Hestia: The Indo-European Goddess of the Cosmic Central Fire

Abstract

The Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton (470-390 BCE) created a unique model of the Universe and he placed at its centre a ‘fire’, around which the spheres of the Earth, the Counter-Earth, the five planets, the Sun, the Moon and the outermost sphere of fixed stars, also viewed as fire but of an ‘aethereal’ kind, were revolving. This system has been considered as a step towards the heliocentric model of Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE), the astronomical theory opposed to the geocentric system, which already was the communis opinio at that time and would be so for many centuries to come: but is that really so? In fact, comparing the Greek data with those of other ancient peoples of Indo-European language, it can be assumed that the ‘pyrocentric’ system is the last embodiment of a theological tradition going back to ancient times: Hestia, the central fire, was the descendant of an Indo-European goddess of Hearth placed at the centre of the religious and mythological view of a deified Cosmos where the gods were essentially personifications of atmospheric phenomena and of celestial bodies.