ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and Greek mythology, mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and Cult (religious practice), cult practices. The application of the modern concept ...

and

myth Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

, Nemesis (; ) also called Rhamnousia (or Rhamnusia; ), was the goddess who personified retribution for the sin of hubris: arrogance before the gods.

Etymology

The name ''Nemesis'' is derived from the Greek word , ''némein'', meaning "to give what is due", from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

*''nem-'' "distribute".

Family

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 ...

's ''

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 ...

'', Nemesis was one of the children of Nyx alone. Nemesis has been described as the daughter of

Oceanus In Greek mythology, Oceanus ( ; , also , , or ) was a Titans, Titan son of Uranus (mythology), Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys (mythology), Tethys, and the father of the River gods (Greek mythology), river gods ...

, Erebus, or

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 ...

, but according to Hyginus she was a child of Erebus and Nyx. Some made her the daughter of Zeus by an unnamed mother. In several traditions, Nemesis was seen as the mother of

Helen of Troy Helen (), also known as Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda (mythology), ...

, adopted and raised by Leda and Tyndareus. According to the Byzantine poet Tzetzes, Bacchylides had Nemesis as the mother of the

Telchines In Greek mythology, the Telchines () were the original inhabitants of the island of Rhodes and were known in Crete and Cyprus. Family Their parents were either Pontus (mythology), Pontus and Gaia (mythology), Gaia or Tartarus and Nemesis (mytholog ...

by Tartarus.

Mythology

Fortune and retribution

The word ''nemesis'' originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved. Later, ''Nemesis'' came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished. O. Gruppe (1906) and others connect the name with "to feel just resentment". From the fourth century onward, Nemesis, as the just balancer of Fortune's chance, could be associated with Tyche. Divine retribution is a major theme in the Greek world view, providing the unifying theme of the tragedies of

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

and many other literary works.

states: "Also deadly Nyx bore Nemesis an affliction to mortals subject to death" (''

'', 223, though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epic '' Cypria''. She is implacable justice: that of

in the Olympian scheme of things, although it is clear she existed prior to him, as her images look similar to several other goddesses, such as Cybele, Rhea,

Demeter In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over cro ...

, and

Artemis In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Artemis (; ) is the goddess of the hunting, hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, Kourotrophos, care of children, and chastity. In later tim ...

. In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris, and as such is akin to Atë and the

Erinyes The Erinyes ( ; , ), also known as the Eumenides (, the "Gracious ones"), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the ''Iliad'' invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth tak ...

. She was sometimes called Adrasteia, probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet ''Erinys'' ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele.

Nemesis and Zeus

In some less common traditions, it is Nemesis, rather than the mortal Spartan queen Leda, who is the mother of

. This narrative is first found in the lost epic '' Cypria'', the prelude of the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

''. According to its author, Stasinus of Cyprus, Helen was born from the rape of Nemesis by Zeus. Zeus fell in love with Nemesis, here possibly presented as his own daughter, and pursued her, only for her to flee in shame. She took several forms to escape Zeus, but he eventually captured her and forced himself on her. Stasinus of Cyprus or Hegesias of

Aegina Aegina (; ; ) is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina (mythology), Aegina, the mother of the mythological hero Aeacus, who was born on the island and became its king. ...

, '' Cypria'' Fragmen
8
/ref> Apollodorus speaks of a single transformation, into a goose, while Zeus turned into a swan to hunt her down and raped her, producing an egg that was given to the queen of Sparta; Helen hatched from the egg, and was raised by Leda. In another variation, Zeus desired Nemesis, but could not persuade her to sleep with him. So he tasked

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

to transform into an eagle and mock-chase him, while he transformed into a swan. Nemesis, pitying the poor swan, offered it refuge in her arms, and fell into a deep sleep. While asleep, Zeus raped her and in time she bore an egg which was transported to Leda by Hermes. Leda then raised Helen as her own. According to

Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; ; – ) was an Ancient Greek polymath: a Greek mathematics, mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theory, music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of A ...

in his '' Catasterismi'', this version was presented by

Cratinus Cratinus (; 519 BC – 422 BC) was an Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy. Life Cratinus won prizes for his plays on 27 known occasions, eight times at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-to-late 450s BCE (IG II2 2325. 50), and t ...

Narcissus

In Ovid's

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

, Nemesis enacted divine retribution on Narcissus for his vanity. After he rejected the advances of the nymph Echo, Nemesis lured him to a pool where he caught sight of his own reflection and fell in love with it, eventually dying. His body was transformed by the nymphs into a narcissus flower.

Aura

In Nonnus' epic '' Dionysiaca'', Aura, one of

' virgin attendants, questioned her mistress' virginity due to the feminine and curvaceous shape of her body; Aura claimed that no goddess or woman with that sort of figure would be a virgin, and asserted her own superiority over the goddess thanks to her own lean and boyish silhouette. Artemis, enraged, went to Nemesis and asked for revenge. Nemesis promised to the goddess that Aura would have her punishment, and that the punishment would be to lose the virginity she took such pride in. Nemesis then contacted Eros, the god of love, and he struck

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

with one of his arrows. Dionysus fell madly in love with Aura, and when she rebuffed his advances, he got her drunk, tied her up and raped her as she lay unconscious, bringing Nemesis' plan to a success.

Iconography

She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger. In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis. As the goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she is often depicted wielding a measuring rod ( tally stick), a bridle,

scales Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number ...

, a

sword A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter ...

, and a scourge, and she rides in a

chariot A chariot is a type of vehicle similar to a cart, driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid Propulsion, motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk O ...

drawn by

griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (; Classical Latin: ''gryps'' or ''grypus''; Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk ...

s. The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:

Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice

and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals".

Local cult

A festival called Nemeseia (by some identified with the Genesia) was held at

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

. Its object was to avert the nemesis of the dead, who were supposed to have the power of punishing the living, if their cult had been in any way neglected (

, ''

Electra Electra, also spelt Elektra (; ; ), is one of the most popular Greek mythology, mythological characters in tragedies.Evans (1970), p. 79 She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, ''Electra (Sophocles play), Electra'' by Sophocles and ''Ele ...

,'' 792; E. Rohde, ''Psyche,'' 1907, i. 236, note I).

Rhamnous

As the "Goddess of Rhamnous", Nemesis was honored and placated in an archaic sanctuary in the district of Rhamnous, in northeastern

Attica Attica (, ''Attikḗ'' (Ancient Greek) or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital city, capital of Greece and the core cit ...

. There she was a daughter of

, the primeval river-ocean that encircles the world. Pausanias noted her iconic statue there. It included a crown of stags and little Nikes and was made by Pheidias after the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), crafted from a block of

Parian marble Parian marble is a fine-grained, semi translucent, and pure-white marble quarried during the classical antiquity, classical era on the Greece, Greek List of islands of Greece, island of Paros in the Aegean Sea. A subtype, referred to as Parian ' ...

brought by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to make a memorial stele after their expected victory.

Smyrna

Smyrna Smyrna ( ; , or ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean Sea, Aegean coast of Anatolia, Turkey. Due to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence, and its good inland connections, Smyrna ...

, there were two manifestations of Nemesis, more akin to

than to Artemis. The reason for this duality is hard to explain. It is suggested that they represent two aspects of the goddess, the kindly and the implacable, or the goddesses of the old city and the new city refounded by Alexander. The martyrology ''Acts of Pionius'', set in the "

Decian persecution Christians were persecuted in 250 AD under the Decius, Roman emperor Decius. He had issued an edict ordering everyone in the empire to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods and the well-being of the emperor. The sacrifices had to be performed ...

" of AD 250–51, mentions a lapsed Smyrnan Christian who was attending to the sacrifices at the altar of the temple of these Nemeses.

Rome

Nemesis was one of several

tutelary deities A tutelary (; also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and ...

of the drill-ground (as ''Nemesis campestris''). Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that arena personnel such as gladiators, ''venatores'' and ''bestiarii'' were personally or professionally dedicated to her cult. Rather, she seems to have represented a kind of "Imperial

Fortuna Fortuna (, equivalent to the Greek mythology, Greek goddess Tyche) is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Religion in ancient Rome, Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular thr ...

" who dispensed Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidized gifts on the other; both were functions of the popular gladiatorial

Ludi ''Ludi'' (Latin:games; plural of "ludus") were public games held for the benefit and entertainment of the Roman people (''populus Romanus''). ''Ludi'' were held in conjunction with, or sometimes as the major feature of, Roman religious festiv ...

held in Roman arenas.Nemesis, her devotees and her place in the Roman world are fully discussed, with examples, in Hornum, Michael B., ''Nemesis, the Roman state and the games'', Brill, 1993. She is shown on a few examples of Imperial coinage as ''Nemesis-Pax'', mainly under

Claudius Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; ; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Nero Claudius Drusus, Drusus and Ant ...

and

Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...

. In the third century AD, there is evidence of the belief in an all-powerful ''Nemesis-Fortuna''. She was worshipped by a society called Hadrian's freedmen. Ammianus Marcellinus includes her in a digression on Justice following his description of the death of Gallus Caesar.Ammianus Marcellinus 14.11.25

Footnotes

Notes

References

* Campbell, David A., ''Greek Lyric, Volume IV: Bacchylides, Corinna'',

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. 461, 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 ...

, 1992.
Online version at Harvard University Press
* Gantz, Timothy, ''Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2). * ''

'',
The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
', with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White'', Cambridge, MA.,

; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* * Matranga, Pietro, ''Anecdota Graeca'', Volume II, Typis C. A. Bertinelli, Rome, 1850
Google Books
* Pausanias, ''Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nemesis Justice goddesses Justice deities Vengeance goddesses Greek goddesses Personifications in Greek mythology Oceanids Divine women of Zeus Children of Zeus Children of Nyx Metamorphoses characters Mythological rape victims Avian humanoids Shapeshifters in Greek mythology Retribution