The Ancients - Hestia: Goddess of Hearth & Home

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

As both the eldest and youngest child of the great titan Kronos, and the Greek goddess of hearth and home, Hestia was incredibly important in almost every sphere of Greek daily life. But she is arguably one of the most overlooked deities in the Greek Pantheon. The question we're asking today is why.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined once again by the University of Bristol’s Dr Ellie Mackin-Roberts as they delve into the elusive, but fascinating figure of Hestia and uncover just how Hestia could be the eldest and youngest Greek God all at the same time.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. The scriptwriter is Andrew Hulse. The voice actor is Nichola Wooley.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.The Ancients is recording our first LIVE SHOW at the London Podcast Festival on Thursday 5th September 2024! Book your tickets now to be in the audience and ask Tristan and his guest your burning questions. Tickets on sale HERE https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/the-ancients/Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionVote for The Ancients in the Listeners Choice category of British Podcast Awards here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Hi, Tristan here, and I have an exciting announcement. The Ancients has been invited to open the London Podcast Festival. We will be recording our very first live show on Thursday 5th September at 7pm at King's Place,

and being the first live show where we want it to be extra special, so I've invited a friend of the podcast, Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, to join me on stage where we will be diving into the captivating story of the Tower of Babel, from its first mention in the Book of Genesis to the real-life great ancient Babylonian structure that it was based on. Of course, the ancients is nothing without you, so we want you to be there in the audience, taking part and asking us your burning questions. Tickets for the festival always sell fast. So book yourself a seat now at www.kingsplace.co.uk

forward slash what's on, or click the link in the show notes of this episode. I really hope to see you there. earth, sea, and sky. That is what the young boy whispers into the flames. He has spent all day gathering wood to feed the fire, picking through the bones of his home. The bed his father whittled, the chair his mother rocked him in as a babe, the eaves under which he slept all his nine years. There was little of the house that was not already burnt. The soldiers saw to that. Just as they saw to the massacre of the entire colony.

He heard it, that young boy. The trapdoor to the cellar may have been hidden, but it was not thick enough to keep out the screams. He hears it even now in the cracking and popping of the fire. The gods, surely they will offer some revenge, some justice. So the young boy makes an offering of his last morsels of food. He prays to Zeus, the father of gods and men, to Athena, the maiden of wisdom and war, to Apollo, the archer, Artemis, the hunter, Hephaestus, the craftsman. He prays to all those who dwell upon Olympus, all except one. except one. You've forgotten me. It is a reproach, but a gentle one, a soothing voice. She is not what the young boy imagined of a goddess. She is not marble perfection, nor clad in dread and terror. In fact, between each flicker of the fire, he sees the face of his mother, his grandmother, the kindly priestess who cared for him during a fever.

It's only those garnet eyes that promise divinity. They seem to glow from within to promise safety, like burning coals against an endless winter night. holes against an endless winter night. The first portion is always offered to me, she explains, picking a smoking slither of bone from the heart of the Hughes, your host, and today, well, it is the final episode of our Greek Gods and Goddesses miniseries. Over the past 18 months, we've covered all the big deities, almost all of them, from Zeus to Dionysus and many more. You can go and listen to them all in the Ancients Archive. Today, we're on the last one.

We are covering arguably the most overlooked deity of them all. And yet, she was a goddess who was right at the heart of ancient Greek society. Hestia, goddess of the hearth. Now, Hestia, she has an extraordinary, albeit rather elusive, story. As you'll hear, there were far fewer myths about Hestia than the other gods and goddesses, but nevertheless, she was incredibly important in almost every sphere of Greek daily life. The crux of this episode is an interview with the University of Bristol's Dr Ellie Mackin-Roberts. Ellie, she has been on the podcast a couple of times before to talk about

Hera, Queen of the Gods, and Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, so she is a stalwart of our Gods and Goddesses series. Now she is back to talk all things Hestia. But just before we get to that, to talk all things Hestia. But just before we get to that, as with all of the episodes in this series, we are kicking off our Hestia episode with a story, with the retelling of a myth associated with this goddess of the hearth, one of very few admittedly. The one we've chosen today is that of Hestia's birth and how she became both the eldest and youngest child of the great titan Cronos. It is quite the story. So without further ado, let's get into it. How can the Muses begin their story of Hestia? What can they say of her? They struggle to agree, squabbling with one another while the goddess watches on, amused, and the young boy, confused. You see,

the muses cannot agree her title. It is a discord slipping into their song. Some of their melodies contend that Hestia is the first of the Olympians. The others insist the opposite. She is the last. Eventually, the muser's song does reach agreement, though, if one can call silence agreement. For that is where Hestia's story starts, in the void, in the carceral gut of her father, Cronus, youngest born of Uranus. He has been warned that his children will overthrow him,

just as Cronus did his own father, and so the moment his wife, Noble Rhea, gives birth, Cronus swallows the baby whole. Swallows Hestia whole. There is no light in her prison. No sound. No sense. Only solitude. Hestia learns then to keep her own company. She hallucinates worlds in the dark. Colors and comprehensions cohered from nicks, nil, and nought. Characters pulled from each and every contrary thought. Narratives spun from threads of imagination drawn taut.

She is alone, until she is not. Isolation is timeless, and so who could say if it is only a second or an eon until her solitude shatters? A new cellmate arrives. Cronus swallowed another child, Hades. He would become lord of the dead. The newborn finds Astia by following the garnet glow, that promise of safety, like burning coals against an endless winter night. And for the first time, Astia sees light. Her eye is reflected in his. They begin to measure time then, not by second or by eon, but by advent. The third sibling, Demeter, she who would become the goddess of abundance. Now the fourth, Poseidon, he who would become lord of the deep. Now the fifth, Hera, she who would become queen of the gods. She who would become queen of the gods.

And between each advent, Astia is the one the other gods gather about. Their eldest sister. Their home. Their hearth. It is with the sixth advent that things change. It is not a sibling. It is a stone, clad in swaddling clothes.

The imprisoned gods wonder if it could be some sign. Is their incarceration coming to a close? They hope. They conspire. Then it comes. A rumble, a rolling,

thundering pearl that deafens fragile ears. A crack of light that scorches undeveloped eyes. This is no advent. It is exodus. Hera, the last to arrive, is first to leave. Then Poseidon, now Demeter, now Hades, and finally, for who could say how long? A second, or an eon. Hestia is alone once more.

Then she feels it too, that pull, that drag, and the light takes her, released, regurgitated, reborn. It was their mother, noble Rhea, who contrived the escape. It was she who substituted Re-born. stronger than his father. And it was she who fed Cronus the emetic that released the five imprisoned gods. The war the siblings wage then is vicious. But though Cronus puts up a fierce fight, he does so with grim resignation. His usurpation is fated. It always was. It always was. What could follow this great war, this Titanomachy, but a petty squabble? The gods arguing over who should rule in Cronus' stead, who should stand as first among them. Zeus holds a claim to kingship in his mind.

He turns it this way and that. He weaves his thoughts and winds his reckonings. And then he lays his argument before the other gods. A simple dichotomy. He is the youngest born, as Cronus was, so he should rule as Cronus did. But he is also the eldest. The other gods were reborn from their father in the opposite order. His rule is doubly affirmed. The only problem is Astia.

Those siblings who gathered about her in the void, in Cronus' carceral gut, bathing in the garnet glow, that promise of safety, like burning coals against an endless winter night, those gods demand a position for Hestia too. For if Zeus' logic says he is the first and last of them, then Hestia is the last and first, and if she is not to rule, Stia is the last and first, and if she is not to rule, she must receive some other honor. The first of every offering. The first of every sacrifice. I could tell you we are the linchpins of Olympus, Zeus and I, Astia says, bringing the muses' story to a close.

I could tell you I am the foundation, but that he is the citadel upon it. I could tell you he is the revenge, the justice you pray for. That he is the scorch of lightning, the flame when it burns. But I don't believe that is what you need right now. I am the glow of the hearth, the flame when it comforts. And Astia draws the young boy, shivering, into a hug. Comfort. I believe that is what you are really praying for. Ellie, what a pleasure. It is great to have you back on the podcast. It's great to be back on the podcast. For the last in our long Greek Gods and Goddesses miniseries, but we could not forget Hestia.

Ellie, first off, who was Hestia? Well, Hestia is both the eldest and the youngest of what becomes the Olympian dynasty, and we can get into why that is. Her name literally simply means hearth in Greek, and often she is represented just by the hearth. There are very few myths about her compared to her perhaps more dynamic or adventurous siblings, but she's this sort of stable, ever-present goddess who is really central to daily life, real daily life, rather than the dramatics that we might find in some of the others. You mentioned the hearth. Is that the key symbol, almost the image we have of Hestia today, or are there other certain instrumental attributes and symbols that are always associated with Hestia in Greek mythology? So the hearth is definitely the main one, and this is how she is represented to the Greeks. Every home had a hearth in it, although

archaeological evidence suggests that in sort of normal people's homes, that wasn't the kind of built-in big circular hearth that we think of in palatial centres. But she was also represented in temples and particularly in other gods' temples as this fire pit. The most notable one, I think, is probably in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and also in public buildings. So the Pripneum, which is kind of the central building of government, kind of state house. She's represented there, but she doesn't really have a lot of stories about her. And those that we do have emphasize her virginity, her want to remain unmarried and to kind of reject that aspect of life, but she rejects it in a different way to other

sort of perpetual virgin goddesses like Athena or Artemis. That isn't really a, you know, wish to remain childlike that we perhaps find with Artemis or kind of a masculinisation that we would find with Athena, but almost just a wish to remain pure. And of course, we can think about the purity of fire and the way that that is a purifying substance and kind of perhaps link it up in that way. Because it is such an interesting depiction of Hestia compared to all the other gods and goddesses that we've covered in this series. It's interesting. It's almost as if she's, in one kind of way, taking the moral high ground as staying on the sidelines, knowing what she's meant to represent. Whilst we have all of these other, you know, consistently lots of stories of other gods and goddesses having great rivalries, bickering with one another, and sometimes those arguments going over the top and with mortals as well. But Hestia, almost very differently to the rest, she kind of steps back from that and doesn't get involved for many cases.

Yeah, absolutely. And perhaps the place where we see her the most is in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where both Apollo and Poseidon proposition her and she rejects them. And that's sort of all that's really said about that. And then she really does just kind of take this step back almost. You mentioned Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite there. So I mean, Ellie, this I'm guessing, is this a key piece of literature that explores, I guess, the story of Aphrodite, goddess of love, but is it also an important source for that of Hestia or is there also a Homeric hymn, an ancient piece of literature for Hestia too? I mean, are there many literary sources that do shed more light on who Hestia was or is it largely archaeology for her story?

There's some archaeological evidence for her, but I think what we find the most is literature in non-mythic sources. So we're thinking about religious regulations or historiography, where we find out things about her significance, not because they are directly addressed, but because of the prominent place that she's given. So for example, Hestia receives the first and last portion of every sacrifice and is often found with spaces in other gods' temples. She has very few temples of her own, but is always found within the hearth in other people's, other gods' spaces. In the same way, she has a really important role in colonization because the hearth fire, which she is, not just that she represents, but is an embodiment of her, a part of the hearth fire is taken from the mother city to the new colony. And that is the very first

piece of religious practice that the new colony does together as a community is setting up the heart. And she's important at every level, from families in their homes, small communities and neighbourhoods, politics, obviously in religious practice. But she really permeates all of life for the ancient Greeks. And this is perhaps a nice place to say that your listeners will probably be most familiar with Hestia not through her Greek version but through her Roman version, Vesta, which obviously is the patron of the Vestal Virgins, this prominent sect of priestesses in Rome that maintain the hearth fire.

of priestesses in Rome that maintain the hearth fire. So you can kind of see from that how important she is in society. And scholars have tried to figure out why she has this sort of very important cult practice in Rome, but that she doesn't have in Greece and all of these sorts of things. I'm not sure that we can solve that in the course of a podcast. Well, let's steer away from that now. But I think you've hammered home that really important point, the importance and the enduring importance of Hestia as the representation of fire. Really interesting point there about mother cities and then colonies and bringing fire from the hearth of a mother city to one of their colonies as a representation of Hestia. But let's go back to the beginning.

Ellie, what is Hestia's story? What is her origin story? Because earlier you mentioned figures like Cronos and Rhea, because this is a really interesting part of Hestia's story, almost being the eldest and then the youngest at the same time. Rather, well, contradictory. Yeah, she is both the first and last born of the Olympian siblings, of the elder Olympians. So she's the first child that Kronos and Rhea have together. And these are the second set of gods who rule after Kronos overthrows his own father, Uranos. And Kronos has been given this prophecy that he will be overthrown by his own children in the same way that he overthrew his father. And so he obviously doesn't want that to happen. And so decides that he is going to swallow all of his children.

And so as Rhea has these children, he swallows them. So Hestia is the first to be swallowed as she is the first born. I'm sure you covered in the Zeus episode the story of Zeus not being swallowed, that Rhea gives Cronus a rock instead, and Zeus goes away and grows up and comes back and bites his father in whichever way of whichever version you want to read. And the gods then come out in reversed order. So then Hestia is the last one to come out.

So, yeah, both firstborn and lastborn. And she does sort of almost immediately kind of take a back seat to the other gods. There is no real, she doesn't really play a part, a big part in the Titanomachy, the battle between the Olympians and the Titans in which Zeus and the Olympians win supremacy. So who are the Titans there, Ellie? You said the Titanomachy, so I thought I need to ask who they are. The Titans are just the gods who come before the Olympians. So Kronos and Rhea are the leaders of the Titans. They're just the generation of

gods before the Olympians. Got it. And then they take over. And then the Olympians take over, of which Hestia is one of the oldest, which is really interesting. So she is there alongside the likes of Hera and Zeus right at the beginning, Ellie. But with that legacy, with that fact of Hestia being in the mythology the eldest and then the youngest, but let's say the eldest is the firstborn of Cronos and Rhea, does that result in any consequences for Hestia? Does that mean automatically that she does take this back role because she is the eldest? I mean, how do you think that impacts her story in the mythology? I'm not sure that she is sort of necessarily immediately regulated to a background role. Zeus does give her the job of maintaining the fires of the Olympian hearth.

And so this is kind of where perhaps that background role comes from. She's sort of taken back into the home, as it were, the home of the Olympians. And that, I mean, befits a goddess whose main role is within the home, whether that's in the homes of real people or the homes of the gods in temples and those sorts of things. But it's also interesting that she does eventually end up taking a back seat in the overall court, I guess, of the Olympians because she is replaced in the canonical 12 by Dionysus. So you mentioned that how Zeus makes Hestia goddess of the hearth. Do we know the story

behind that as to why Hestia was made the goddess of the hearth? No, we don't. I'm sure that there is some piece of fantastic lost literature that spells that out. But in the literature that has come down to us in Hesiod's Theogony, for example, we are not really given that information. And as I've mentioned, the other big source for Hestia is the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where what we get is a sense that she is an elder, not necessarily elderly, but one of the elders of the gods, that she kind of has this wisdom about her.

And part of that is because Aphrodite has no power over her. And we sort of associate the power that Aphrodite has over women with perhaps levity, lightness, a little bit of frivolity perhaps, which we just don't get in Hestia. So is that status of her being a virgin goddess alongside the likes of Athena and Artemis, if I remember correctly, the three virgin goddesses. Is this depiction, as you say, Hestia as a maiden, as this elder figure almost in a way, is that also central to her portrayal? Yes, I think so. We don't get a lot of images of her in art, but those that we do portray her in this sort of modest, veiled, mature way, not necessarily elderly, but then we don't really get a lot of portrayals of elderly women and certainly

not goddesses who are elderly, but definitely mature. Sometimes she kind of holds flowers or a kettle, which perhaps connect her to the earth, to kind of purity, those sorts of things. And with the kettle, obviously back to the hearth, back to the home. We don't sort of get a lot of images of her and certainly none that really throw a spanner in what we understand of her from the limited literature. That's interesting. But did you say that in some cases she's portrayed as holding flowers? Yeah. And we can think about other goddesses that are shown holding flowers. The most notable one, and that I think your listeners will probably recognize immediately, is Persephone.

immediately is Persephone and that is about her status as a pre-married woman obviously we know that Persephone goes on to become married but her image with flowers is pre-marriage it's about this purity this sort of connection to Gaia as the earth not in a kind of underworld-y or chthonic sense, but in sort of a natural state, pure state kind of sense. And that's the mythology and stories surrounding Hestia, because we've already admitted that there aren't many stories, and we've already covered the one about Hestia's origins with Kronos, Zeus and Rhea. But, Eddie, are there any other myths that we can talk about with Hestia? I mean, you mentioned already, I think you said Dionysus replacing her. But are there any big stories of Hestia where she does play an important role or is a character in an ancient Greek myth?

No, not really. Those are genuinely the two big ones. They're her birth story, which isn't really even her birth story, and the story that we find in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where Apollo and Poseidon both proposition her, and she says, no, I don't want that. Poseidon both propositioned her and she says, no, I don't want that. Our Roman counterpart has one other that we don't find in the Greek sources, but that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have a genesis. And that is where we find Vesta sleeping and Priapus, who is this cheeky, lustful,

who is this cheeky, lustful, kind of greasy god who is usually shown with a gigantic phallus, comes across the sleeping Hestia. She is woken up just in the nick of time by the saying of she calls the other gods in and they immediately take revenge on her behalf on Priapus. But apart from that, not really. So they all sort of get this sense of she is not, I don't want to say in need of the other gods for protection,

but there is a recognition between Hestia and the other gods in these stories that Hestia's role is home-based. And so she doesn't need to cultivate the kinds of skills that we might think of. Other goddesses fighting off unwanted advances from lusty gods of course the place that we get that story about preapis is ovid so we know that ovid likes to play with greek stories to turn them on their heads almost so and ovid is a roman writer i sort of the first century BCE into the first century CE, so that kind of crossed period. And he writes one of his main works is the Metamorphosis, which is this series of stories, predominantly with Greek, of mythic stories, predominantly with Greek origins about metamorphosis essentially.

So this is where we get stories about Daphne turning into a laurel tree because Apollo is chasing her. And that's where we find this story about Hestia, Vesta and Priapus. There are also two short Homeric hymns to Hestia. The Homeric hymns, there are four long ones, and we can relatively securely date those to the late archaic, mid to late archaic period, around the same time as Homer, that sort of thing. And there are this bunch of shorter ones that because they are short, we can't date with much certainty.

So they may be quite early, but similarly they could be, you know, late classical Hellenistic. So they're much more difficult. So we have these two very short hymns to Hestia, the first of which essentially talks about her role in the home what mortals should do for her and why so for example it says without you we wouldn't have any banquets we wouldn't be able to pour sweet wine in honor of the gods we wouldn't be able to have friendship in our homes and all those sorts of things. In the second one, it says, Hestia, you are central

to the house of Apollo in Delphi, essentially. That's basically all it says. And we do know that there is a house in the centre nearly of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi where the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi sat. But apart from that, there is no strong link between Hestia and Delphi. And then we have a slightly later Orphic hymn

of the sort of 3rd century CE, maybe slightly later, the Orphic Hymns run all the way up to kind of the second century CE. And this kind of just talks about, again, Hestia as the eternal flame, as the basis of the home. This is where we get our stability from, because of you, because the heart and the home is central to what we do. And therefore, we worship you to keep that stability. It's such an interesting portrayal for an ancient Greek deity, especially, and I'm really glad that Hestia is the last one we do in this series because of the contrast with the many, many stories that you get with the rest that we've covered so far. But at the same time, I think, Ellie, what you're saying there from the snippets that you do have,

and now as we kind of go more into the archaeology of people who would have worshipped Hestia in the ancient Greek world, not to let the lack of myths take away from her importance to people. Because at the end of the day, you remember this is a time before radiators and where the hearth, the fire was a source of light during the night, it was a source of warmth. Of course, you have the Prometheus myth as well with bringing fire to mortals. So even though there is a lack of surviving mythology compared to the other Olympian deities, for everyday people living across the Greek world, Ellie, because she represented fire and warmth and light, was she almost, in one kind of way, the mobile phone goddess in the fact that this is a goddess that you would expect everyone to know and you wouldn't really need to describe them that much because they were just that central. Everyone would know who they were and what they represented and how they would be worshipped because they were in every person's house. Yeah, absolutely. And one other, I think, really important aspect of this is nourishment,

cooking. We cook over the half fire. And so, you know, we think about our big agrarian gods, Demeter, and, you know, the role that they play. But actually, without the ability to cook that food, it's a bit worthless. And there's also something, I think, of the community in there. You think about gathering around the fire on cold nights, gathering around to share meals. I think there's a reason why Hestia has the first and last portions of every sacrifice, because the Greeks acknowledge that this is life-sustaining. And I think that point that that Orphic hymn sort of makes about stability is a really strong one.

And perhaps that's also an explanation for why she doesn't have a lot of myths because to be stable, a stable foundation, a stable home. We're not necessarily looking for excitement and big adventures, but to just have someone who will always be there at home. And that, I think, is what Hestia is for the gods. And not just in homes, but in every polis, you would have a religious centre with a hearth, you would have a religious centre with a hearth. You would have a political centre with a hearth. And just to clarify, a polis, that is a city-state. That's an ancient Greek city-state like Athens or Corinth, yes.

And she doesn't have a lot of her own temples. So I pulled a list from our old friend Pausanias, geographer, travel writer of the second century CE. Yes. And this is what we have. There's a temple at Ephesus of Hestia Boulia, so Hestia of the Senate. We have a temple in Hermione in the Argyllid, in Sparta, at Andros, which is one of the islands in the Cyclades, down in the very south of the Cyclades. And in addition to those, Xenophon says she has a small temple at Olympia. But from what I could see very briefly, we have no archaeological proof of that Olympia temple. So you can see, even just from that list, that if that's all Pausanias sees, and we know that Pausanias is very

fastidious in listing temples, that's not a huge amount. But if you add every home, then suddenly you are the most worshipped divinity in the Greek world. And I think that's true of Hestia. I know with ancient Rome, you have the household gods, the Lares, and a little shrine to these household gods. Do we know anything about the worship of Hestia within everyday homes of ancient Greeks? Was there a little shrine? I mean, has archaeology or literature, is anything revealed about that, about how she would have been worshipped within the house itself? It doesn't, and that's really a very frustrating thing. We don't even have, in many homes, an actual built-in hearth. What we're probably thinking of are movable, I guess, braziers sort of things. And that perhaps speaks to the way that Greek homes are built. You know, we don't have bedrooms. There are definitely dining rooms and kitchens. But apart from that, the living

spaces would have been very multi-purpose. And so you are perhaps thinking about a place where you want to be able to move that source of heat and community from room to room. It's also really disappointing, I suppose, from the perspective of a scholar of ancient religion, which I am, that we do not sort of have more. But then when you think about it from the kind of everyday living sensory approach of the ancient person, when you're thinking about the smoke of a fire filling your room, that is a sensory intervention of the goddess. The heat is a sensory intervention of the goddess. The smell of cooking or smoke or sacrifice is an intervention that the goddess plays with you because there is this very strong, tangible connection between the fire and Hestia. And look, we find this with other gods,

between the fire and Hestia. And look, we find this with other gods, but this is definitely the most impactful in people's lives. People knew that thunder was Zeus, but that doesn't have the same impact in your life as the hearth being the goddess in your own home that you are cooking on and all of these things. And so in a sense, you just have to, I think, consider the way that people interacted with the hearth itself

and the way that the hearth interacted with people or the way that they perceived the hearth interacting with them as the daily worship practice. And, of course, then we have things like small libations. So before every meal, there would probably be a libation to Hestia, potentially at the end of every meal as well. And so these sort of little daily things, rather than that sort of more formalized little shrine thing that we get in Rome, we first start seeing those really in the Hellenistic period. And so that's what

develops into that Roman tradition and probably develops out of this much more fluid tradition. So, well, and that makes sense, doesn't it? Can you see it with all the other gods and goddesses as well, how they evolve over time from archaic to classical and then Hellenistic and ultimately with the Romans who, you you know pose so much of the ancient greek religion but then obviously they're those those adaptations made as well and then with figures such as of it that you mentioned earlier i i feel that it's okay to say but of course i'm a joe blogs looking in but from what you've said there really and kind of reinstating restating what i was saying earlier hestia does in a way kind of feel like a mobile phone

goddess in the fact that this is something she's something what represents her in the hearth is something that they would have used every day and interacted with every day so that almost you don't talk about it so much because it isn't a grand ceremony or anything else like the other gods and goddesses your interactions with this goddess because she was within the home itself, was just part of everyday practice. Yeah, absolutely. And to sort of belabor your analogy of the mobile phone, maybe slightly too much. She's also a goddess of community communication. When you have your neighbours over, you gather around the hearth. When you get together in communities, you gather around the hearth. And what do you do in those communities? You gossip,

you exchange information. And so, you know, perhaps we really are talking about divinity that facilitates information gathering and particularly for women they don't have the ability to go i'm being wildly speculative now they don't have the ability to go to the assembly they rely on the information that they can gather locally with other women both around their hearts and at places like public fountains so maybe that is belaboring your mobile phone analogy slightly too much. But no, I like it. But actually, that also leads on to another point and brings me back to, I'd like to ask about that particular type of Hestia that you mentioned at Ephesus, this epithet of the Senate. Now, the Senate, of course, you know, kind of a council,

but this is a gathering, this is people all together. I guess you can then understand from what we've already talked about with Hestia as being central to gatherings around the hearths and so on, that you can understand why she receives this rather, I mean, I've never heard of an of the Senate epithet to describe a particular deity before, but I guess you can understand why it is given to Hestia. Yeah, absolutely. We don't actually know really a lot about this Hestia. Ephesus also is a very odd place for cults. This is the place that we have that Artemis with the bulbs of whatever they are around her. But it does sort of speak to this other, as you mentioned, you know, this other really important aspect of Hestia

that we find everywhere, not just in Ephesus, which is the link between Hestia and politics. We find hearths in the Prytanean, so this is like the Senate House or, you know, the home of the bullae, so like in Athens this is the kind of core of the assembly who meet and decide what is going to be discussed at the assembly. So really the centre of government. And we find them at Pritnean all over the Greek world.

And it seems very likely that these halves in public buildings in political buildings are treated in the same way as the half in the home that libations are poured to Hestia that she is propitiated during meals that are taken in the Pruteneian and so you know we kind of have to think about the way that we pull this family home-based goddess to what is the home of the city which is the senate building which is the government and of course in many places that government it rotates around it's not always the same people and so it's not even necessarily about who is doing the propitiating who's giving those sacrifices pouring those libations it is about whoever is doing it on behalf of everyone in the entire city so yeah there's some really important kind of multi-layers sort of above and below to

every part of community in the Greek world that Hestia really takes charge of. So I'd like to move on actually down more to present day to the 20th and 21st centuries, because we see all these great movies and this literature where Greek mythology and fictional stories about the Greek gods and goddesses are very popular. Is that the same for Hestia? Does she also get a mention in these retellings of the gods and goddesses alongside the more famous ones like Zeus, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and so on? By and large, no, not really. And I do wonder if that is because we had this switch from Hestia to Dionysus in sort of the canonical 12. And of course, in very late, like in the 19th century, that was sort of categorized as Hestia purposefully taking a step back and giving Dionysus, this young god from the east, this central role.

That is not borne out in the ancient sources. But one representation of Hestia that I do really genuinely like is from Percy Jackson, which I read with my eldest child. is from Percy Jackson, which I read with my eldest child. And she is sort of simultaneously represented as this kind of young girl and a more elderly woman, but always with this calmness, with this sort of sense of innate wisdom that she knows what's happening. And there's one scene in particular sort of towards the end of the first book where Percy comes across her on Olympus, I think, and she just gives him this sort of sense of groundedness,

of calm that I think really speaks to what the Greeks saw in her, what they loved about her. Ellie, this has been fantastic. Have you got any final remarks on Hestia? Anything that you would want us to take away more than anything else about this goddess that is so often overlooked? I think that it is very clear that she has the single greatest amount of worship amongst the ancient Greeks because this is every day in their own homes. And I know I've said this already, but I think the fact that she doesn't have a lot of myths really demonstrates this point of the stability that Greeks needed in their daily lives and that she represents that stability. Ellie, this has been fantastic and it's been a pleasure to get through this whole series with Hestia at the end. And of course, you've been on the

podcast before also to talk about Persephone and about Hera. So you are a stalwart of our Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses miniseries. And it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. No worries. Thank you so much for having me, Tristan. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Ellie Mackin-Roberts talking all the things Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, the final episode of our Greek Gods and Goddesses miniseries. That has been a regular feature of the Ancients podcast over the past 18 months. One and a half years, folks,

since the first episode in late 2022. I hope you have enjoyed this series. What a joy it's been. I have learned so much about the Greek gods and goddesses and I hope you have too. Credits for today's episode. Well the narration for the story was done by Nicola Woolley. The script for that was written by Andrew Hulse. The assistant producer for the episode was Joseph Knight. The producer was Anne-Marie Luff. And it was all edited together by Aidan Lonergan. Thank you to you all for making this episode a reality. So thank you once again for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And as a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code ANCIENTS at checkout. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.