[1354] Compare Miss Harrison, op. cit., p. 271 ff.
[1355] By her name she is identified with the hearth, as similarly Zeus is identified with the sky. The hearth was the center of the home, and had wide cultic significance. The name Hestia embodies not the divinization of a concrete object, but the recognition of the divine person presiding over the object in question.
[1356] Roscher, Lexikon; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States.
[1357] Odyssey, xx, 71.
[1358] The representation of her as the slayer of women with her "kindly arrows" (Odyssey, xx, 67), that is, by an easy death, is in keeping with the early idea that death was caused by some supernatural Power; so Apollo slays (Iliad, xxiv, 759).
[1359] Leto is a Titaness (Hesiod, Theogony, 404 ff.), an old local goddess, naturally a patron of children, and so of similar nature with Artemis, with whom she was often joined in worship. Her connection with Apollo arose possibly from a collocation of her cult with his in some place; in such collocations the goddess would become, in mythological constructions, the mother, sister, or wife of the god. This relation once established, stories explaining it would spring up as a matter of course. The fact that she was later identified with the Asian Great Mother indicates that she also had a universal character.
[1360] Hesiod, Theogony, 411 ff.
[1361] She was, perhaps, an underground deity, or the product of the fusion of two deities, one of whom was chthonic.
[1362] Farnell, Cults of the Greek States; Roscher, Lexikon.
[1363] Thus the Greeks endeavored to embody in divine figures all sides of family life. The division of functions between Hera, Hestia, and Athene is clear.