VES'TA (Lat., connected with Gk.'Ecrria, Hes tia, goddess of the hearth and home: connected with Gk. darv,asty, city, Skt. vas, to dwell, Goth. Skt. vas, to dwell, Oh% foss, remnant, Goth. wisan, to be, Eng. ices). In classical mythology, the goddess of the hearth-fire. In Greece Hestia plays but. a very small part in legend. She ap pears as the eldest daughter of Cronos and Rhea, and as wooed by Poseidon and Apollo, whose suit escaped by vowing eternal virginity. To her, therefore, was given the honor of a place in all temples of the gods and all houses of men. If legend made little of Hestia, her cult was widespread in all (4eek lands. Every com munity had its eonnnon hearth where the sacred lire burned, and from which every colony took the sacred dame which was to kindle a new sacred centre in close connection with the old. Even confederacies recognized a central hearth. as the Arcadians at. Tegea, the Cyclades at Delos, and the Amphietyonic Council at Delphi. In some places the sacred fire was in charge of maidens, in others of old women, and we hear of priestesses of Ilestia in Athens and Sparta. At bone this cult reached a far more prominent place than it seems to have assumed in Greece.
Vesta matcr is the only female in the original series of great 11'oman gods, and as Janus oe enpied the first place in the ritual invocations, so Vesta closed the series. The worship of the goddess was also spread throughout Latium, though the evidence for its early existence else where in Italy is unsatisfactory. Her festival, the Vesta/fa', fell mi .hint 9th, while on the first of March the sacred fire was solemnly renewed. The state worship was, however, the most im portant. Near the Forum, at the foot of the Palatine, close to the fountain of Juturna and the temple of Castor, was the little circular temple of Vesta, containing no image, but only the sacred hearth with the ever-burning fire, and a shrine in which were kept the implements and provisions for the sacrifices, and, according to popular belief, the Trojan palladium and other sacred objects on which the safety of the city was believed to depend. Near the temple was the frinm Vesta', where the Vestal Virgins lived.