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 Retribution may refer to: * Punishment * Retributive justice, a theory of justice ** Divine retribution, retributive justice in a religious context * Revenge, a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance Film and televis ...

for the sin of

hubris Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), is extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. Hubris, arrogance, and pretension are related to the need for vi ...

: arrogance before the gods.

Etymology

The name ''Nemesis'' is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

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 In Greek mythology, Nyx (; ) is the goddess and personification of the night. In Hesiod's ''Theogony'', she is the offspring of Chaos, and the mother of Aether and Hemera (Day) by Erebus (Darkness). By herself, she produces a brood of children ...

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 In Greek mythology, Erebus (; ), or Erebos, is the personification of darkness. In Hesiod's ''Theogony'', he is the offspring of Chaos, and the father of Aether and Hemera (Day) by Nyx (Night); in other Greek cosmogonies, he is the father of A ...

, or Zeus, but according to De astronomia, Hyginus she was a child of

and

. Some made her the daughter of Zeus by an unnamed mother. In several traditions, Nemesis was seen as the mother of Helen of Troy by Zeus, adopted and raised by Leda (mythology), Leda and Tyndareus. According to the Byzantine poet Tzetzes, Bacchylides had Nemesis as the mother of the Telchines 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 Fortuna (mythology), 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 Greek tragedy, tragedies of Sophocles and many other literary works.

states: "Also deadly Nyx (mythology), 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 Zeus in the Twelve Olympians, 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 (mythology), Rhea, Demeter, and Artemis. In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of

, and as such is akin to Atë and the Erinyes. 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 Phrygians, Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele.

Nemesis and Zeus

In some less common traditions, it is Nemesis, rather than the mortal Spartan queen Leda (mythology), Leda, who is the mother of Helen of Troy. This narrative is first found in the lost epic ''Cypria'', the prelude of the ''Iliad''. 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, ''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 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 in his ''Catasterismi'', this version was presented by Cratinus.

Narcissus

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Nemesis enacted divine retribution on Narcissus (mythology), Narcissus for his vanity. After he rejected the advances of the nymph Echo (mythology), 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 (mythology), Aura, one of Artemis' 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 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 Retributive justice, avenger of crime, she is often depicted wielding a measuring rod (tally stick), a bridle, Weighing scale#Symbolism, scales, a sword, and a scourge, and she rides in a chariot drawn by griffins. 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. 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 (Sophocles, ''Electra (Sophocles), Electra,'' 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. There she was a daughter of

, the primeval river-ocean that encircles the world. Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias noted her iconic statue there. It included a crown of stags and little Nike (mythology), Nikes and was made by Pheidias after the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), crafted from a block of Parian marble brought by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to make a memorial stele after their expected victory.

Smyrna

At Smyrna, there were two manifestations of Nemesis, more akin to Aphrodite 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 "Decius, Decian persecution" 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 deity, tutelary deities 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" who dispensed Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidized gifts on the other; both were functions of the popular gladiatorial Ludi 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 and Hadrian. 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 Constantius Gallus, Gallus Caesar.Ammianus Marcellinus 14.11.25

Footnotes

Notes

References

* Campbell, David A., ''Greek Lyric, Volume IV: Bacchylides, Corinna'', Loeb Classical Library No. 461, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1992.
Online version at Harvard University Press
* Timothy Gantz, 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 Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Evelyn-White'', Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; 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 (geographer), 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