Hestia Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Hestia
Goddess of the domestic and civic hearth, the home, sacred and sacrificial fire, virginity, family, and the state
Member of the Twelve Olympians
The Giustiniani Hestia
Abode	Delphi and Mount Olympus
Animals	Pig
Symbol	The hearth and its fire
Personal information
Parents	Cronus and Rhea
Siblings	Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, Chiron (half)
Roman equivalent	Vesta

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Hestia ( Greek: Ἑστία, meaning "hearth" or "fireside") is the virgin goddess of the hearth, the right ordering of domesticity, the family, the home, and the state. In myth, she is the firstborn child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and one of the Twelve Olympians.

According to ancient Greek tradition, Hestia, along with four of her five siblings, was devoured by her own father Cronus as an infant due to his fear of being overthrown by one of his offspring, and was only freed when her youngest brother Zeus forced their father to disgorge the children he had eaten. Cronus and the rest of the Titans were cast down, and Hestia then became one of the Olympian gods, the new rulers of the cosmos, alongside her brothers and sisters. After the establishment of the new order and in spite of her status, Hestia withdraws from prominence in mythology. Like Athena and Artemis, Hestia elected to never marry and remain an eternal virgin goddess instead, forever tending to the hearth of Olympus.

Despite her limited mythology, Hestia remained a very important goddess in ancient Greek society. Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. Whenever a new colony was established, a flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement. The goddess Vesta is her Roman equivalent.

Origins and etymology
Mythology
Worship
- Shrines, temples and colonies
Genealogy
See also

Origins and etymology

Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar". Hestia's naming thus makes her a personification of the hearth and its fire, a symbol of society and family, also denoting authority and kingship.

Mythology

Origin

Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian generation. She is the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus. Immediately after their birth, Cronus swallowed all his children (Hestia was the first who was swallowed) except the last and youngest, Zeus, who was saved by Rhea. Instead, Zeus 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 is thus both the eldest and youngest daughter; this mythic inversion is found in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (700 BC).

Zeus assigned Hestia a duty to feed and maintain the fires of the Olympian hearth with the fatty, combustible portions of animal sacrifices to the gods. Wherever food was cooked, or an offering was burnt, she thus had her share of honor; also, in all the temples of the gods, she has a share of honor. "Among all mortals she was chief of the goddesses".

Virgin goddess

The gods Poseidon and Apollo both (her brother and nephew respectively) fell in love with Hestia and vied for her hand in marriage. But Hestia would have neither of them, and went to Zeus instead, and swore a great oath, that she would remain a virgin for all time and never marry. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over Hestia.

Status and attributes

Hestia (?) on the northern frieze of the Siphnian Treasury, 6th century BC, Delphi Archaeological Museum, Greece.

Traditionally, Hestia is absent from ancient depictions of the Gigantomachy as she is the one who must keep the home fires burning when the other gods are away. Nevertheless her possible participation in the fight against the Giants is evidenced from an inscription on the northern frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi.

Hestia is identified with the hearth as a physical object, in contrast to the fire of the forge employed in blacksmithing and metalworking, the province of the god Hephaestus. 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. At times, she is shown with a staff in hand or by a large fire. She sits on a plain wooden throne with a white woolen cushion. Her associated sacrificial animal was a domestic pig.

Equivalence

Fragment of a Hellenistic relief (1st century BC–1st century AD) depicting the twelve Olympians carrying their attributes in procession; Hestia with scepter to the left, from the Walters Art Museum.

Her Roman equivalent is Vesta; Vesta has similar functions as a divine personification of Rome's "public", domestic, and colonial hearths, binding Romans together within a form of extended family.

Worship

Part of a marble altar with inscription ESTIAS ISTHMIAS, 5th – 4th century BC. The altar was dedicated to the goddess Hestia with the epithet Isthmia ("of the isthmus". Archaeological Museum of Paros.

The worship of Hestia was centered around the hearth, both domestic and civic. The hearth was essential for warmth, food preparation, and the completion of sacrificial offerings to deities. At feasts, Hestia was offered the first and last libations of wine.

The accidental or negligent extinction of a domestic hearth fire represented a failure of domestic and religious care for the family. A hearth fire might be deliberately, ritually extinguished at need; but its lighting 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.

Dedication of an altar to Hestia in Karneades, Taormina (undated). The inscription states: "Beside these walls of Serapis the warden of the temple Karneades of Barke, son of Eukritos, o foreigner, and his spouse Pythias and his daughter Eraso placed to Hestia a pure altar, as a reward for this, o you that governs the marvelous dwellings of Zeus, grant to them a lovely auspiciousness of life."

Responsibility for Hestia's domestic cult usually fell to the leading woman of the household, although sometimes to a man. Hestia's rites at the hearths of public buildings were usually led by holders of civil office.

Shrines, temples and colonies

Every private and public hearth was regarded as a sanctuary of the goddess, and a portion of the sacrifices, to whatever divinity they were offered, belonged to her.

Very few free-standing temples were dedicated to Hestia. Pausanias mentions one in Ermioni and one in Sparta, the latter having an altar but no image. Xenophon's Hellenica mentions fighting around and within Olympia's temple of Hestia, a building separate from the city's council hall and adjoining theatre: A temple to Hestia was in Andros.

Prospective founders of city-states and colonies sought approval and guidance not only of their "mother city" (represented by Hestia) but of Apollo, through one or another of his various oracles. He acted as consulting archegetes (founder) at Delphi. Among his various functions, he was patron god of colonies, architecture, constitutions and city planning. Additional patron deities might also be persuaded to support the new settlement, but without Hestia, her sacred hearth, an agora and prytaneum there could be no polis.