VESTA. [ASTEROIDS ] VESTA ('Earle or lasrin, Hestia., or xiatie), one of the great divinities of the ancients, and common both in name and mode of worship to the Greeks and Romana. According to Hesiod, abe was the first-born daughter of lCronos and Rhea, and sister of Zeus, and the Romans therefore made her the daughter of Saturn and Ops. She was a maiden divinity, and was said to have vowed eternal virginity by the head of Zeus.
Vests was the goddess of the hearth ; and as the hearth was with the ancients the centre of the family, where the members met, con versed, and took their meals, Vesta was regarded as the goddess of domestic union and happiness. Strangers and friends were hospitably received at the hearth ; suppliants sought safety and protection there; and there the members of a family swore fidelity to one another. The fire burning on the domestic hearth, the symbol of domestic union, was also regarded as the symbol of Vesta herself. As according to the notions of the ancients the state was formed on the model of a single family, each political community, city, or state had its public hearth or altar of Vesta, on which a perpetual fire was kept burning. At Athens the public hearth of Vesta was in the Prytaneum, and here the guests of the state and foreign ambassadors were received and hospitably treated. The public hearth was to the members of a civil community what the domestic hearth was to the members of a family ; and when a state sent out colonists, they took from'the public hearth of the metropolis the fire which was henceforth to blaze on the publio hearth of the colony. Larger communities than a mere town or city had likewise their public hearth and centre of union. Thus the common hearth of the Greeks was at Delphi, and that of the Latina at Laouvium, the metropolis of the Latins. Later speculators and mystics extended this idea even farther, and spoke of a central tire or a common hearth of the earth and the universe. Vesta, as the protectress of the family, is intimately connected with the Penatea, and she herself is sometimes called a Penas or Des Peoetralis. Her connection with the house led some ancients even to ascribe to her the art of building houses.
In Greece, Vesta had very few temples, because every house and every prytaneum was regarded as her sanctuary, and because she had her Aare in all the sacrifices which were offered to other gods ; and at all sacrificial feasts the first and last libations were offered to Vesta. But at Hero:done in Argolis she had a special temple, though, like her temple at Rome, it contained no image of the goddess. The sacritices offered on her altar consisted of seeds, fruit, libations of water, oil, or wine, and of yuung cows.
siEneas was believed to have brought the sacred fire of Vesta together with the Penatea and the Palladium from Troy to Italy ; and at Rome the worship of Vesta was said to have been Introduced by Romulus or Numa. Her worship at Rome was of much greater importance than in Greece. Her temple, which was Of a round form, stood in the forum near that of the Penates; It was open during the day and olosed by night. According to Ovld's description, its walla consisted In the earliest times of wicker-work, and the roof of reeds. The temple con tained the altar of the goddess with her sacred fire, the extinction of which was regarded as an omen of the greatest cal mitt' to the republic, and priestesses (at Athena and at Delphi widows, and at Rome virgins) were appointed to keep the fire alive. \Vith the exception of the Pontifex Maximus, no male being was allowed to enter the temple of Vesta ; and hence we never hear of the senate meeting in it as In other temples. The Roman prnturs, consuls, and dictators. on entering upon their offices, ha I to offer sacrifi, as to the Palates and to Vesta at Lanuvlum. Representations of Vesta in works of art were not frequent in antiquity, as she was worshipped in the form of the sacred tire burning on the hearth. But some are mentioned by Pausanias and Pliny, and she was represented in the grave and dignified attitude and expression of a majestic and pure maiden, with the attire and veil of a matron, and holding in her band a sceptre or a lamp.
(Ilartung, Die Rdigion der Romer, ii., p. 11I, &c.; it. H. }Clausen, ..E11411: sad die remote!, IL, p. 624, &e.; Muller, Arch. der Kunst, 332; Hirt, hi' ythobog. p. 70.)