HEPHÆSTIA, in Grecian antiquity, an Athenian festival in honour of Vulcan, the chief ceremony of which was a race with torches. It was performed in this manner: The antagonists were three young men, one of whom, by lot, took a lighted torch in his hand, and began his course; if the torch was extinguished before he finished the race, he delivered it to the second; and he in like manner to the third: the victory was his who first carried the torch lighted to the end of the race; and to this successive delivering of the torch we find many allusions in ancient writers.