Hestia

The perpetual virginity of Hestia, whose name simply means “hearth,” reflects the Greek belief that fire and the fireplace must be kept pure and inviolate. The hearth was the center of domestic cult; it symbolized the integrity of the individual household, and by extension, the chastity of the resident women. Hesiod (Op. 733-34) advises men not to expose their genitals before the hearth after sex, and hearth fires polluted by proximity to corpses or violated by enemies needed to be extinguished and lit anew from a pure source. In spite of her great antiquity and her status as an Olympian god, Hestia remained one of the least anthropomorphic of Greek deities, without a fully developed mythology. The newborn child was carried around the hearth and laid upon the ground to indicate its acceptance into the family, while the outcast suppliant crouched at an alien hearth to indicate his homeless state. Hestia as a divine personality appears to have no role in these rituals, yet the hearth, hestia, is no less revered. Homer does not mention a personal goddess Hestia, but in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5.30-32), she “sit[s] in the center of the house, taking a rich portion” of daily offerings and is honored in all temples. Hestia’s priority is the distinguishing feature of her cult. According to a widely observed ritual protocol, Hestia was mentioned first of the gods when oaths were sworn, and received an offering first when sacrifices were performed. This was the custom followed at Olympia, where Hestia was honored before Olympian Zeus himself.15

During the Bronze and early Iron Ages, the sacral power of the domestic hearth was extended to the king’s or chieftain’s hearth as the symbol of civic continuity and integrity. With the development of the polis, this function was transferred to a communal civic hearth, usually located in the city hall or prutaneion. With a few exceptions, state cults of Hestia were conducted in these halls, which often functioned as dining rooms, rather than in separate sanctuaries. The civic hearth was in many ways analogous to the home hearth, for it was here that important guests were brought to receive the city’s hospitality. Inscriptions from around the Greek world show that civic officials honored Hestia when they began their service. One such man was Aristagoras, who served on the governing council of the island Tenedos in the fifth century. Pindar’s eleventh Nemean ode (11.1-7), commissioned for his installation, asks Hestia to welcome Aristagoras to the prutaneion, where “they often worship you first among the gods with libations, and often with savory smoke.” Finally, when a city was founded, the colonists brought cinders from the prutaneion in their hometown to light the fires on their new hearths and altars.16

Hestia’s special relationship with Hermes is recognized in the Homeric Hymn to Hestia (29.7-12), where the two are invoked as dear friends who dwell in and protect the house together. Both are the objects of domestic cult and both are concerned, more than the other gods, with the doings of epichthonioi, those “who live on the surface of the earth.” Also present in this pairing is an implicit recognition of the way the two deities govern gendered space and movement in relation to the home. Hestia, the most immobile of goddesses, marks and anchors the center of the home, just as the women of the house ideally remain indoors and aloof from contact with strangers. Conversely, Hermes guards the door and governs movement in and out, just as the masculine role is to work under the sun and deal with strangers. Iconographic convention also linked these two gods. They appeared as a pair, for example, on the altar of Amphiaraos at Oropos and on the statue base of Pheidias’ Olympian Zeus.17