In The Modern Hephaestus; Ancient Weavers and Linux programmers; (The Craftsmen, 2008) Richard Sennett introduces The hymn to Hephastus “Sing clear voiced Muse, of Hephaestus famed for skill. With bright-eyed Athena he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world – men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned the crafts through Hephaestus famous for his art they live a peaceful life in their houses the whole year round.”
Emphasizing the importance of tools, craft and the craftsmen ‘for a collective good’ and in the development of civilization. The use of tools Sennett quotes historian; Indra Kagis McEwan, reflecting on the hephaustus hymn in Socrates Ancestor McEwan writes; craft “brought people out of the isolation, personified by the cave-dwelling Cyclopes, craft and community were, for the early Greeks, indissociable.”