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Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for the goddess Hestia.

So Hestia is, in my view, the forgotten goddess.

People don't talk about her.

They very rarely mention her when they talk about Greek myth.

And yet, she was central to daily life in ancient Greece.

We're told by Plato, I think, that her name is literally proverbial. If you want to say, as an ancient Greek, let's start right at the beginning, you would say,

Afestias archesthi, let's start with Hestia.

I know.

Only you guys gasp at a. We're literally the best audience alive.

It's just true. So Hestia is the oldest sibling of the big name Olympians. So she is the

oldest sibling of Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus. But as I'm sure you know, she and her siblings

are consumed by their father, Kronos, as soon as they've been born until Zeus, where he consumes

a stone instead, because trickery. And then he is made to regurgitate Zeus's siblings in

reverse order. I'm sorry if you're eating while listening to this show.

So Hestia is both the first and last born of her siblings.

If you see what I mean, she is sort of the perfect opposite to Zeus.

She shares her name with the Greek word for a hearth.

That's also called Hestia, as often is the fire for a hearth. That's also called Hestia,

as often is the fire within that hearth.

It has a metonymic quality, the idea of a hearth in Greek.

So as in English, I think it often means the house that contains the hearth, or perhaps the home,

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