The anthropomorphism of Hestia: reconsidering the early Greek sources

Abstract This article revisits the mainstream scholarly view that the Greek Hestia is the least anthropomorphic deity among the Olympians, an idea that owes much to a short reference to her in Plato’s Phaedrus . The analysis is based on textual and visual sources from the Archaic period: I first review two references to Hestia in early hexameter poetry, in Hesiod’s Theogony and in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite , before turning to the depiction of her in two early Attic black-figure vases, the Sophilos dinos at the British Museum and the François vase, which have been neglected in discussing Hestia’s anthropomorphic nature in early Greek thought. While the study of individual Greek gods has returned to the fore in the field of Greek religion in the last 20 years, it seems that not enough has changed in the current conceptualization of Hestia.