Who is Hestia/Vesta?

In two previous posts — Who is Vesta? Defining a goddess and Who is Hestia? Translating a goddess — I tried to establish a basic framework for understanding the goddess known as Hestia in Greek, and as Vesta in Latin. I now want to fill in the picture a bit more, using mostly Greek sources.

The Twelve Gods

Although there is no one canonical list of the twelve gods, many versions include her. In the scholia on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica 2.531f, for example:

And the twelve gods are these: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades; Hermes, Hephaestus, Apollon; Demeter, Hera, Hestia; Artemis, Aphrodite, Athena.

In a fragment of the early Latin poet Ennius:

Iuno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Iovis[!], Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo.

And again in the bilingual Hermeneumata Leidensia:

Names of the twelve gods: Hera/Juno, Hestia/Vesta, Poseidon/Neptune, Ares/Mars, Demetra[!]/Ceres, Aphrodite/Venus, Artemis/Diana, Leto/Latona, Hermes/Mercury, Apollon/Apollo, Zeus/Iovis[!].

The Platonic philosopher Sallustius detects a cosmological rationale behind the list of the twelve:

Those who make the cosmos are Zeus, Poseidon, and Hephaestus; those who ensoul it are Demeter, Hera, and Artemis; those who harmonize it are Apollon, Aphrodite, and Hermes; and those who protect it (phroroûntes) are Hestia, Athena, and Ares.

Further, according to Sallustius, the earth belongs to Hestia.

Hestia and the Earth

In Who is Vesta?, we encountered the idea that Hestia is the earth or, slightly more nuanced, that she is the ruling power (dýnamis) of the earth. More conservative Platonic philosophers were happy with this basically Stoic approach, but the so-called Neoplatonists were not. That was not a sign of the times, per se: Calchidius wrote after Plotinus and still took Hestia/Vesta as a name for the Earth (122; or for the world soul, 178; cf. scholia on Theogony 117: “Plato says the earth is the hearth of the cosmos”).

But among the followers of Plotinus and Iamblichus, this became unfashionable. Proclus, for example, writes in the commentary on Plato’s Timaeus:

Plotinus calls the intellect (of the earth) Hestia, its soul Demeter. But we say that these goddesses’ first causes are (all) intellective and hegemonic and separate (from the cosmos), while (only) their illuminations and powers come down into the earth from them, and that there is (thus) a chthonic Demeter, a chthonic Hestia and a chthonic Isis, like there is a chthonic Zeus and chthonic Hermes, these chthonic (gods) being arrayed around the one divinity of the Earth.

And Proclus, again, in his commentary on Euclid:

Some call the earth Hestia and Demeter and say that it participates in Rhea entirely, and that all the causes of generation are in it chthonically.

Similarly Hermias (p.141f):

If some say that the earth is Hestia, you should know that this is said according to participation and that (the earth) is a perfect statue (ágalma) of her.

This differentiated theology of course builds on earlier ideas which simply and crudely equivocated the deities, such as in this scholium on Lycophron (710):

Persephone is also Isis, the Earth and Rhea and Hestia and Pandora, and myriads others of that sort (hétera myría toiaûta).

But we should not allow ourselves to fall into the teleological fallacy; just because the Neoplatonists were more nuanced, this does not mean that less nuanced ideas were waiting for the Neoplatonic system to be properly explained. The Stoics’ explanation — that Vesta is the Earth — stands on its own and is not intrinsically in need of further development. Thus John Lydus lists them side by side in his little doxography (On the Months 4.94, tl. M. Hooker, modified):

On the fifth day before the Ides of June (=June 9th), [there was] a festival of Hestia. On this day the bread-makers would keep festival, on account of the fact that the ancient [bread-makers] prepared bread in the shrines of Hestia. Garlanded donkeys were at the head of the procession, because the grain is ground by them.

The natural [philosophers] assert that Hestia is the earth, [so called] from its standing (hestánai); but the theologians* assert that she is so-called “being-ness” (ontótēs) As witness, Socrates in the Cratylus says that Hestia is “fontal substance” (pegaía ousía), being situated in the Father. But Porphyry claims that after the intelligible Hestia, i.e. “being-ness”, [there is] also the overseer (éphoros) of the earth — they call it (or ‘her’) chthon — called by the same name, Hestia. He speaks as follows: “And on the one hand, the ruling principle of the divine potentiality has been called Hestia — whose maidenly image is placed at the hearth (hestía) — , and in as much as the potentiality is generative, they signify it by the form of a large-breasted woman.” But the hierophants of the Romans claim that she is nothing other than the earth.

(*Here referring not to mythological poets, as the word theológos usually does, but to Platonic metaphysicians/theologians.)

In other words: the natural philosophers (Stoics) and the Roman priests (more probably, the scholars writing about Roman rituals) say Hestia/Vesta is simply the earth; the followers of Plato say she is an intelligible entity, “being-ness”; and Porphyry argues in one work (On Cult Statues) that she is the overseer of the earth, in another (now unknown) that she is “being-ness”. Whether this means, as Lydus thinks, that he held both opinions at the same time, is quite unclear.

It does seem that Lydus may have held such a double opinion; as a student of Christodorus, who studied with Proclus, he was no doubt familiar with the idea that Hestia is in truth a being beyond the cosmos. But he treats the interpretation of Hestia as earth or overseer of the earth as self-evident in a delightful little passage about why different deities are worshipped in different regions (4.30, tl. M. Hooker, modified):

Because the western cardinal direction was attributed to the element of earth, […] the Romans, it is clear, honored Hestia before all [others], just as the Persians [honor] the rock-born Mithras on account of the cardinal point of fire; and those under the Bear (i.e. in the north) [honor] the moist nature on account of the cardinal point of water; and the Egyptians [honor] Isis, in place of Selene, the overseer (éphoros) of all the air.

Hestia/Vesta in poetry

In John Lydus, we saw mention of the festival of Vesta, called Vestalia in Latin and Hestíaia in Greek, which was celebrated on June 9th. In Ovid’s poetic calendar, the Fasti, there is a long, internally varied section on this festival, of which I want to note a few pieces of special interest. First, there is the prayer-like opening (6.249f, tl. A.S. Kline):

Vesta, favour me (Vesta, fave)! I’ll open my lips now in your service,
If I’m indeed allowed to attend your sacred rites.

Then, Ovid describes what the goddess’ response to such a prayer might be like (6.251–256, my tl.):

I was totally in prayer (in prece totus eram); I felt the celestial deity (literally pl.: caelestia numina), and the happy earth was refulgent with crimson light. Not that I saw you, goddess — whatever the lies of poets — nor that you were visible to a man; but what I had not known, and what I had been in error about, these things were now known to me untaught.

Ovid then goes on to tell us that “Vesta and earth are the same” (Vesta eadem est et terra, 6.267), a point on which he dwells for some lines and which he later repeats: “Tellus and Vesta are the same deity” (est Tellus Vestaque numen idem, 6.460). This also explains her name, because “the earth stands by its own power; Vesta is named after the power of standing (vi stando)” (6.299; cf. John Lydus above). Despite the common assumption that such philosophical or “physical” explanations would render “traditional” religiosity absurd, Ovid in fact shows no sense of tension between the concept of Vesta as earth and the notion that she might be present in a special way with her worshipper.

There are some other important comments on ritual practice as well. Firstly, Vesta has no cult statues in her temple (6.295) because she is “nothing but living flame” (6.291), and “neither Vesta nor fire have any image” (6.298). It is neither explained nor problematized how Vesta = fire and Vesta = earth relate to each other.

Secondly, the vestibulum (entrance-hall) is named after her because the hearth used to be in this part of the house, and “it used to be the custom to sit around the hearth on long benches and to believe that the gods were present at the table” (6.305f); offerings to Hestia are still given “on clean plates” (6.310), as if she were partaking in the meal.

Thirdly, “in prayer, we speak of Vesta first” (6.303f). This, of course, is supposed to be the Greek way of praying, while the Roman way should be to pray to Janus first and to Vesta last. But Ovid is here claiming the “Greek” method as Roman! Clearly, things were more varied on the ground than broad Greek-versus-Roman generalizations would allow.

I want to end this little trilogy with a prayer to Hestia composed by the Greek poet Pindar, with which he opens a poem occasioned by the election of a new prýtanis in Tenedos, some kind of official who was set up in the “city halls” (prytaneîa). Fittingly, the scholia disagree whether the city halls were home to hearths (scholium 11.1a) or to statues of Hestia (scholium 11.5). In either case, the poem opens as follows (from N. 11, tl. E. Myers):

Daughter of Rhea, who hast in thy keeping the city halls, O Hestia! sister of highest Zeus and of Hera sharer of his throne, with good-will welcome Aristagoras to thy sanctuary, with goodwill also his fellows who draw nigh to thy glorious sceptre, for they in paying honour unto thee keep (the city) Tenedos in her place erect, by drink-offerings glorifying thee many times before the other gods, and many times by the savour of burnt sacrifice; and the sound of their lutes is loud, and of their songs: and at their tables never-failing are celebrated the rites of Zeus, the stranger’s friend.