Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/459

HESTIAEA. of a house is at the same time the altar on which ! sacrifices are offered to the domestic gods (eariou- Xoi or ic(>6(TTioi), Ilestia was looked upon as pre- siding at all sacrifices, and, as the goddess of the sacred fire of the altar, she had a share in the sacrifices in all the temples of the gods. (Hom. Hymn, in Ven. 31.) Hence when sacrifices were offered, she was invoked first, and the first part of the sacrifice was offered to her. (Hom. Hymn, xxxii. 5 ; Find. Nem. xi. 5 ; Plat. Cratyl. p. 401, d. ; Paus. V. 14. § 5 ; Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. 842 ; Hesj'^ch. s. V. d(p* 4<Trlas apx^/J-evos.) Solemn oaths were sworn by the goddess of the hearth, and the hearth itself was the sacred asylum where sup- pliants implored the protection of the inhabitants of the house. (Hom. Od. xiv. 159 ; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1579.) A town or city is only an ex- tended family, and therefore had likewise its sacred hearth, the symbol of an harmonious community of citizens and of a common worship. This public hearth usually existed in the prytaneiura of a town, where the goddess had her especial sanctuary {^d- Xa/xos under the name of ngvTau7ris, with a statue and the sacred hearth. There the prytanes offered sacrifices to her, on entering upon their office, and th6re, as at a private hearth, Hestia pro- tected the suppliants. As this public hearth was the sacred asylum in every town, the state usually received its guests and foreign ambassadors there, and the prytanes had to act the part of hosts. When a colony was sent out, the emigrants took the fire which was to burn on the hearth of their new home from that of the mother town, (Pind, Nem. xi. 1, &c., with the Scholiast ; Parthen. Eroi. 18 ; Dion. Hal. ii. 65.) If ever the fire of her hearth became extinct, it was not allowed to be lighted again with ordinary fire, but either by fire produced by friction, or by burning glasses drawing fire from the sun. The mystical speculations of later times proceeded from the simple ideas of the ancients, and assumed a sacred hearth not only in the centre of the earth, but even in that of the uni- verse, and confounded Hestia in various ways with other divinities, such as Cybele, Gaea, Demeter, Persephone, and Artemis, (Orph. Hymn. 83 ; Plut. de Plac. Philos. 3, 11, Numa, 11.) There were but few special temples of Hestia in Greece, as in reality every prytaneum was a sanctuary of the goddess, and as a portion of the sacrifices, to what- ever divinity they were offered, belonged to her. There was, however, a separate temple of Hestia at Hermione, though it contained no image of her, but only an altar. (Paus. ii. 35. § 2.) Her sacrifices con- sisted of the primitiae of fruit, water, oil, wine, and cows of one year old. (Hesych. I. c. ; Hom. Hymn. xxxi. 3, xxxii. 6 ; Pind. Nem. xi. 6.) The Ro- mans worshipped the same goddess, or rather the same ideas embodied in her, under the name of Vesta, .which is in reality identical with Hestia; but as the Roman worship of Vesta differed in several points from that of Hestia in Greece, we treat of Vesta in a separate article. [L. S.] HESTIAEA ('Eo-Tiata), a learned Alexandrian lady. Her literary efforts were directed to the explanation of the Homeric poems. Strabo (xiii. p. 894 ), on the authority of Demetrius of Scepsis, informs as that she wrote a treatise respecting the site of the Homeric city of Troy, and the position of the plain which formed the scene of the en- counters described in the Iliad. She is mentioned by the scholiasts on //. iii. C4, and by Eustathius, HESYCHIUS. 446 and is dignified by them with the title 'Earidiu tj rpaix/xaTiKi^. (Fabric. BM, Graec. vol. i. p. 516.) [C. P. M.] HESTIAEUS ('Eo-TtaTos). 1. A native of Perinthus, mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (iii. 16) as one of the disciples of Plato. 2. According to Aristoxenus (in Diog. Laert. viii. 79), the father of Archytas of Tarentum was named Hestiaeus. And the name occurs in the list of Pythagoreans in lamblichus {Vit. Pythag. c. 36. § 267). 3. A Stoic philosopher, a native of Pontus, men- tioned by Athenaeus (vi. p. 273 d.). [C. P. M.] HESY'CHIA ('Ho-uxi'a), the personification of tranquillity and peace, is called a daughter of Dice, that is, Justice. (Pind. 01. iv. 18, Pyth. viii. 1, Fragm. 228. p. 669, ed. Boeckh.) [L. S.J HESY'CHIUS, bishop of Salona in Dalmatia, who flourished about the beginning of the fifth cen- tury, maintained a friendly intercourse with St. Augustin and St. Chrysostom, as we gather from their works ; and a letter has been preserved ad- dressed to him by Pope Zosimus in A. D. 418. The only epistle written by Hesychius himself now extant will be found among the correspondence of St. Augustin, and is numbered cxcviii. in the Bene- dictine edition. (Augustin, De Civ. Dei, xx. 5, Ep. cxcvii, cxcviii, cxcix. vol. ii. ed. Bened. ; Schonemann, Bibl. Patrum Lat. vol. ii. § 14 : Bahr, in his Geschichte der Romisclien Litlerat. suppl. band. II. abtheil. (J 141, by some mistake apparently names this prelate Hegesippus instead of Hesychius.) [W. R.] HESY'CHIUS {'ncrix^os). 1. Libanius appears to have had two friends and correspondents of this name about the middle of the fourth century : one a priest {Ep. 636), the other a magistrate {Ep. 773, 914). One of them had two sons, Eutropius and Celsus, to whom Libanius was much attached, and who were possibly his pupils, and several daughters, to one of whom a cousin of Libanius was married {Ep. 375). Li- banius was anxious to promote the marriage of a grandson of an Hesychius (perhaps one of the two above mentioned ) by his son Calliopius, with a daughter of Pompeianus {Ep. 1400). Possibly the magistrate Hesychius, the correspondent of Liba- nius, may be the Hesychius or Esycliius mentioned by Jerome {Epistola 33 (olim 101) ad Pammach. ; Opera, vol. iv. pt. ii. col. 249, ed. Benedictin.) as a man of consular rank, bitterly hated by the patri- arch Gamaliel, and who was condemned to death by the emperor Theodosius for bribing a notary, and pillaging some of the imperial records. Far bricius understands the notice in Jerome of He- sychius, who was proconsul of Achaia, under Theodosius II. A. d. 435 (Cod. Theodos. 6. tit. 28. § 8) ; but this is not likely, for if the Bene- dictine editors are right in fixing a. d. 396 as the date of the letter to Pammachius, the Theodosius there mentioned must have been Theodosius I. the Great ; and if Hesychius was executed (as Jerome seems to say) in his reign, he could not have been pro- consul in the reign of his grandson Theodosius II. The Hesychius of the Codex Theodosianus may perhaps be the one mentioned in the letters of the monk Nilus, the pupil of Chrysostom. (Libanius, Epistolae, 11. c^., and Ep, 1010; Cod. Theodos. /. c; Hieron. /. c. ; Nili Ascetae Epistolae. Lib. ii. Ep. 292, ed. Allatii ; Fabr. Bill. Or. vol. vii. p. 547.) 2. A devoted disciple of St. Hilarion, whose