In Ancient Greek religion, Hestia is a virgin goddess of the hearth, architecture, and the right ordering of domesticity, the family, the home, and the state. In Greek mythology, she is a daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Hestia received the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytanuem functioned as her official sanctuary. With the establishment of a new colony, flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement. Her Roman equivalent is Vesta. Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian generation. She was the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hera, and Hades. Immediately after their birth, Cronus swallowed all his children (Hestia was the first who was swallowed) except the last and youngest, Zeus, who forced Cronus to disgorge his siblings and led them in a war against their father and the other Titans. As "first to be devoured and the last to be yielded up again', Hestia was thus both the eldest and youngest daughter, this mythic inversion if found in the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite [700 BC]. Hestia rejects the marriage suits of Poseidon and Apollo, and swears herself to perpetual virginity. She thus rejects Aphrodite's values and becomes, to some extent, her chaste, domestic complementary, or antithesis. Zeus assigns Hestia a duty to feed and maintain the fires of the Olympian hearth with the fatty, combustible portions of animal sacrifices to the gods. Wherever food was cooked, or an offering was burnt, she thus had her share of honour, "among all mortals she was chief of the goddesses.
