HYMN TO HESTIA

HESTIA is here invoked to make her home, with Zeus, in a building, the nature of which cannot be determined. According to Baumeister, it was probably a private house or a palace, in which rhapsodists recited epic at a feast. But there is weight in Gemoll's criticism, that Hestia and Zeus would not be invoked into a private house with so much solemnity. The occasion is rather to be sought in the dedication of a temple.

No stress can be laid on the words Πυθοῖ ἐν ἠγαθέῃ, which certainly need not imply that the hymn was Delphian; the reference is, as often, literary, being due to the fame of Hestia's connexion with Delphi and the Pythian Apollo. There was a Hearth at Delphi in the Prytaneum, at which a perpetual fire was kept up by widows (see references in Frazer on Paus.viii. 53. 9). The allusion in the present passage is, however, to a hearth actually in the temple at Delphi, which is frequently mentioned; cf. Choeph. 1038; Eum.282; O. T. 965; Eur. Ion462; Paus.x. 24. 4 etc.

In view of the abrupt style, many commentators believe it to be a fragment from a longer hymn; Matthiae marks a lacuna after 3. A lacuna is also probable after 4; but we need not suppose that the original form of the hymn was widely different from the present tradition.

*(esti/h: for the form see on h. Aphr. 22 (Solmsen p. 213 f.). Ἱστίη is of course correct for true Ionic; but the pseudo-Ionic Ἑστίη (influenced by the common Ἑστία) may be allowed to stand in the present hymn, and in xxix. Compare ἱστίη in the Odyssey with ἐφέστιος, γ 234, η 248, ψ 55.