Skip to main content

Hestia’s Nature And Deeds

IT is Hestia’s glory that, alone of the great Olympians, she never takes part in wars or disputes. Like Artemis and Athene, moreover, she has always resisted every amorous invitation offered her by gods, Titans, or others; for, after the dethronement of Cronus, when Poseidon and Apollo came forward as rival suitors, she swore by Zeus’s head to remain a virgin for ever. At that, Zeus gratefully awarded her the first victim of every public sacrifice, because she had preserved the peace of Olympus.
b. Drunken Priapus once tried to violate her at a rustic feast attended by accident or in token of mourning, it is kindled afresh with the aid of a fire-wheel.
1. The centre of Greek life-even at Sparta, where the family had been subordinated to the State-was the domestic hearth, also regarded as a sacrificial altar; and Hestia, as its goddess, represented personal security and happiness, and the sacred duty of hospitality. The story of her marriage-offers from Poseidon and Apollo has perhaps been deduced from the joint worship of these three deities at Delphi. Priapus’s attempt to violate her is an anecdotal warning against sacrilegious ill-treatment of women-guests who have come under the protection of the domestic or public hearth: even the ass, a symbol of lust, proclaims Priapus’s criminal folly.
2. The archaic white aniconic image of the Great Goddess, in use throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, seems to have represented a heap of glowing charcoal, kept alive by a covering of white ash, which was the most cosy and economical means of heating in ancient times; it gave out neither smoke nor flame, and formed the natural centre of family or clan gatherings. At Delphi the charcoal-heap was translated into limestone for out-of-doors use, and became the omphalos, or navel-boss, frequently shown in Greek vase-paintings, which marked the supposed centre of the world. This holy object, which has survived the ruin of the shrine, is inscribed with the name of Mother Earth, is about the size and shape of a charcoal fire needed to heat a large room. In Classical times the Pythoness had an attendant priest who induced her trance by burning barley grains, hemp, and laurel over an oil lamp in an enclosed space, and then interpreted what she said. But it is likely that the hemp, laurel, and barley were once laid on the hot ashes of the charcoal mound, which is a simpler and more effective way of producing narcotic fumes. Numerous triangular or leaf-shaped ladles in stone or clay have been found in Cretan and Mycenaean shrines-some of them showing signs of great heat-and seem to have been used for tending the sacred fire. The charcoal mound was sometimes built on a round, three-legged day table, painted red, white, and black, which are the moon’s colours; examples have been found in the Peloponnese, Crete, and Delos-one of them, from a chamber tomb at Zafer Papoura near Cnossus, had the charcoal still piled on it.
Hestia



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merope - Pleiades

Merope is one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione . Pleione, their mother, is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys and is the protector of sailors. Merope is the faintest of the stars because she was the only of the Pleiades to have married a mortal. Her sisters had relations with gods and bore them sons, but Merope married Sisyphus and lived on the island Chios. Merope gave birth to Glaukos, Ornytion, Almus, Thersander and Sinon. The star Merope is often called the "lost Pleiad" because she was at first not seen by astronomers or charted like her sisters. One myth says that she hid her face in shame because she had an affair with a mortal man, another says she went to Hades with her husband, Sisyphus . They were the sisters of Calypso, Hyas, the Hyades , and the Hesperides. The Pleiades were nymphs in the train of Artemis , and together with the seven Hyades were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers to the infant Di...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sisyphus

SISYPHUS, son of Aeolus, married Atlas ’s daughter Merope, the Pleiad, who bore him Glaucus , Ornytion , and Sinon, and owned a fine herd of cattle on the Isthmus of Corinth. b. Near him lived Autolycus , son of Chione , whose twin-brother Philammon was begotten by Apollo , though Autolycus himself claimed Hermes as his father. c. Now, Autolycus was a past master in theft, Hermes having given him the power of metamorphosing whatever beasts he stole, from horned to unhorned, or from black to white, and contrariwise. Thus although Sisyphus noticed that his own herds grew steadily smaller while those of Autolycus increased, he was unable at first to accuse him of theft; and therefore, one day, engraved the inside of all his cattle’s hooves with the monogram SS or, some say, with the words ‘Stolen by Autolycus’. That night Autolycus helped himself as usually and at dawn hoof-prints along the road provided Sisyphus with sufficient evidence to summon neighbours in witness of the th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paris And Helen

WHEN Helen, Leda’s beautiful daughter, grew to womanhood at Sparta in the palace of her foster-father Tyndareus, all the princes of Greece came with rich gifts as her suitors, or sent their kinsmen to represent them. Diomedes, fresh from his victory at Thebes, was there with Ajax, Teucer, Philoctetes, Idomeneus, Patroclus, Menestheus, and many others. Odysseus came too, but empty-handed, because he had not the least chance of success-for, even though the Dioscuri, Helen’s brothers, wanted her to marry Menestheus of Athens, she would, Odysseus knew, be given to Prince Menelaus, the richest of the Achaeans, represented by Tyndareus’s powerful son-in-law Agamemnon. b. Tyndareus sent no suitor away, but would, on the other hand, accept none of the proffered gifts; fearing that his partiality for any one prince might set the others quarrelling. Odysseus asked him one day: ‘If I tell you how to avoid a quarrel will you, in return, help me to marry Icarius’s daughter Penelope?’ ‘It...
Post a Comment
Read more