‘Sing, Muses, sing to me a story of Olympus and the deathless gods who govern earth, sea and sky.’
That is what the young boy whispers into the flames.
He has spent all day gathering wood to feed the fire, picking through the bones of his home. The bed his father whittled. The chair his mother rocked him in as a babe. The eaves under which he slept all his nine years.
There was little of the house that was not already burnt. The soldiers saw to that. Just as they saw to the massacre of the entire colony.
He heard it, that young boy. The trapdoor to the cellar may have been hidden, but it was not thick enough to keep out the screams. He hears it even now in the cracking and popping of the fire.
The gods, surely, they will offer some revenge, some justice – and so the young boy makes an offering of his last morsels of food.
He prays to Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men. He prays to Athena, the maiden of wisdom and war. He prays to the Apollo, the archer; Artemis, the hunter; Hephaestus, the craftsman. He prays to all those who dwell upon Olympus.
All except one.
‘You’ve forgotten me.’
It is a reproach, but a gentle one. A soothing voice.
She is not what the young boy imagined of a goddess. She is not marble perfection, nor clad in dread and terror. In fact, between each flicker of the fire he sees the face of his mother. His grandmother. That kindly priestess who cared for him during a fever.
It’s only those garnet eyes that promise divinity. They seem to glow from within, to promise safety – like burning coals against an endless winter night.
‘The first portion is always offered to me,’ she explains, picking a smoking sliver of bone from the heart of the fire. ‘Ask the Muses of Hestia, goddess of the hearth.’
How can the Muses begin their story of Hestia? What can they say of her?
They struggle to agree, squabbling with one another while the goddess watches on, amused, and the young boy, confused.
You see the Muses cannot agree her title – it is a discord slipping into their song. Some of their melodies contend that Hestia is the first of the Olympians. The others insist the opposite: she is the last.
Eventually, the Muses’s song does reach agreement though – if one can call silence agreement. For that is where Hestia’s story starts. In the void. In the carceral gut of her father, Cronus, youngest born of Ouranos.
He has been warned that his children will overthrow him, just as Cronus did his own father. And so the moment his wife, noble Rhea, gives birth, Cronus swallows the baby whole. Swallows Hestia whole.
There is no light in her prison. No sound. No sense. Only solitude.
Hestia learns then to keep her own company. She hallucinates worlds in the dark: colours and comprehensions cohered from nix, nil and naught; characters pulled from each and every contrary thought; narrative spun from threads of imagination drawn taut.
She is alone…Until she is not.
Isolation is timeless, and so who could say if it is only a second or an eon until her solitude shatters. A new cellmate arrives.
Cronus has swallowed another child, Hades – he who would become Lord of the dead. The new-born finds Hestia by following the garnet glow, that promise of safety – like burning coals against an endless winter night.
And for the first time, Hestia sees light – her eyes reflected in his.
They begin to measure time then – not by second or by eon – but by advent. The third sibling, Demeter – she who would become the goddess of abundance. Now the fourth, Poseidon – he who would become Lord of the Deep. Now the fifth, Hera – she who would become Queen of the Gods.
And between each advent, Hestia is the one the other gods gather about. Their eldest sister. Their home. Their hearth.
It is with the sixth advent that things change. It is not a sibling. It is a stone clad in swaddling clothes.
The imprisoned gods wonder if it could be some sign. Is their incarceration coming to a close? They hope. They conspire.
Then it comes. A rumble, a rolling, thundering peal that deafens fragile ears. A crack of light that scorches underdeveloped eyes.
This is no advent. It is exodus.
Hera, the last to arrive, is first to leave. Then Poseidon. Now Demeter. Now Hades. And finally, for who could say how long – a second or an eon – Hestia is alone once more.
Then she feels it too – that pull, that drag – and the light takes her.
Released. Regurgitated. Reborn.
It was their mother, noble Rhea, who contrived the escape. It was she who substituted the stone clad in swaddling clothes for her final child, Zeus; it was she who spirited the baby away to safety that he might grow stronger than his father; and it was she who fed Cronus the emetic that released the five imprisoned gods.
The war the siblings wage then is vicious, but though Cronus puts up a fierce fight, he does so with grim resignation. His usurpation is fated. It always was.
What could follow this great war, this Titanomachy, but a petty squabble: the gods arguing over who should rule in Cronus’s stead, who should stand as first among them.
Zeus holds a claim to kingship in his mind. He turns it this way and that. He weaves his thoughts and winds his reckonings, and then he lays his argument before the other gods: a simple dichotomy.
He is the youngest born, as Cronus was – so he should rule as Cronus did. But he is also the eldest: the other gods were reborn from their father in the opposite order. His rule is doubly affirmed.
The only problem is Hestia.
Those siblings who gathered about her in the void, in Cronus’s carceral gut, bathing in that garnet glow, that promise of safety – like burning coals against an endless winter night – those gods demand a position for Hestia too.
For if Zeus’s logic says he is the first and last of them, then Hestia is the last and first.
And if she is not to rule, she must receive some other honour.
The first of every offering. The first of every sacrifice.
‘I could tell you we are the linchpins of Olympus, Zeus and I,’ Hestia says, bringing the Muses’s story to a close. ‘I could tell you I am the foundation, but that he is the citadel upon it. I could tell you he is the revenge, the justice, you pray for – that he is the scorch of lightning, the flame when it burns. But I don’t believe that is what you need right now. I am the glow of the hearth, the flame when it comforts.’
And Hestia draws the young boy, shivering, into a hug.
‘Comfort, I believe that is what you are really praying for.’
Commissioned by HistoryHit for The Ancients podcast
Written by Andrew Hulse