Vesta Mythology

Hestia is the first child of Cronus and Rhea, and her name simply means hearth. She has almost no narrative, because she never leaves her place and goes on no adventure. The fire burning in the Greek house and in the civic prytaneion is the goddess herself. Hestia in the family tree →

Vesta is the goddess of the hearth and of the fire of the Roman state. Her round temple in the Forum held no statue, since the sacred thing was the fire itself. Ovid writes plainly that the goddess has no form other than the living flame.

A Greek sacrifice began with the portion given to Hestia and ended with her. The proverb 'start from Hestia' states the rule. She is the least visible of the Olympians and the one named at every offering.

Hesiod writes that Cronus swallowed his children as they were born and that Hestia was the first. When Zeus made him bring them up, they came out in reverse order, so Hestia counts as the last born as well. She is therefore both the eldest and the youngest sister.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite tells that Poseidon and Apollo both wished to marry Hestia. The goddess refused them both and swore by the head of Zeus to remain unmarried. In return Zeus gave her the place at the centre of the house and the richest portion of every offering.

The hearth is the source of heat and the point where the household gathers, and Hestia never leaves it. A newborn child was carried around the hearth to be received into the house. Her stillness is not a lack but the definition of a centre.

There were six Vestals, chosen between the ages of six and ten. They served for thirty years: ten learning, ten performing the rites and ten teaching. They were the only women in Rome who could make a will and live outside their father's authority.

If the fire in the temple went out it was taken as an omen against the state, and the Vestal on watch was punished. The fire was put out and rekindled every year on 1 March, the old Roman new year. It was relit not with flint but with sunlight or by rubbing wood.

A Vestal judged to have broken her vow was lowered into an underground chamber with a day's food and the chamber was sealed, so that no blood was shed. Plutarch describes the rite in detail and calls it the most dreadful sight in Rome. It was rarely carried out, and the known cases cluster in times of political crisis.

The temple of Vesta in the Forum is round, and its shape is thought to recall the early Italic hut. There was no statue of the goddess inside, only the burning fire. Only the Vestals could enter the inner store called the penus.

During the Vestalia the inner room of the temple was opened to married women. Ovid writes that the millstones stood still in those days and the mill donkeys were decked with flowers. On the last day the temple was swept and the sweepings were thrown into the Tiber.

In the Fasti Ovid tells how Hestia fell asleep at a feast and Priapus approached her. The donkey of Silenus brayed, the goddess woke and the assault failed. The garlanding of donkeys at the Vestalia is tied to this story.

Rome held that the Palladium, the statue of Athena believed to have come from Troy, was kept in the inner room of the temple of Vesta. As long as it stood in the city, Rome was thought to be safe. That story joins Vesta and Pallas in a single cult object. The Palladium on the Pallas page →

The Latin word for hearth is focus. In the seventeenth century Kepler gave that name to the point where light gathers in a lens, and from there it became the modern focus. The idea of the hearth as a centre survives in the word.

Service as a Vestal meant a thirty year oath and full commitment to a single duty. The structure describes a person who gives herself to one work and forms no competing tie. This is where modern asteroid literature takes its reading of Vesta as focus and dedication.

In ancient usage parthenos or virgo describes a woman not bound to a man. A Vestal stood outside both her father's authority and a husband's, so in law she belonged to herself. The point is independence rather than solitude.

When a new colony was founded, an ember from the hearth of the mother city's prytaneion was carried to the new site. If the fire died the colony had to apply to the mother city again. The practice turned the hearth into an instrument of political bond.

A perpetual fire is reported at Kildare in Ireland for Brigid, tended in turn by nineteen women. The record rests on the twelfth century account of Gerald of Wales. The structure resembles the cult of Vesta, although no direct link can be established.

Eleanor Bach's ephemeris made Vesta calculable in a chart. Demetra George reads it through focus, dedication and the theme of the temple priestess. These readings have no link to the classical system of dignities and cannot be added to it.