In Ancient Greek religion Hestia is a virgin goddess of the hearth, ancient Greek architecture,
and the right ordering of domesticity, the family, and the state. In Greek mythology
she is a daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Hestia received the first offering at every
sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum functioned
as her official sanctuary. With the establishment of a new colony, flame from Hestia's public
hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement. She sat on a plain
wooden throne with a white woolen cushion and did not trouble to choose an emblem for
herself. Her Roman equivalent is Vesta.
Origins and cults Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar",
the oikos, the household, house, or family. "An early form of the temple is the hearth
house; the early temples at Dreros and Prinias on Crete are of this type as indeed is the
temple of Apollo at Delphi which always had its inner hestia" The Mycenaean great hall
which had a central hearth – such as the hall of Odysseus at Ithaca, a megaron. Likewise,
the hearth of the later Greek prytaneum was the community and government's ritual and
secular focus. Hestia's name and functions show the hearth's
importance in the social, religious, and political life of ancient Greece. It was essential for
warmth, food preparation, and the completion of sacrificial offerings to deities; in the
latter, Hestia was the "customary recipient of a preliminary, usually cheap, sacrifice".
She was also offered the first and last libations of wine at feasts. Her own sacrificial animal
was a domestic pig. The accidental or negligent extinction of a domestic hearth-fire represented
a failure of domestic and religious care for the family; failure to maintain Hestia's public
fire in her temple or shrine was a breach of duty to the broad community. A hearth fire
might be deliberately, ritually extinguished at need, and its lighting or relighting should
be accompanied by rituals of completion, purification and renewal, comparable with the rituals and
connotations of an eternal flame and of sanctuary lamps. At the level of the polis, the hearths
of Greek colonies and their mother cities were allied and sanctified through Hestia's
cult. Hestia's nearest Roman equivalent, Vesta, had similar functions as a divine personification
of Rome's "public", domestic, and colonial hearths, and bound Romans together within
a form of extended family. The similarity of names between Hestia and Vesta is, however,
misleading: "The relationship hestia-histie-Vesta cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European
linguistics; borrowings from a third language must also be involved," according to Walter
Burkert. Responsibility for Hestia's domestic cult
usually fell to the leading woman of the household, sometimes to a man. Her public rites, at the
hearths of public buildings, were usually led by holders of civil office, and their
assistants. Dionysius of Halicarnassus testifies that the prytaneum of a Greek state or community
was sacred to Hestia, who was served by the most powerful state officials. Evidence of
her specialist priesthoods is extremely rare. Most stems from the early Roman Imperial era,
when Sparta offers several examples of women with the priestly title "Hestia"; Chalcis
offers one, a daughter of the local elite. Existing civic cults to Hestia probably served
as stock for the grafting of Greek ruler-cult to the Roman emperor, the Imperial family
and Rome itself. In Athens, a small seating section at the Theatre of Dionysus was reserved
for priesthoods of "Hestia on the Acropolis, Livia, and Julia", and of "Hestia Romaion".
A priest at Delos served "Hestia the Athenian Demos" "and Roma". An eminent citizen of Carian
Stratoniceia described himself as a priest of Hestia and several other deities, as well
as holding several civic offices. Hestia's political and civic functions are further
evidenced by her very numerous privately funded dedications at civic sites, and the administrative
rather than religious titles used by the lay-officials involved in her civic cults.
Myths and attributes Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian
generation, along with Demeter and Hera. She was a daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus,
and sister to Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hera, and Hades. Immediately after their birth,
Cronus swallowed all but the last and youngest, Zeus, who forced Cronus to disgorge his siblings
and led them in a war against their father and the other Titans. As "first to be devoured
. . . and the last to be yielded up again", Hestia was thus both the eldest and youngest
daughter; this mythic inversion is found in the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite. Hestia rejects
the marriage suits of Poseidon and Apollo, and swears herself to perpetual virginity.
She thus rejects Aphrodite's values and becomes, to some extent, her chaste, domestic complementary,
or antithesis. Zeus assigns Hestia a duty to feed and maintain the fires of the Olympian
hearth with the fatty, combustible portions of animal sacrifices to the gods.
Hestia's Olympian status is equivocal. At Athens "in Plato's time," notes Kenneth Dorter
"there was a discrepancy in the list of the twelve chief gods, as to whether Hestia or
Dionysus was included with the other eleven. The altar to them at the agora, for example,
included Hestia, but the east frieze of the Parthenon had Dionysus instead." Hestia's
omission from some lists of the Twelve Olympians is sometimes taken as illustration of her
passive, non-confrontational nature – by giving her Olympian seat to Dionysus she prevents
heavenly conflict. Hestia was known for her kindness, but no ancient source or myth describes
such a surrender or removal. "Since the hearth is immovable, Hestia is unable to take part
even in the procession of the gods, let alone the other antics of the Olympians," Burkert
remarks. Her mythographic status as first-born of Rhea and Cronus seems to justify the tradition
in which a small offering is made to Hestia before any sacrifice.
The ambiguities in Hestia's mythology are matched by her indeterminate attributes, character,
and iconography. She is identified with the hearth as a physical object, and the abstractions
of community and domesticity, but portrayals of her are rare and seldom secure. In classical
Greek art, she is occasionally depicted as a woman, simply and modestly cloaked in a
head veil. She is sometimes shown with a staff in hand or by a large fire.
Homeric Hymn 24, To Hestia, is a brief invocation of five lines:
Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo, the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho,
with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house, come, having one
mind with Zeus the all-wise: draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song.
The Hestia Tapestry The Hestia Tapestry is a Byzantine tapestry,
made in Egypt during the 6th century AD. It is a late representation of the goddess,
who it identifies in Greek as “Hestia Polyolbos". Its history and symbolism are discussed in
Friedlander(1945). Genealogy of the Olympians in Greek mythology
See also
Sacred fire of Vesta References and sources
References
Sources Burkert, Walter.. Greek Religion. Harvard
University Press. Kerenyi, Karl.. The Gods of the Greeks.
Stephenson, Hamish.. The Gods of the Romans and Greeks. NYT Writer.
Friedlander, Paul.. Documents of Dying Paganism. University of California Press.
External links Carlos Parada, "Hestia"
Socrates to Hermogenes about Hestia - Estia - Esti - Osia
Theoi Project: Hestia Excerpts in translation of Classical texts.
Hestia "Polyolbos" Dumbarton Oaks site.