Hestia
Goddess of the Hearth
HESS-tee-uh
Eldest of the Olympians and the quietest, the fire at the centre of every house, and the first portion of every sacrifice.
The Story
Hestia was the first child Cronus swallowed and the last he brought back up, which makes her both the eldest and the youngest of her siblings. She swore off marriage, refused both Poseidon and Apollo, and took the hearth as her portion instead.
She has almost no myths, and that is the point: she does not leave. Every household fire and every civic hearth is hers, she takes the first and last offering at any sacrifice, and in some tellings she gives up her Olympian seat to Dionysus rather than argue about it.
Did You Know?
- She received the first and last libation at every feast, which produced the proverb start from Hestia, begin at the beginning.
- Greek colonists carried fire from their mother city's public hearth to light the new one, making her the physical link between a city and its founders.
- Rome took the practice literally: the Vestal Virgins tended a flame that was not allowed to go out, and letting it die was punished as a state emergency.