656 



HEPAR 



HERA 



to 1609 has fortunately been preserved at Dul- 

 \vich College, and contains invaluable informa- 

 tion about new plays and all the stage business 

 of Shakespeare's day. It was edited by J. Payne 

 Collier for the Shakespeare Society in 1841, but 

 his reprint is unreliable, marred by many ugly 

 interpolations and worse. 



Hepar ( Gr. hepar, ' the liver ' ) is the name 

 given t>y the older chemists to various compounds 

 of sulphur, from their brown, liver-like colour. 

 Hepatic means belonging to the liver ; as, hepatic 

 artery, vein, duct, Ace. Hepatica is a term for 

 medicines which affect the liver and its appendages. 



Hepatica, a genus of hardy perennial plants 

 belonging to the natural order Ranunculacese, 

 closely related to Anemone, and formerly included 

 in that genus under the name A. Hepatica. H. 

 triloba is the best-known species, and has long 

 been extremely popular in the flower-garden on 

 account of its flowering in early spring in great 

 profusion ; the flowers of the several varieties being 

 also very brilliantly coloured. The normal colour 

 of the species appears to be purple, but there are 

 varieties with red, deep blue of these there are 

 single and double-flowered forms and pure white 

 flowers. It is a native of many hilly parts of 

 Europe. Its roots are powerfully astringent, but 

 have not the acrid qualities possessed by many of 

 the Ranunculaceae. H. angulosa is the only other 

 species known to cultivation ; it is larger in all its 

 parts ; the flowers are pale blue. It is a native of 

 Transylvania, and both species delight in partial 

 shade rather than full exposure to the sun. For 

 another kind of Hepaticae, see LIVERWORTS. 



Hepatitis (Gr. hepar, 'the liver'), inflamma- 

 tion or the Liver ( q. v. ). 



ll<'jlia'sl us. the god of fire and of smithying 

 among the Greeks, is represented by Homer as 

 lame, walking with the aid of a stick, and panting 

 as he goes. His character is good-tempered, affec- 

 tionate, and compassionate (cf. ^Esch. Prometheus 

 Bound}. There is also an element of the comic 

 connected with him ; his gait and ungainly figure 

 provoke the laughter of the gods. On the other 

 hand, he is himself given to practical jokes ; he 

 constructs a seat on which his mother sits down, 

 but from which she is unable to rise. His mother 

 was Hera, who (according to Homer) liked her 

 lame child so little that she cast him far out from 

 heaven. Another account of his fall from heaven 

 is also given by Homer that Zeus threw him out 

 for siding with Hera against him. The story of 

 the seat just mentioned is brought into connection 

 with the former version of his fall ; none but he 

 could release Hera, nor would he help her until 

 restored to his place in heaven. Mythologists in- 

 terpret the fall of Hephaestus as the fall of lightning 

 from the sky ( = Hera, but see HERA ). Amongst 

 the myths in which Hephaestus is concerned we 

 must mention that of the manufacture of the first 

 woman, Pandora (by whom all evil came into the 

 world ) ; the birth of Athene from the head of 

 Zeus, .when Hephaestus with an axe acted as mid- 

 wife ; and the birth of Erichthonios, who claimed 

 Hephaestus for father, and from whom the Athenians 

 counted themselves as descended. 



In discussing the origin and antiquity of Hephaes- 

 tus it is necessary to bear in mind that this deity 

 appears under two aspects, which would naturally 

 come to be combined though they were not neces- 

 sarily united from the first. Hephaestus is the god 

 of smithying and also the god of fire. To begin 

 with the latter aspect of the deity, there are so 

 many points of resemblance between the divine 

 smith of the Greeks and the Wayland Smith (q.v.) 

 or Wieland or Volundr of the northern members of 

 the Indo-European family of peoples that some 



comparative mythologists have felt justified in 

 inferring that the divine smith was a conception 

 known to the Indo-Europeans before their disper- 

 sion. On the other hand, it is maintained that the 

 resemblances are due, not to the joint inheritance by 

 different peoples of the same original myth, but to 

 borrowing at a late pericrti. The stories of Wieland 

 were a conscious loan on the part of the Teutons, 

 in the 6th century A.D., of various classic tales 

 about Daedalus and Vulcan ( W. Golther, Germania, 

 xd. xxiii. 449 ). This latter view has in its favour 

 the fact that the undivided Indo-Europeans were 

 unacquainted with the metals, except copper, and 

 totally ignorant of the art of smithying. The 

 divine smith, therefore, is a mythological concep- 

 tion which must be posterior to the dispersion of 

 the Indo-Europeans. Remains the question then 

 whether the other aspect under which Hepheestus 

 appears, that of the god of fire, goes back to 

 primeval times. Oil the one hand, other Indo-Euro- 



S;an peoples have fire-gods of their own; the 

 indus Agni, and the Norsemen Loki. But, un- 

 fortunately, there is no phonetic identity between 

 the names of the various deities. We have there- 

 fore nothing beyond general considerations to 

 guide us. The want of philological equivalence 

 in the names of various fire-gods makes rather 

 against the supposition that the primitive Indo- 

 Europeans recognised a god of fire. On the 

 other hand, there is no improbability inherent in 

 the assumption that they were at least as far 

 advanced as the Australian aborigines who worship 

 fire. The fact that several members of the Indo- 

 European family agree in the worship of a fire-god 

 does not, of course, demonstrate that the worship 

 was a joint inheritance, for the worshipper's idea of 

 worshipping so useful an element occurs independ- 

 ently to peoples who cannot be supposed on any 

 theory to be connected. Finally, the lameness of 

 Hephaestus may be an expression of the unsteady, 

 flickering motion of flame ; but it is well to remem- 

 ber that amongst savages the people to whose lot it 

 particularly falls to tend the fire are the lame. 



Hephaestus was by the Romans identified with 

 their own fire-god Vulcan (q.v.). 



Heptam'eron. See MARGARET OF NAVARRE. 



Heptarchy, the name sometimes applied to the 

 seven Kingdoms supposed to have been established 

 by the Saxons in England. The term is completely 

 misleading if it be taken to mean that there were 

 neither more nor less than seven distinct kingdoms 

 in the country down to the time of Egbert ; but is 

 permissible enough if taken to mean only that the 

 chief kingdoms at various periods from the 5th to 

 the 9th century were Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, 

 East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria ( see ENG- 

 LAND ). The shadowy sovereignty of the Bretwalda 

 is discussed under that head. 



Heptateuch, a word sometimes used for the 

 first seven books (Gr. hepta, ' seven ;' teuchos, 'in- 

 strument,' 'volume') of the Old Testament formed 

 on the analogy of Pentateuch and Hexateuch. See 

 BIBLE, Vol. II. p. 119. 



Hera, the daughter of Kronos, the sister and at 

 the same time the wife of Zeus, was the Greek god- 

 dess of marriage, child-birth, and menstruation. 

 In the Iliad she takes the part of the Greeks, and 

 hates the Trojans, because Paris awarded the fatal 

 apple of discord to Aphrodite. She is the mother 

 of Hephaestus, the god of fire, of Ares, the god of 

 war, of Eileithyia, of Hecate, and of Hebe. Three 

 towns, according to Homer, are especially dear to 

 her Argos, Sparta, arid Mycenae. She is repre- 

 sented by the poet as jealous and ill-tempered. 

 As the goddess of lawful marriage she persecutes 

 the illegitimate offspring of her consort Zeus, such 

 as Heracles and Dionysus. She conspires against 



