside of towns, so that his fire would not destroy them.

Image: Wikipedia

The Roman God Vulcanus, as mentioned above, followed the tales about the greek god Hephaistos.(greek :Ἥφαιστος, Latin: Hephaestus). Just his parents were named Zeus and Hera, but those represent the same kinds of gods and personalities in greek mythology as Jupiter and Juno for the Romans.

Webcam image from White island today.

Ancient nations often could not explain some sights they got to see during their explorations. So logically, in places like Etna, some mysterious things had to be going on. Legends started being told, and people associated volcanic activity with a god. And in our case this god was Vulcanus, who seemed to have his smithy right under Etna.

At first, the term vulcan or volcano, was only linked with the volcanic activity in the Aeolian Islands. Later this term was used for volcanoes and volcanic activity all over our globe.

Much later the therm volcanology, had to be introduced to space as well, when scientist found volcanoes on Venus ( a planet), Mars ( a plante), Io ( a moon of Jupiter, a planet) and even ice volcanoes on distant moons like Titan and Triton.

As long as not all to much is up with volcanoes, which we Europeans could watch, recently, i thought to explain the origin of the word volcano/Vulkan.

Spica.