Hephaestus (Vulcan) is the god of fire, the forge, and craft — the divine blacksmith who made the gods' finest weapons and treasures, including Zeus's thunderbolt and his own net that caught Ares and Aphrodite [S1][S2][S4][S5]. His parentage is a genuine variant: in the Iliad he is the son of Hera alone (Hera, spurned by Zeus, produced him without a consort, in a fit of spite); in the Theogony he is the son of Zeus and Hera [S1][S2]. He is lame (in one account he was thrown from Olympus by Zeus and crippled in the fall) and dwells in an underground forge, often associated with volcanoes [S2][S4][S5]. Despite his ugliness and lameness, he is the only god who can match Zeus in craft, and he is married to the beautiful Aphrodite (a union that is itself a source of myth, given her affair with Ares) [S2][S4][S5].