Re: Questions

[Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>]

Poster: Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>


On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Brenda wrote:

> Poster: Brenda <Adendra@Charleston.Net>
> 
> Megan Brett wrote:
> > 
> > Does anyone know of good resources about women's Celtic clothing? As in,
> > what it looks like, and how it might be constructed?
> > Also, has anyone ever heard any Greek myths about the goddess Hestia? Or
> > Roman myths about Vesta? (They're the same goddess...)
> > 
Hestia/Vesta kept pretty much out of the Greek myths, barring one: the
revolt of the other Olympians against Zeus, when they surprised him
sleeping and got him tied up before he could reach his thunderbolts.  Then
they fell to arguing about how to portion out his power; whereupon Hestia,
realizing that bad as Zeus was a civil war among the gods would be worse,
released the hundred-handed Hekatoncheires.  Using all their hands at
once, they untied Zeus before the other gods could stop them, and the
revolt collapsed.

There were a couple of other stories about her which are more incidental
anecdotes than real myths..  At one of the gods' feasts, when everybody was
in the digestive torpor afterward, the lustful Priapus found her
cat-napping, but before he could carry out any plans he might have formed
Silenus' ass brayed and wakened her.  (_Videlicet_, even the archetype of
casual lust, the ass, objects to making out with a lady who doesn't know
what's happening.)  Again, after the overthrow of the Titans when the
original Olympians were pairing off, Hestia surprised Zeus, Poseidon and
Hades arguing about which of them would get her first; then and there she
swore to remain a virgin forever, and made the oath stick, too, though she
was defying all of the eldest Olympians at once.  (There is a different
version in which it was Poseidon and Apollo who were arguing; as Apollo
wasn't born until well after the Olympian takeover, this is less
plausible.)  The poets don't record it, but I'd bet a few obols that she
also voiced some candid opinions about three macho peckerheads who would
try to settle a question like that without getting the opinion of the lady
involved.

Hestia had no temples of her own (and Vesta only the one in downtown
Rome), but she was the Goddess of the Hearth-Flame, and no temple could be
considered sacred unless there were an altar fire there.  Besides, this
gracious and gentle aspect of the Great Goddess was welcome where-ever she
chose to go.

|---------Master Vuong Manh, C.P., Storvik, Atlantia---------|
|Now, let's stop and think: how would Bugs Bunny handle this?|
|----------------(dickeney@access.digex.net)-----------------|


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