Ave Aureli Orce,
If I may add a few clarifications.
Quintus Aurelius Orcus wrote:
We do know that they both played a pivotal role in both private and state religion. They were the centre of all. In ancient Greece and later in Rome, family members would offer (I think) leftovers from their dinner to Hestia and later to Vesta.
"The name Vesta comes from the Greeks, for she is the goddess whom they call Hestia. Her power extends over altars and hearths, and therefore all prayers and all sacrifices end with this goddess, because she is the guardian of the innermost things. Closely related to this function are the Penates or household gods." - Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.27
In Rome, Vesta had a temple, where the fire was kept burning for forever or it was supposed to last forever. Those Vestal virgins who dared to let the fire go out where usually killed by burying them alive.
Actually, they were beaten.
"Their chief office was to watch by turns, night and day, the everlasting fire which blazed upon the altar of Vesta (VIRGINESQUE VESTALES IN URBE CUSTODIUNTO IGNEM FOCI PUBLICI SEMPITERNUM, Cic. de Leg. ii.8.12; Liv. xxviii.11; Val. Max. i.1 §6; Senec. de Prov. 5), its extinction being considered as the most fearful of all prodigies, and emblemate of the extinction of the state (Dionys. ii.67; Liv. xxvi.1). If such misfortune befell and was caused by the carefulness of the priestess on discovery, she was stripped and scourged by the Pontifex Maximus, in the dark and with a screen interposed, and he rekindled the flame by the friction of two pieces of wood from a felix arbor (Dionys., Plut, Val. Max. ll. cc.; Festus, s.v. Ignis). "
Quote from "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," at
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... tales.html
A Vestal was buried alive for violatiing her vow of chastity only (see above link for this also).
Incidentally, the fire on the altar of Vesta was ceremonially rekindled each year on the Kalends of March, beginning the new sacral year.
Vale,
Ambrosius Celetrus