Hestia, Day Nine

9. Common mistakes about this deity.

There's a myth I see commonly attributed to Hestia - that she gave up her throne on Olympus to Dionysos, that she did this to remove herself from the "drama" of the gods, or so she could focus on tending the hearth. It's a nice enough story, perhaps something Hestia might do, but as far as I can tell, this myth has no historical basis. I've dug through myths, hymns, and so on, and I have seen no reference to this in any classical work. (If someone knows of an actual historical source for this myth, please let me know about it).

However, in my digging I found a blog post about this very subject. It turns out that Robert Graves is likely the source of this myth, and I'm fairly sure I've written about him before, and the bad history that's come about due to some of his works. I've known for a while now that many of his stories are often passed around as historical fact, but I was still surprised to see that this myth was one of them.

Which is not to say that one shouldn't find meaning in the myth, or even include it in their personal path if they want to, but it's always good to know the origin of things.