When I was on holiday in Rhodes at the start of June, I listened to the audiobook of Natalie Haynes’ Divine Might. It wasn’t intentional to wind up listening to stories about Greek myths while in Greece but I enjoyed the synchronicity of it. Admittedly it wasn’t that much of a coincidence either. I favour audiobooks predominantly for autobiographies. I love the added intimacy of hearing someone read their own words and story directly to you. But I also love audiobooks for mythology. It’s not a genre I typically read but one I love to listen to. I flit between fiction and non-fiction, picking ancient Roman and Greek stories or especially retellings of classic female Greek goddesses.
I was really taken by the chapter on Hestia. The forgotten sister of the Olympians. She’s the oldest but also the youngest. The firstborn child of Rhea and Cronos, but the last one to be regurgitated. Yes, that’s right. Cronos overthrew his father, Uranus, to become King of the Titans after he imprisoned all of his children. This also included Rhea, who as well as being the mother of Cronos’ children was also his sister. Lots of incest in ancient Greece that we’ll swiftly gloss over.
Cronos was destined to be overthrown by his own children, just like his father before him had been. So his response to avoid this from happening was to eat them all. Zeus, Hestia’s infamous brother, was actually the last child to be born but never swallowed. Rhea decided to hide Zeus until he was grown and could challenge his father, ultimately freeing the rest of his siblings.
There are not many myths about Hestia. She’s not a feature in many of the classic poems or plays. Certainly there aren’t as many mentions as there are of her siblings, nieces or nephews. Sometimes, she’s not even considered one of the 12 Olympians along with the rest of her siblings. Although she’s not the only one. Her brother Hades, God of the Underworld, spent much of his time otherwise engaged there than in the world of the living. When he wasn’t busy trying to kidnap Persephone, that is. If Hestia is the forgotten one, Hades is probably the weird one of the family.
Dionysus instead often takes her place in the line up of 12. For all the things he’s known for, he is also the God of wine-making so I sense a little bribery could have been at play. It’s thought that she got bored with all the constant bickering on Mount Olympus and gave up her seat quite willingly in the end. How have we all been sleeping on this absolute icon for so long?
She was the Goddess of the hearth and of the home. The ruler of sacrificial fire. It was she who would receive the first offerings from the Greeks. She is the embodiment of family and community. There used to be a public hearth burning in every city in Greece dedicated to her, never allowed to burn out. As much as her name might not appear written down and passed down in the stories, her influence on the life of the people was arguably the most relevant of all.
She refused not one but two marriage proposals and didn’t have any children. Her ambivalence to it all led her to actually ask Zeus to make her a virgin Goddess. She sought to protect her own peace and set those boundaries (with what limited options there were for women, even Goddesses, I guess - wife or virgin). After leaving Olympus, it’s thought she still stayed at home and never left. Never venturing off on adventures or quests like her peers. Satisfied entirely in her own company and that of her close friend Hermes, her polar opposite in many ways as a God known for travel and communication.
The quiet one of the family, the “gentle one. Largely forgotten, it seems. Yet I found her authenticity and unwillingness to change or compromise herself for others so endearing. She may not have made for a good story by the men who sang and held the pens at the time, but I think she’s pretty fucking great.