Talk:Hestia

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[edit] How there is no "biography" for Hestia

what about her her life a a kid what happen (anon1)

Agreed. I added stub as this page needs a bit more. As well as the above, there needs to be some elaboration on the donkey story, or at the least a link to a page about it. (anon2)

No childhood was imagined for Hestia, just as the Old Man of the Sea was never the "Young Boy of the Sea". Greek gods are manifest in episodes called epiphanies, which may be strung together by a storyteller (Thomas Bulfinch's parlor mythology, I bet) to give a simulation of a "biography", one that is artificial and misleading: it leads to naive questions, like "What about her life a a kid?" Zeus has a childhood set-scene, in a cave on Crete; in the "next" epiphany he overthrows Cronus. There is no "biography" in between. Understanding this is essential for a first approach to Greek myth. This really shouldn't sound "new" to any educated person. --Wetman 03:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Virgins

No public cult? What about the Hestian/Vestal Virgins? Or do they count as something else entirely?

Sister of God known as Steven C. Mackey

No public cult of Hestia: i.e. no Greek Hestaion in which she was publicly worshipped. The implied equation Hestia=Vesta is a false equation. Vesta is only a Roman analogy of Hestia. Vesta tends the public hearth at the center of Rome. There is no equivalent in a Greek demos or polis. --Wetman 03:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The following anecdote concerns the nymph Lotis in Ovid's Fasti (6.319ff) and does not concern Hestia, who does not leave hearths, thus has been moved here: "Only once was Hestia in danger of losing her virginity. After a great feast when the immortals were all either passed out drunk or asleep (Hestia was the latter), Aphrodite and Dionysus' son Priapus---who had grotesquely large genatalia---spied her and was filled with lust for her. He quietly approached the goddess and began to lower himself down on top of her, but the braying of an ass awoke Hestia just in time. She screamed at the sight and Priapus immediately ran away." Click here for original Ovid text) --Wetman 15:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Its an odd passage, Ovid's Fasti contains a duplication of the story, in one passage it is the Nymph Lotis in the role, in the other the goddess Hestia. Presumably Ovid drew from some Greek source: although all the components (Priapos, Mt Ida, Cybelian orgies) would suggest it was an indigeneous Mysian myth. Hestia seems quite out of place in the story. If its ever reincluding in the article, it should be with a proviso. --Theranos 20:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speculative origins

I have removed the following text from the article which is too speculative for an encyclopedia entry. There is no evidence of such a direct evolution. --Theranos 20:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

And her 2 greatest attributes, that of "Goddess of the Home" and "Goddess of the Hearth/fire" could well originate hundreds of thousands of years ago; ancient cavemen learned fire and stayed in caves to keep warm and safe, and always drew Female Divine images ^{[citation needed]} on the cave walls. This probably evolved in Greece to the deity called Hestia.