Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household.
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Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household.
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Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar", This stems from the PIE root *wes, "burn".
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Hestia's naming thus makes her a personification of the hearth and its fire, a symbol of society and family, denoting authority and kingship.
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Worship of Hestia was centered around the hearth, both domestic and civic.
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Accidental or negligent extinction of a domestic hearth-fire represented a failure of domestic and religious care for the family; failure to maintain Hestia's public fire in her temple or shrine was a breach of duty to the broad community.
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Hestia offered sanctuary from persecution to those who showed her respect and would punish those who offended her.
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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.
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Homeric Hymn 24, To Hestia, is an invocation of five lines, alluding to her role as an attendant to Apollo:.
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Burkert remarks that "Since the hearth is immovable Hestia is unable to take part even in the procession of the gods, let alone the other antics of the Olympians".
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Hestia is identified with the hearth as a physical object, and the abstractions of community and domesticity, in contrast to the fire of the forge employed in blacksmithing and metalworking, the province of the god Hephaestus.
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Hestia sits on a plain wooden throne with a white woolen cushion and, Robert Graves declares, "did not trouble to choose an emblem for herself".
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