Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, Dike or Dice, ( or ; ) sometimes also called Dicaeosyne (), is the goddess of justice and the spirit of moral order and fair judgement as a transcendent universal ideal or based on immemorial custom, in the sense of socially enforced norms and conventional rules. According to

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

(''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' () is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogy, genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Homeric Greek, epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one ...

'', l. 901), she was fathered by

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

upon his second consort, Themis. She and her mother are both personifications of justice. She is depicted as a young, slender woman carrying a

balance scale A scale or balance is a device used to measure weight or mass. These are also known as mass scales, weight scales, mass balances, massometers, and weight balances. The traditional scale consists of two plates or bowls suspended at equal dis ...

and wearing a

laurel wreath A laurel wreath is a symbol of triumph, a wreath (attire), wreath made of connected branches and leaves of the bay laurel (), an aromatic broadleaf evergreen. It was also later made from spineless butcher's broom (''Ruscus hypoglossum'') or cher ...

. The constellation Libra (the Scales) was anciently thought to represent her distinctive symbol. She is often associated with Astraea, the goddess of innocence and purity. ''Astraea'' is also one of her

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

s, referring to her appearance in the nearby constellation

Virgo Virgo may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Virgo (film), a 1970 Egyptian film * Virgo (character), several Marvel Comics characters * Virgo Asmita, a character in the manga ''Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas'' * ''Virgo'' (album), by Virgo Four, ...

which is said to represent Astraea. This reflects her symbolic association with Astraea, who, too, has a similar

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

Depiction

The sculptures of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia have as their unifying iconographical conception the ''dikē'' of Zeus, and in poetry she is often the attendant (, ''paredros'') of Zeus. In the philosophical climate of late 5th century Athens, ''dikē'' could be anthropomorphised as a goddess of

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...

justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...

. She was one of the three second-generation

Horae In Greek mythology, the Horae (), Horai () or Hours (, ) were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. Etymology The term ''hora'' comes from the Proto-Indo-European ("year"). Function The Horae were originally the ...

, along with Eunomia (Order) and Eirene (Peace): She ruled over human justice, while her mother Themis ruled over divine justice. Her opposite was '' adikia'' ("injustice"); in reliefs on the archaic Chest of Cypselus preserved at Olympia, an attractive depiction ''Dikē'' throttled an ugly depiction of ''Adikia'' and beat her with a stick. The later art of

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

treated the personification of abstract concepts as an artistic device, which devolved into the allegorizing that

Late Antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

bequeathed to patristic literature. In a further euhemerist interpretation, Dikē was born a mortal and

placed her on Earth to keep mankind just. He quickly learned this was impossible and placed her next to him on

Mount Olympus Mount Olympus (, , ) is an extensive massif near the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia (Greece), Macedonia, between the regional units of Larissa (regional unit), Larissa and Pieria (regional ...

Dike Astraea

One of her epithets was '' Astraea'', referring to her appearance as the constellation

. According to Aratus's account of the constellation's origin, Dike lived upon Earth during the Golden and

Silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

ages, when there were no wars or diseases, men raised fine crops and did not yet know how to sail. They grew greedy, however, and Dike was sickened. She proclaimed: Dike left Earth for the sky, from which, as the constellation, she watched the despicable human race. After her departure, the human race declined into the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, when diseases arose and humanity learned how to sail.

In the Bible

The consensus of most biblical scholars is that the book of Acts contains a reference to Dike in its final chapter. In Acts 27–28, the

Apostle Paul Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Apostles in the New Testament, Christian apostle ( AD) who spread the Ministry of Jesus, teachings of Jesus in the Christianity in the 1st century, first ...

is conducted toward Rome under guard after having appealed his legal case to Caesar. After getting caught in a storm, having their boat ran aground, and narrowly escaping death while making it to shore, they discover they have landed on

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

, where they are cared for by the local populace. While helping to fuel the fire, Paul is bitten by snake, and the locals conclude, "No doubt this man is a murderer! Although he has escaped from the sea, Justice herself has not allowed him to live!" ( NET). Ben Witherington III writes of this incident, It was common belief of the time that the sea was a place where the gods could exact vengeance, and the snakebite was likely perceived as Dike pursuing Paul after surviving the shipwreck.

Notes

References

* Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, ''The Orphic Hymns'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Internet ArchiveGoogle Books
* ''Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 4'', Cyr-Epy, editors: Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2004.
Online version at Brill
* *

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

, ''Olympian Odes. Pythian Odes''. Edited and translated by William H. Race.

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...

No. 56. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

, 1997.
Online version at Harvard University Press
* Smith, William, ''

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' is a biographical dictionary of classical antiquity, edited by William Smith (lexicographer), William Smith and originally published in London by John Taylor (English publisher), Tayl ...

'', London (1873)
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dike (Mythology) Children of Zeus Greek goddesses Horae Justice goddesses Personifications in Greek mythology

Depiction

Dike Astraea

In the Bible

See also

Notes

References