It is remarkable that in all sacrifices, even in those offered to Zeus or to Athene, it was always to the fire that the first invocation was made. At Olympia assembled Greece offered her first sacrifice to the hearth-fire, and the second to Zeus. Similarly at Rome, the first to be adored was always Vesta, who was nothing else but the fire. And so we read in the hymns of the Veda: "Before all gods, Agni must be invoked. We will pronounce thy holy name before that of all the other immortals. O Agni, whatever be the god we honour by our sacrifice, to thee is the holocaust offered." It was not that Jupiter and Brahma had not acquired a much greater importance in the minds of men, but it was remembered that the fire was much older than the gods. When the populations of Greece and Italy had learnt to represent their Gods as persons, and had given each a proper name and a human shape, the old worship of the fire was similarly modified. The sacred fire was called Vesta. The common noun was made a proper name, and a legend by degrees attached to it. They even went so far as to represent the fire in statues under the features of a woman, the gender of the noun having determined the sex of the deity. Vesta, in mythology, was one of the principal deities of the Pagans. Those who have diligently investigated the religion of the Pythagorean philosophers pretend that by Vesta they meant the universe, to which they ascribed a soul, and which they worshipped as the sole divinity sometime under the name of το παν, the whole, and sometimes under the appellation of μονος, unity. However, fabulous history records two goddesses under the name of Vesta; one the mother of Saturn, and wife of Cœlum, and the other the daughter of Saturn, by his wife Rhea. The first was Terra, or the Earth, called also Cybele, and derived her name Vesta, according to some, from clothing, because the earth is clothed, _vestitur_, with plants and fruits, or, according to Ovid, from the stability of the earth because _stat vi terra sua_, or it supports itself. Hence the first oblations in all sacrifices were offered to her, because whatsoever is sacrificed springs from the earth; and the Greeks both began and concluded their sacrifices with Vesta, because they esteemed her the mother of all gods. The second was Fire, and Vesta whose power was exercised about altars and houses, derives her name, according to Cicero, from fire or hearth. Accordingly the poets frequently use Vesta for fire or flame; as they do Jupiter for air, Ceres for corn, &c. An image of Vesta, to which they sacrificed every day, was placed before the doors of the houses at Rome; and the places where these statues were erected were called _vestibula_, from Vesta. This goddess was a virgin, and so great an admirer of virginity, that when Jupiter her brother gave her leave to ask what she would, she besought that she might always be a virgin, and have the first oblations in all sacrifices.