14 Facts About Hestia

Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household.

Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar", This stems from the PIE root *wes, "burn".

Hestia's naming thus makes her a personification of the hearth and its fire, a symbol of society and family, denoting authority and kingship.

Worship of Hestia was centered around the hearth, both domestic and civic.

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.

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.

Homeric Hymn 24, To Hestia, is an invocation of five lines, alluding to her role as an attendant to Apollo:.

Hestia tapestry is a Byzantine tapestry, made in Egypt during the 6th century AD.

Hestia is the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus.

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".

Hestia's mythographic status as firstborn of Rhea and Cronus seems to justify the tradition in which a small offering is made to Hestia before any sacrifice, though this was not universal among the Greeks.

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.

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".