Who is Hestia?

Translating a goddess

Who is Hestia? Vesta. It really is that simple. Ancient dictionaries are unanimous, ancient literature is unanimous: Hestia is the Greek translation of Vesta and Vesta is the Latin translation of Hestia.

Translation? Or interpretatio?

Translation, definitely, but it’s a false binary to begin with. The Latin word interpretatio often simply means “translation”, and so it does when Tacitus first used the phrase interpretatio Romana, from which modern scholars derived the theory of interpretatio as a way ancient “pantheons” interacted. We’ll get closer to the truth if we don’t assume theonyms (names of deities) behave in unique ways, and simply look at what is going on linguistically. From this purview, there are basically three ways in which foreign theonyms could be treated in ancient Greek and Latin.

(1) The one that is typical for Egyptian gods is that their name is borrowed in a form suitable to Greek/Latin grammar. So Ise becomes Isis, for example, Amun becomes Ammon, and Usire becomes Osiris. It is then left up to ad hoc interpretation whether this is a distinct deity or the same as another Greco-Roman deity.

Some say that [Osiris] is Dionysus; others that he is another. (Damascius, Philosophical History Fr. 3b)

(2) Another way, which occasionally occurs in Greek and is regularly found in Latin, is that names from other languages are cited without assimilation, as foreign words in the narrower sense. In Latin, such foreign words are most often Greek, and kept in Greek script:

Vesta autem dicta […] ἀπὸ τῆϛ ἑστίαϛ.

Vesta derives from the Greek word ‘Hestia’. (Servius, Commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid 1.292)

In Greek, Latin words are typically transliterated:

Why do [the Romans] call Dionysus Liber Pater (Λίβερουμ Πάτρεμ)? (Plutarch, Roman Questions 104)

Dionysus is a name that does crop up in Latin occasionally, but Plutarch is of course giving it in its original Greek inflection for the accusative case, Dionyson (Διόνυσον), while he inflects Liber Pater according to Latin rules, with the accusative ending in um: Liberum Patrem. In other words, he has transcribed the word into Greek script, but has not made it into a Greek word. An even clearer case is the following, where a Hellenized and an un-Hellenized form are given side by side:

Moreover, most people believe that Amun (…) is the name given to Zeus in the land of the Egyptians, a name which we, with a slight alteration, pronounce Ammon (…). But Manetho of Sebennytus thinks that the meaning “concealed” or “concealment” lies in this word. […] When they, therefore, address the supreme god, whom they believe to be the same as the Universe, as if he were invisible and concealed, and implore him to make himself visible and manifest to them, they use the word “Amun”. (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 9, tl. Frank Cole Babbitt)

(3) In other sources, however, the Egyptian god Amun is simply referred to as Zeus or Jupiter, with no qualification (and without the collocation Zeus Ammon, which also occurs regularly). Such straightforward translation is what usually obtains between Greek and Latin. Just as we don’t ask whether the French Dieu is the same god as the German Gott, for example, there’s no debate about whether Jupiter and Zeus might be distinct deities.

There is a wonderful test case for how these different forms worked in the Secular Games organized by Augustus. We have very full documentation of this festival, including a) the Greek Sibylline oracle explaining what gods shall be made offerings to; b) a record of the prayers spoken by Augustus during the ritual — which were in Latin, although the sacrifices were made according to the so-called “Greek rite”; and c) a hymnic poem by Horace composed for the occasion.

The Sibylline oracle mentions the following gods: the Moirai, the Eileithyiai, Gaia, Zeus, Hera, and Phoibos Apollon “who is also called Helios”.

The prayers name: the Moerae, Ilithyia (in the singular; the prose introducing the prayer uses the plural), Terra Mater, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Iuno Regina, Apollo, and also — unmentioned but perhaps implied in the oracle — Diana.

Horace addresses: the Parcae, Ilithyia — for whom he proposes the Latin names Lucina and Genitalis — , Apollo/Phoebus/Sol, and Diana/Luna.

Clearly, different names behave quite differently: (A) Apollo is a Greek name in the first place, only inflected differently in Latin, and the same is true of Phoebus. (B) Jupiter, Juno, Sol (and Diana and Luna) uncontroversially translate Zeus, Hera, Helios (and Artemis and Selene), albeit (B2) the by-names Optimus Maximus and Regina are specific to Latin. (C) The translation of Gaia as Terra may be very slightly “foreignizing”, as Tellus is the more usual theonym for Mother Earth, where Greek uses the same word for earth and Earth, as it were. (D) The Moirai are usually translatable as Parcae, but the concepts do not entirely line up, so that a borrowing Moerae is sometimes (albeit very rarely) used. (E) Eileithyia/the Eileithyiai are in function basically equivalent to the Latin Lucina, but Lucina is usually treated as a byname of Juno, whereas Eileithyia is a byname of Artemis, or, in the plural, the Eileithyiai are an independent group of deities. Latin authors sometimes have a Diana Lucina, and the glossaries translate Juno Lucina as Hera Eileithyia, but either is an awkward fit. So it is understandable that Horace is caught between using the Latinized Greek name, using an established Latin one, or coining a new one (Genitalis); in a hymn, abundance of names is a kind of praise, so he goes through all options.

In this taxonomy, Hestia=Vesta clearly belongs in category B. Not only is it uncontroversial to translate one into the other, it would be wrong to write HESTIA in a Latin text or to treat Vesta (Βέστα? Ϝέστα? Οὐέστα?) as a Greek word.

Analytical distinctions

So much for the distinction between Hestia and Vesta in terms of ancient language usage. But granting that ancient speakers of Greek and Latin did not differentiate between them as two goddesses does not necessarily mean that there is no point in us making such a distinction for analytical reasons. I doubt, however, that the Roman/Greek division is nearly as salient as it is usually thought to be; it would make at least equal sense to take Roman and Athenian ideas, etc., as subdivisions of a general Hellenistic umbrella. And it cannot be taken for granted that Latin texts tell us about Roman, Greek about non-Roman conceptions of the goddess. It will often be better practice to use both names interchangeably than to hew too faithfully to the language in which a given source happens to be written (or preserved).

The Greek semantics of Hestia

That being said, there is a key difference between Greek and Latin here, which is that Vesta is only a theonym; when it is used in other senses (e.g. “fire”), then only metonymically. Hestia, however, is also the ordinary word for the hearth or the hearth-fire, and thus for the household — rather like the Lar or Lares in Latin. Moreover, Hestia is invoked first in sacrifice, where Vesta is invoked last (while Janus is called on first). How consistently this was actually done in ritual is rather unclear to me, but it is the basis for the proverbial expression “to begin from Hestia/the hearth” (aph’ hestías árkhesthai). The expression is used by Plato in the Euthyphro (3a7), and receives some interesting explanations in the scholia:

“from the hearth”: i.e. from the most familiar things (oikeiotátōn), because the “hearth” is the household.

A different explanation, “from Hestia”: a proverb. It is transferred from what is done in sacrifice, because it was the custom (éthos) to make the first offerings to Hestia.

“to begin from Hestia”: a proverb applied to people who come into power and first do injustice against their own relations (oikeíous), because it was the custom to sacrifice to Hestia first (before) the other gods.

And a myth about her is also related, as follows: they say that, after the dissolution of the rule of the Titans, when Zeus received the kingship, he granted Hestia to take whatever she should wish, and she asked for virginity and the first offerings from humanity.

The same explanations are also found in other scholiasts and paroemiographers (proverb collectors). The Aratus scholiasts give us examples of Hestia’s primacy in worship:

Krates the comic poet says, “Beginning from Hestia I pray to the gods” (Ex Hestías arkhómenos eúkhomai theoîs), and Sophron, “Beginning from Hestia, I call Zeus the ruler of all things” (Ex Hestías arkhómenos kalô Día pántōn arkhēgétēn).

Another interesting passage, which spells out the meanings of the word hestía, is found in the lexicographical text On the Difference between Related Words ascribed to the grammarian Ammonius (s.v. bōmós):

Altar (bōmós) and hearth (hestía) and fire-place (eskhára) and pit (mégaron) differ, according to what Ammonius of Lamprae says in the first book of On Sacrifices: “Altars have pedestals (or ‘steps‘?’), a fire-place is for common use (and directly) upon the earth, and hearths are extravagant; a pit is an enclsoed hearth, in which the mystery (sacrifices) of Demeter (are offered).”

In Homer, however, “fire-place” and “hearth” mean the same thing, and “altar” also means “pedestal”, as in “And golden youths stood on well-built bōmôn” (Odyssey 7.100, tl. A.T. Murray), in the sense of “on pedestals”. And “hearth” also means the house, as in “and Odysseus’ noble hearth” (Odyssey 20.231 etc.); and the “hearthless” is homeless.

In Hesiod, there is also the corporeal goddess Hestia, her and “Demeter and golden-sandaled Hera” (are daughters of Kronos and Rhea, Theogony 454).

Neanthes of Cyzicus in the third book of Myths by City says that altars belong to the gods, fire-places to heroes.

In Euripides’ Pleisthenes, “fire-place” stands for “altar” […] as well as in Sophocles’ Chryse.

“Corporeal god” is a technical term for what we usually call anthropomorphic gods, but used only (as far as I can tell) in poetry criticism, to distinguish when a human-like agent is meant from other word-meanings (e.g. Nyx versus the night); in everyday life, such a distinction is not really necessary.

A final note

Coincidentally, researching Hestia also led me to the first woman grammarian (γραμματική) I remember encountering in ancient literature: Hestiaea of Alexandrian.