Hestia

Hestia, the Roman Vesta, is the goddess of the hearth, the household, and the sacred fire that burns at the center of every home and city. The gentlest and least storied of the Olympians, she has almost no myths, for she keeps to her place — and that very stillness is her dignity.

She received the first portion of every sacrifice, and the public hearth of a city, where her undying flame was tended, was its symbolic heart; colonists carried its fire to kindle the hearth of each new colony. The Platonists, fittingly, made the unmoving Hestia an image of the steadfast center — the abiding ground around which all things turn, even as Zeus is the power that moves them.

Epithets

• Prytanis Πρύτανις — of the public hearth of the city
• Boulaia Βουλαία — of the council chamber
• Vesta Lat. — her Roman name, served by the Vestal Virgins