Hestia

Template:Greek myth (Olympian) In Greek mythology, virginal Hestia (ancient Greek Ἑστία) is the goddess of the hearth, of the right ordering of domesticity and the family, who received the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum or town hall functioned as her official sanctuary. With the establishment of a new colony, flame from Hestia's public hearth would be carried to the new settlement.

Name and Characteristics

At a very deep level her name means "home and hearth": the household and its inhabitants. "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" (Burkert p 61). It will be recalled that among classical Greeks the altar was always in the open air with no roof but the sky, and that the oracle at Delphi was the shrine of the Goddess before it was assumed by Apollo. The Mycenaean great hall, such as the hall of Odysseus at Ithaca was a megaron, with a central hearthfire.

At the more developed level of the polis Hestia symbolizes the alliance between the colonies and their mother-cities.

Hestia is one of the three Great Goddesses of the first Olympian generation: Hestia, Demeter and Hera. She was described as both the oldest and youngest of the three daughters of Rhea and Cronus, the sisters to three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Originally listed as one of the Twelve Olympians, Hestia gave up her seat in favour of new-comer Dionysus to tend to the sacred fire on Mt. Olympus.^{[citation needed]}

In classical Greek art Hestia was depicted as a woman modestly cloaked in a head veil (see below).

Mythic Representations

The Giustiniani Hestia in O. Seyffert, Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1894

Out of all of the Olympian gods, almost none of them have as few surviving stories about their divine exploits as Hestia. Sometimes this is assumed to be due to her passive, non-confrontational nature.^{[citation needed]} This nature is illustrated by her giving up her seat in the Olympian 12 to prevent conflict.^{[citation needed]} But closer analysis shows strong hints that Hestia was a religious force of tremendous and ancient import. She is considered to be the first-born of Rhea and Cronus (followed by Demeter, Hades, Poseidon, Hera and, lastly, Zeus); this is evidenced by the fact that in Greek (and later Roman) culture ritual offerings to all gods began with a small offering to Hestia; the phrase "Hestia comes first" from ancient Greek culture denotes this.

Immediately after their birth, Cronus swallowed Hestia and her siblings except for the last and youngest, Zeus, who later rescued them and led them in a war against Cronus and the other Titans. Hestia, the eldest daughter "became their youngest child, since she was the first to be devoured by their father and the last to be yielded up again" (Kereny 1951 p 91)— the clearest possible example of mythic inversion, a paradox that is noted in the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite (ca 700 B.C.E.):

"She was the first-born child of wily Cronos — and youngest too."

It is also recalled in the hymn that Poseidon, and Apollo of the younger generation, each aspired to court Hestia, but the goddess was unmoved by Aphrodite's works and swore on the head of Zeus to retain her virginity. The Homeric hymns, like all early Greek literature, are concerned to reinforce the supremacy of Zeus, and Hestia's oath taken upon the head of Zeus is an example of surety. <find reference and quotation>

In his account of the Fasti of the Roman year, Ovid twice recounted an anecdote of Priapus's foiled attempt on a sleeping nymph: once he told it of the nymph Lotis and then again, calling it a "very playful little tale", he retold it of Vesta, the Roman equivalent of Hestia. In the anecdote, after a great feast, when the immortals were all either passed out drunk or asleep, Priapus — who had grotesquely large genatalia — spied Lotis/Vesta and was filled with lust for her. He quietly approached the nymph, but the braying of an ass awoke her just in time. She screamed at the sight and Priapus immediately ran away.

Hestia figures in few myths: she did not roam or have any adventures. The Homeric hymn To Hestia is consequently brief, simply an invocation of five lines, a prelude:<weak intro... read the hymn and reintroduce>

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.

In the hymn, Hestia is located in ancient Delphi (rather than at the hearth of Zeus on Mount Olympus), which was considered the central hearth of all the Hellenes.

Cultic Observances

"Hestia full of Blessings" Egypt, 6th century tapestry in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection

The hearth fire of a Greek or a Roman household was not allowed to go out, unless it was ritually extinguished and ritually renewed, accompanied by impressive rituals of completion, purification and renewal. Compare the rituals and connotations of an eternal flame and of sanctuary lamps.

A measure of the goddess's ancient primacy—"queenly maid...among all mortal men she is chief of the goddesses", in the words of the Homeric hymn— is that she was owed the first as well as the last sacrifice at every ceremonial assembly of Hellenes, a pious duty related by the mythographers as the gift of Zeus, as if it had been his to bestow: another mythic inversion if, as is likely, the ritual was too deep-seated and essential for the Olympian reordering to overturn.

The "great hall" of Minoan-Mycenaean culture as well as the type of earliest enclosed site built for worship on the Greek mainland is the megaron: the name of the Goddess who was venerated in the Helladic megara is not recorded, but at the center of each holy site laid bare by archaeologists was normally a hearth.

Roman Parallels

In Roman mythology her more civic approximate equivalent was Vesta, who personified the public hearth, and whose cult round the ever-burning hearth bound Romans together in the form of an extended family. The similarity of names, apparently, is misleading: "The relationship hestia-histie – Vesta cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European linguistics; borrowings from a third language must also be involved," Walter Burkert has written (1985, III.3.1 note 2).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Apollodorus. Gods & Heroes of the Greeks. Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Michael Simpson. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. ISBN 0-87023-205-3.
• Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Translated by John Raffan. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. ISBN 0631112413.
• Dillon, Matthew. Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece. London; New York: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0415127750.
• Farnell, Lewis Richard. The Cults of the Greek States (in Five Volumes). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
• Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. ISBN 080184410X.
• Kerenyi, Karl. The Heroes of the Greeks. Thames & Hudson (New Ed edition), 1997. ISBN 050027049X.
• Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. ISBN 0631232222.
• Nilsson, Martin P. Greek Popular Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. Also accessible online at [1].
• Parke, H. W. Festivals of the Athenians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-8014-1054-1.
• Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth (Second Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. ISBN 0-13-716714-8.
• Price, Simon. Religions of the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-521-38867-8.
• Rose, H. J. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1959. ISBN 0-525-47041-7.
• Ruck, Carl A.P. and Staples, Daniel. The World of Classical Myth. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1994. ISBN 0-89089-575-9.
• Rutkowski, Bogdan. The Cult Places of the Aegean. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. ISBN 0300029624.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Hestia

• Carlos Parada, "Hestia" - Retrieved June 18, 2007
• Theoi, "Hestia" - Retrieved June 18, 2007
• Homeric hymns To Aphrodite and To Hestia - Retrieved June 18, 2007
• Ovid, Fasti (Vesta) - Retrieved June 18, 2007

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Hestia  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Hestia"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.