#prytaneum

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

I just reread Prytaneum by @rgm0005 on space battles and it's still mind blowing. Every day I wake up and wish I could write a cross over like Ryuugi.

[royal-wren]

Hestia, goddess of the hearth (of flame/fire), of the home, sacrifices, of buildings, of architecture, of festivities/parties/feasts. The Goddess found at the center of every room sadly does not have a lot of remaining epithets to her name, so I will attempt to give her more that ties into her domains.

Aidios - Eternal

Kloomorphos - Verdant

Polymorphos - Multi-Formed

Polyolvos - Rich in Blessings

Potheinotati - Beloved

Prytaneai - Of the Prytaneion/Prytaneis (Prytaneum, Town Hall)

Basileia - Queen

Boulaia - Of the Council

Rheia eukomos thugater - Daughter of rich-haired Rheia

Parthenos - Maiden

Khrysothronos - Golden-Throned (Of the Golden Throne/With Throne of Gold)

Pyribromos - Roaring with Fire

Pyrimarmaros - Sparkling Like Fire

Pyristephēs - Fire-Wreathed/Fire-Crowned Xenia - Hestia of Hospitality, Hestia of the Guest, Hestia of Friendship, Hestia of the Foreigner, Hestia the Protector (of Protection). The goddess that looks after everyone, who is generous, benevolent, she who is epichthonic in nature, closest to man who dwells closest to us and supports us endlessly in all our endeavors, she who gifts and gives without a second thought with much joy. Everyone will find her presence so warm, peaceful, and calming.

Philia - Hestia of Friendship.

Agathe Thea - The Good Goddess.

Arkhitríklinos - Lit. The Superintendent of a Banquet. Governer(Ruler) of the Banquet/Master of the Feast/Director of a Feast/Who Presides at the Table

Panakhaia - Of all the Greeks. Common to, or worshipped by all the Hellenes. While in the modern day we aren't any of the above for a good chunk of worshippers, I think we can all agree to apply the sentiment and use it simply as "Common to all and Worshipped by All."

Hypate (Hupátē)/Hypsistos (Hypsiste) - Supreme, Most High.

Ktêsia - Of the House/Property

Ekkleisíā/Ekklēsíā - Hestia of the Political Assembly. Lit. Gathering of Those Summoned, basically an assembly of the people convened at the public place of the council for the purpose of deliberating. In place of Guardian of Parliments

Prôtogonê - First Born

Presveira - Oldest/The Oldest

Próti kaì Eskhátēs - First and Last (Chances are that I did butcher this one, I'm just trying my best here)

Mêkhanitis - Skilled in Inventing. As the one who provides a roof over everyone's heads, the gift to make buildings and homes to live in and dwell in. The one who shares the gift Hermes created with so many of us, and the means to avoid the harshest of storms and weather.

Sekos - Of the Courtyard, or Of Sanctuaries. A Sekos (plural: Sekoi) was a sacred enclosure, sanctuary, or cella in a temple.

Lā́ïnon - Made of Stone/Rock

Líthos - A Stone, or a large rock or stone block, used as a seat to a speaker's platform, especially in the Assembly or in the Athenian agora, where archons, arbitrators and certain witnesses swore oaths

Pyrônia - Of the Fire

Pyrphóros - Fire-Bringer or Fire-Bearer

Pyrkaeus - Fire-kindler

Polias - Of the City. Polioukhos - Protector of the City. Poliatis - Keeper of the City.

Anêsidôra - She who Sends Forth Gifts

Thermasia - Of Warmth, of Heat

Pronaia - Of the Fore-temple

Sources/Further Reading:

terpsikeraunos' tumblr

Theoi.com's epithets pages

gone-arai's Hestia info dump

[thoughtportal]

Hestia

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Hestia (/ˈhɛstiə, ˈhɛstʃə/; Greek: Ἑστία, meaning "hearth" or "fireside") is the virgin goddess of the hearth, the right ordering of domesticity, the family, the home, and the state. In myth, she is the firstborn child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and one of the Twelve Olympians.[1]

According to ancient Greek tradition, Hestia, along with four of her five siblings, was devoured by her own father Cronus as an infant due to his fear of being overthrown by one of his offspring, and was only freed when her youngest brother Zeus forced their father to disgorge the children he had eaten. Cronus and the rest of the Titans were cast down, and Hestia then became one of the Olympian gods, the new rulers of the cosmos, alongside her brothers and sisters. After the establishment of the new order and in spite of her status, Hestia withdraws from prominence in mythology, with few and sparse appearances in tales. Like Athena and Artemis, Hestia elected to never marry and remain an eternal virgin goddess instead, forever tending to the hearth of Olympus.

Despite her limited mythology, Hestia remained a very important goddess in ancient Greek society. Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum functioned as her official sanctuary. Whenever a new colony was established, a flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement. The goddess Vesta is her Roman equivalent.

[irate-iguana]

Since we’ve voted Socrates guilty (such as in this post), it’s time for us to vote on a punishment.

[legend-collection]

Hestia

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Hestia is the virgin goddess of the hearth and the home. In myth, she is the firstborn child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and one of the Twelve Olympians.

Pic by Christian Baitg on Getty Images

According to ancient Greek tradition, Hestia, along with four of her five siblings, was devoured by her own father Cronus as an infant due to his fear of being overthrown by one of his offspring, and was only freed when her youngest brother Zeus forced their father to disgorge the children he had eaten. Cronus and the rest of the Titans were cast down, and Hestia then became one of the Olympian gods, the new rulers of the cosmos, alongside her brothers and sisters. After the establishment of the new order and in spite of her status, Hestia withdraws from prominence in mythology, with few and sparse appearances in tales. Like Athena and Artemis, Hestia elected to never marry and remain an eternal virgin goddess instead, forever tending to the hearth of Olympus.

Despite her limited mythology, Hestia remained a very important goddess in ancient Greek society. Greek custom required that as the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia should receive the first offering at every sacrifice in the household. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum functioned as her official sanctuary. Whenever a new colony was established, a flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement. The goddess Vesta is her Roman equivalent.

Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar". This stems from the PIE root *wes, "burn" (ultimately from *h₂wes- "dwell, pass the night, stay"). It thus refers to the oikos: domestic life, home, household, house, or family. Burkert states that an "early form of the temple is the hearth house; the early temples at Dreros and Prinias on Crete are of this type as indeed is the temple of Apollo at Delphi which always had its inner hestia". The Mycenaean great hall (megaron), like Homer's hall of Odysseus at Ithaca, had a central hearth. Likewise, the hearth of the later Greek prytaneum was the community and government's ritual and secular focus. Hestia's naming thus makes her a personification of the hearth and its fire, a symbol of society and family, also denoting authority and kingship.

Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian generation. She is the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus. Immediately after their birth, Cronus swallowed all his children (Hestia was the first who was swallowed) except the last and youngest, Zeus, who was saved by Rhea. Instead, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge his siblings and led them into a war against their father and the other Titans. As "first to be devoured . . . and the last to be yielded up again", Hestia is thus both the eldest and youngest daughter; this mythic inversion is found in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (700 BC).

Zeus assigned 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 honor; also, in all the temples of the gods, she has a share of honor. "Among all mortals, she was chief of the goddesses".

The gods Poseidon and Apollo (her brother and nephew respectively) both fell in love with Hestia and vied for her hand in marriage. But Hestia would have neither of them, and went to Zeus instead, and swore a great oath, that she would remain a virgin for all time and never marry. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over Hestia.

At Athens, "in Plato's time," notes Kenneth Dorter "there was a discrepancy in the list of the twelve chief gods, as to whether Hestia or Dionysus was included with the other eleven. The altar to them at the agora, for example, included Hestia, but the east frieze of the Parthenon had Dionysus instead." However, the hearth was immovable, and "there is no story of Hestia's "ever having been removed from her fixed abode". Burkert remarks that "Since the hearth is immovable Hestia is unable to take part even in the procession of the gods, let alone the other antics of the Olympians".

Traditionally, Hestia is absent from ancient depictions of the Gigantomachy as she is the one who must keep the home fires burning when the other gods are away. Nevertheless, her possible participation in the fight against the Giants is evidenced from an inscription on the northern frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi; Brinkmann suggests that the letter tracings of one of the two goddesses right next to Hephaestus be restored as "Hestia", although other possible candidates include Demeter and Persephone, or two of the three Fates.

Her mythographic status as firstborn of Rhea and Cronus seems to justify the tradition in which a small offering is made to Hestia before any sacrifice ("Hestia comes first"), though this was not universal among the Greeks. In Odyssey 14, the loyal swineherd Eumaeus begins the feast for his master Odysseus by plucking tufts from a boar's head and throwing them into the fire with a prayer addressed to all the powers, then carved the meat into seven equal portions: "one he set aside, lifting up a prayer to the forest nymphs and Hermes, Maia's son."[20]

Hestia is identified with the hearth as a physical object, and the abstractions of community and domesticity, in contrast to the fire of the forge employed in blacksmithing and metalworking, the province of the god Hephaestus. Portrayals of her are rare and seldom secure.[21] In classical Greek art, she is occasionally depicted as a woman simply and modestly cloaked in a head veil. At times, she is shown with a staff in hand or by a large fire. She sits on a plain wooden throne with a white woolen cushion and, Robert Graves declares, "did not trouble to choose an emblem for herself". Her associated sacrificial animal was a domestic pig.

Her Roman equivalent is Vesta; Vesta has similar functions as a divine personification of Rome's "public", domestic, and colonial hearths, binding Romans together within a form of extended family. The similarity of names between Hestia and Vesta is, however, misleading: "The relationship hestia-histie-Vesta cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European linguistics; borrowings from a third language must also be involved," according to Walter Burkert. Herodotus equates Hestia with the high ranking Scythian deity Tabiti. Procopius equates her with the Zoroastrian holy fire (atar) of the Sasanians in Adhur Gushnasp. To Vesta is attributed one more story not found in Greek tradition by the Roman poet Ovid in his poem Fasti, where during a feast of the gods Vesta is nearly raped in her sleep by the god Priapus, and only avoids this fate when a donkey cries out, alerting Vesta and prompting the other gods to attack Priapus in defense of the goddess. This story is an almost word-for-word repeat of the myth of Priapus and Lotis, recounted earlier in the same book, with the difference that Lotis had to transform into a lotus tree to escape Priapus, making some scholars suggest the account where Vesta supplants Lotis only exists in order to create some cult drama.

[itznarcotic]

heading over to the prytaneum with the squad to pontificate our most controversial hunting methods

[classicalmonuments]

Prytaneion

Ephesus, Turkey

1st century BCE 

The Prytaneum (Prytaneion), was the edifice where the executive council (Prytanes) ruling Ephesus had their meetings, ate their meals, received official guests and honoured them. It was also called the municipality building.

The building was rectangular with two main sections. A square courtyard formed in the south-western corner, while a monumental portico to its north, led to the two non communicating sets of rooms.

The remains of the courtyard consisted of a three-sided Ionic peristyle measuring 13,00x14,50 m. In the centre of the court is a rectangular foundation measuring 2,50x2,10 m. It was possibly the base for one of the three Roman copies of the Ephesian Artemis, which were found in this area.

To the north side of the courtyard, a stoa served as a porch to the interior rooms behind. It was of the Doric order, with five unfluted columns, 7,35 m wide and 8 m. high. The portico gave a monumental character to the building, emphasizing at the same time the meaning of the rooms to which it led. The columns and the entablature were covered with inscriptions of the Imperial era which are a valuable source of information for the interpretation of the building’s function andthe city’s public issues. Although the portico follows the forms and proportions of the Augustan architecture, some construction details reveal a remodelling during the Severan era (end of the 2nd, beginning of the 3rd century CE).

The head of the executive committee was called the Prytan and was selected from among the elite families of Ephesus. He had also to be rich because he would pay for most of the expenditures relating to the city from his own budget. The Prytan’s essential task was to watch over the cults in the city, to organize the ceremonies and to continue the social life of the city. Furthermore, he had to see that the sacred hearth of Hestia situated in the middle of the building was kept burning perpetually. This hearth was kept alive representing all the hearths in Ephesus.

The square shaped area made of darker stones in the hall of the building is the place of the sacred hearth. The famous statues of Artemis on display in the Ephesus Museum were found buried in the Prytaneum. It is understood that at the time of the Iconoclasts the Prytaneum was destroyed but that the destroyers did not dare touch the statues of Artemis.

The Prytaneum, with its façade of six thick columns, had the aspect of a Doric temple. There were double columns in the corners of the main hall in the middle of which stood the sacred hearth. The surrounding buildings served the functions of the Prytaneum.

The inscriptions on the columns are the lists of names of the Curetes. The order of priests called the Curetes who were formerly in the Temple of Artemis were later given a place in the Prytaneum. The Prytaneum was built in the 1st century BCE.

further reading

[archibaldtuttle]

Absinthe ablaze - An offering to Hestia

She watches over the fire that warms the house, she watches over the one that lights the prytaneum - Your city, your state, your country, your house, they are all your home to which she is the guardian - No matter where you spark a fire, if it burns to protect, to light, to warm your home, she will be there, sitting by your side

[redhandedblue]

Did this a bit ago; I was waiting for another char to add in alongside him but, alas, I’m slow at the moment. Zan, for smerdle!

[pixiuu]

prytaneums -> qingtza

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Hot take. There's only one good PJO fanfiction and it belongs to @rgm0005. It's called Prytaneum and it fucking slaps. He maintains Percy's optimism, his loyalty to his friends, but says 'let's go into the depths of despair and find out there's an even deeper level of despair and go there.'

I don't know.

I'm just so happy @rgm0005 is writing pjo fanfiction again.

[olympushqs]

welcome to olympus. if you’re new in town don’t forget to stop by the prytaneum to pick up your town essentials, at the prytaneum you’ll be able to apply for housing, take care of any financial needs you may have, as well as meet a couple of your fellow demigods! interested in a phone? hit up the local ims store and apply for an iris phone today! you’ve have 24 hours to send your account in or your faceclaim will be reopened and be sure to check out the olympus checklist for further instructions!

( chase stokes | cis male ) woah! looks like liam van staveren is here. a grandchild of dionysus & tyche, apparently they got here 1 year ago. they’re 23 and i heard they’re very +incontrovertible, +guileful, but can also be pretty -egocentric, and -manipulative. they’re staying at aura lofts and can usually be seen at euthymia, but who knows what trouble they’ll brew on their time off. ( paige. 23. she/her. est. )

[historyfilia]

we think Greeks were a very rational people and all until we learn about the Buphonia, an Athenian ritual where a laboring ox had to be sacrificed but at the same time, this was considered a terrible crime. so when the priest killed it with an axe, he had to throw it aside and get the fuck out of there running for his life. then the rest of the people discovered the crime scene and blamed the axe, the only one present. the axe was immediately carried before the court of the Prytaneum which charged the axe with having caused the death of the ox. sometimes it was absolved, others, it was thrown into the sea,

[pagansquare]

We're the Keepers of the Flame: Hestia's Hearth Altar

Vesta is the Roman cognate of the revered Greek goddess, Hestia, “first of all divinities to be invoked” in classical rituals. In Greece, they had public hearths called prytaneums that came under the domain of the most revered Hestia, protector of “all innermost things,” according to the great philosopher Pythagoras, who also claimed that her altar fire was the center of the earth. The altar of Vesta in classical Rome was tended by the Vestal Virgins and was also believed to be the very center of the earth. The insignia for the goddess Vesta was an altar table with flames at both ends, forming the Greek letter “pi,” which is the numerological symbol for the Pythagorean sect.

Read more...

[the-smeraldo-flower]

Women in mythology ↠ Hestia: Virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and chastity

Receives the first offering at every sacrifice in the household

The hearth of the prytaneum functioned as her official sanctuary

[classicalmonuments]

Prytaneion of Priene

Priene, Ionia, Turkey

180 BCE

The prytaneum was a meeting house and a dining room for senate members and housed the sacred flame of Hestia. I was adjacent to the bouleuterion in the center of the city.

The building in its present state takes the form of a peristyle house: a rectangular structure with a central paved, colonnaded courtyard surrounded by three small rooms on the north, two on the west and three on the south sides. The building was entered through a door in the north wall of the central room in the south row.

The Prytaneion held the sacred flame of the city, was dedicated to the goddess Hestia and held all other continually burned hearths. In the room to the east of the entrance stands the Sacred Hearth in which the sacred fire burned. The hearth was made of rubble which was 30 centimeters and is believed to date from earlier periods.

At the entrance to the southernmost room of the western row stands a reused column shaft carved with the following inscription: "The most brilliant city of the Ionian citizens of Priene and the most powerful Council and the most august Synhedrin of the elders in accordance with the things frequently received in (their?) accounts for...(council?) of the assemblies of the expenses of the city have honored M. Aur. Tatianus, the market official of the noble Pollion (?), the president of the festal assembly for the city's goddess Athena, the presiding officer of the goddess, the chief president, and the crowed president of the senate. May you prosper. “

More Priene buildings

Other Prytaneia