Hestia

He'stia

Ἑστία, (Ion. Ἱστίη), the goddess of the hearth, or rather the fire burning on the hearth, was regarded as one of the twelve great gods, and accordingly as a daughter of Cronus and Rhea. According to the common tradition, she was the first-born daughter of Rhea, and was therefore the first of the children that was swallowed by Cronus. (Hes. Th. 453, &c.; Hom. Hymn. in Ven. 22; Apollod. 1.1.5.) She was, like Artemis and Athena, a maiden divinity, and when Apollo and Poseidon sued for her hand, she swore by the head of Zeus to remain a virgin for ever (Hom. Hymn. in Ven. 24, &c.), and in this character it was that her sacrifices consisted of cows which were only one year old. The connection between Hestia and Apollo and Poseidon, which is thus alluded to in the legend, appears also in the temple of Delphi, where the three divinities were worshipped in common, and Hestia and Poseidon appeared together also at Olympia. (Paus. 5.26.26, 10.5.3; Hom. Hymn. 31.2.) As the hearth was looked upon as the sacred centre of domestic life, so Hestia was the goddess of domestic life and the giver of all domestic happiness and blessings, and as such she was believed to dwell in the inner part of every house (Hom. Hymn. in Ven. 30; Callim. Hymn. in Del. 325, in Cer. 129), and to have invented the art of building houses. (Diod. 5.68; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 735.) In this respect she appears often together with Hermes, who was likewise a deus penetralis, as protecting the works of man. (Hom. Hymn. 32.10: Paus. 10.11.3.) As the hearth of a house is at the same time the altar on which sacrifices are offered to the domestic gods (ἑστιοῦχοι or ἐφέστιοι), Hestia was looked upon as presiding at all sacrifices, and, as the goddess of the sacred fire of the altar, she had a share in the sacrifices in all the temples of the gods. (Hom. Hymn. in Ven. 31.) Hence when sacrifices were offered, she was invoked first, and the first part of the sacrifice was offered to her. (Hom. Hymn. 32.5; Pind. N. 11.5; Plat. Cratyl. p. 401d. ; Paus. 5.14.5; Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. 842 ; Hesych. s. v. ἀφ̓ ἑστίας ἀρχόμενος.) Solemn oaths were sworn by the goddess of the hearth, and the hearth itself was the sacred asylum where suppliants implored the protection of the inhabitants of the house. (Hom. Od. 14.159; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1579.) A town or city is only an extended family, and therefore had likewise its sacred hearth, the symbol of an harmonious community of citizens and of a common worship. This public hearth usually existed in the prytaneium of a town, where the goddess had her especial sanctuary (Δάλαμος), under the name of Πρυτανῖτις, with a statue and the sacred hearth. There the prytanes offered sacrifices to her, on entering upon their office, and there, as at a private hearth, Hestia protected the suppliants. As this public hearth was the sacred asylum in every town, the state usually received its guests and foreign ambassadors there, and the prytanes had to act the part of hosts. When a colony was sent out, the emigrants took the fire which was to burn on the hearth of their new home from that of the mother town. (Pind. N. 11.1, &c., with the Scholiast; Parthen. Erot. 18; Dionys. A. R. 2.65.) If ever the fire of her hearth became extinct, it was not allowed to be lighted again with ordinary fire, but either by fire produced by friction, or by burning glasses drawing fire from the sun. The mystical speculations of later times proceeded from the simple ideas of the ancients, and assumed a sacred hearth not only in the centre of the earth, but even in that of the universe, and confounded Hestia in various ways with other divinities, such as Cybele, Gaea, Demeter, Persephone, and Artemis. (Orph. Hymn. 83; Plut. de Plac. Philos. 3, 11, Numa, 11.) There were but few special temples of Hestia in Greece, as in reality every prytaneum was a sanctuary of the goddess, and as a portion of the sacrifices, to whatever divinity they were offered, belonged to her. There was, however, a separate temple of Hestia at Hermione, though it contained no image of her, but only an altar. (Paus. 2.35.2.) Her sacrifices consisted of the primitiae of fruit, water, oil, wine, and cows of one year old. (Hesych. l.c. ; Hom. Hymn. 31.3, 32.6; Pind. N. 11.6.) The Romans worshipped the same goddess, or rather the same ideas embodied in her, under the name of Vesta, which is in reality identical with Hestia; but as the Roman worship of Vesta differed in several points from that of Hestia in Greece, we treat of Vesta in a separate article. [L.S]

Hestia

(Ἑστία; Ionic, Ἰστίη). The goddess of the hearth, which is the emblem of the settled home. She was deemed the founder and maintainer of the family and the State, of civic concord and of public reverence for the gods. She was the daughter of Cronus and of Rhea; sister of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Heré, and Demeter; one of the twelve Olympian deities, from the rest of whom she was distinguished by the fact that, as the abiding goddess of the household, she never left Olympus. In Homer, although the sanctity of the hearth is indeed recognized, as yet we find no mention of the goddess. It is a matter of discussion whether this was by accident, or because in that period the personification of the worship of the hearth had not attained its full perfection. Having been wooed by Apollo and Poseidon, she took an oath of perpetual virginity; so Zeus granted her the honour of being worshipped, as a tutelary goddess, at every hearth, in human habitations as well as in the temples of the gods, and of being called to mind amid libations at the beginning and end of every sacrifice and every festal entertainment. Hence it was that every sacrifice began and ended with a libation to Hestia, so that she had a share in all festivities; and in every prayer, as well as in all the public forms of solemn oaths, her name was recited before the name of any other god. Just as in the home her consecrated hearth formed the central point of family life, at which family festivals were celebrated and where both strangers and fugitives found a hospitable asylum, so also in the prytaneum, or town hall, where the sacred fire was ever burning, her hearth was the centre of the life of the city, indeed of the whole State, and of the colonies which had gone forth from it. Here, as representative of the State, the highest officials sacrificed to her, just as in every private house the father or mother of the family provided for her worship. Here also were held the public deliberations, and the public banquet given to deserving citizens and to foreign ambassadors. Hither repaired all who besought the protection of the State. Hence also the colonists, bound for distant shores, took the fire for the public hearth of their new community. In some respects, the centre of the religious life of Greece was the fire on the hearth of Hestia in the Delphic temple, where was the sacred ὀμφαλός (navel), which the Greeks considered to be the central point of the inhabited earth. Hestia stands in close connection with Zeus as the guardian of the law of hospitality and of the oath. She was also much associated with Hermes and often invoked in conjunction with him; Hestia, as the goddess of quiet domesticity, and Hermes, as the restless god of trade on the public streets and roads, representing between them the two principal varieties of human life. According to a view that afterwards became current, under the influence of philosophers and mystics, she was regarded as personifying the earth, as the fixed centre of the world, and was identified with Demeter and Cybelé. The corresponding deity among the Romans was Vesta (q.v.). The statues placed in the prytanea represented her, in accordance with her nature, as a being with grave and yet gentle expression, sitting or standing in an attitude of rest, with a sceptre as her attribute. She is never represented as nude, whence perhaps so few statues of her have been found. The most celebrated of her existing statues is known as the Vesta Giustiniani, in the Torlonia collection at Rome, and ascribed conjecturally to Calamis—a form robed in simple drapery, with hair unadorned and wearing a veil; her right hand rests on her hip, and her left hand, which is pointing upwards, once held a long staff as her sceptre. It represents the earlier Greek conception of divinity, austere and rigid, yet stately and imposing, blending simplicity and severity with grace and tenderness. See Preuner, HestiaVesta (Tübingen, 1864).

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