Nemesis

In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis,[a] also called Rhamnousia or

Nemesis
Rhamnusia ("the goddess of Rhamnous"), is the goddess who
enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance Goddess of retribution
before the gods).[1]

Contents
Etymology
Origin
Fortune and retribution
Kin
Progeny
Helen
Telchines
Acts and deeds
Narcissus
Local cult
Smyrna
Rome
See also
Notes
References
Nemesis, by Alfred Rethel (1837)
Other Rhamnousia/
Etymology names Rhamnusia
Animals Goose
The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νέμειν némein, Symbol Sword, lash, dagger,
meaning "to give what is due",[2] from Proto-Indo-European nem-
measuring rod, scales,
"distribute".[3]
bridle
Festivals Nemeseia
Origin
Personal information
Divine retribution is a major theme in the Hellenic world view, Parents Nyx with no father or
providing the unifying theme of the tragedies of Sophocles and with Erebus, Oceanus or
many other literary works.[4] Hesiod states: "Also deadly Nyx bore Zeus
Nemesis an affliction to mortals subject to death" (Theogony, 223,
Siblings Achlys, Apate (deity),
though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more
Dolos (mythology),
concrete form in a fragment of the epic Cypria.
Eleos, Elpis, Epiphron,
Eris, Geras, Hesperides,
Hybris (mythology),
 She is implacable justice: Hypnos, Ker, Moirai,
that of Zeus in the Olympian Momus, Moros, Oizys,
scheme of things, although it Oneiroi, Philotes,
is clear she existed prior to Sophrosyne, Thanatos,
him, as her images look
or the Oceanides, the
similar to several other
Potamoi
goddesses, such as Cybele,
Rhea, Demeter, and Consort Zeus, Tartarus
Artemis. [5]
Offspring Helen of Troy, the
Telchines
As the "Goddess of
Rhamnous", Nemesis was
honored and placated in an archaic sanctuary in the isolated district
of Rhamnous, in northeastern Attica. There she was a daughter of
Oceanus, 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 brought
Albrecht Dürer's engraving of by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to make a
Nemesis, c 1502
memorial stele after their expected victory.[6] Her cult may have
originated at Smyrna.

She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.

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".

In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet
Nemesis.

Later, as the maiden goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she has as attributes a measuring rod
(tally stick), a bridle, scales, a sword, and a scourge, and she rides in a chariot drawn by griffins.

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.

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. 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.
Kin
Nemesis has been described as the daughter of
Oceanus or Zeus, but according to Hyginus she was a
child of Erebus and Nyx. She has also been
described, by Hesiod, as the daughter of Nyx alone.
In the Theogony, Nemesis is the sister of the Moirai
(the Fates), the Keres (Black Fates), the Oneiroi
(Dreams), Eris (Discord) and Apate (Deception)

Progeny

Helen

In some metaphysical mythology, Nemesis produced

Justice (Dike, on the left) and Divine Vengeance
the egg from which hatched two sets of twins: Helen
(Nemesis, right) are pursuing the criminal murderer.
of Troy and Clytemnestra, and the Dioscuri, Castor By Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808
and Pollux. While many myths indicate Zeus and
Leda to be the parents of Helen of Troy, the author of
the compilation of myth called Bibliotheke notes the
possibility of Nemesis being the mother of Helen.
Nemesis, to avoid Zeus, turns into a goose, but he turns
into a swan and mates with her anyway. Nemesis in her
bird form lays an egg that is discovered in the marshes
by a shepherd, who passes the egg to Leda. It is in this
way that Leda comes to be the mother of Helen of Troy,
as she kept the egg in a chest until it hatched.[7]

Stasinus of Cyprus or Hegesias of Aegina,

Cypria Fragment 8 (trans. Evelyn-White)
(Greek epic C7th or C6th BC) :
Leda and the Swan, copy of Michelangelo's lost
Rich-haired Nemesis gave birth to her painting.
[Helene (Helen)] when she had been joined
in love with Zeus the king of the gods by
harsh violence. For Nemesis tried to escape
him and liked not to lie in love with her
father Zeus the son of Kronos (Cronus); for
shame and indignation vexed her heart:
therefore she fled him over the land and
fruitless dark sea. But Zeus ever pursued
and longed in his heart to catch her. Now
she took the form of a fish and sped over
the waves of the loud-roaring sea, and now
over Okeanos' (Oceanus') stream and the
furthest bounds of Earth, and now she sped
over the furrowed land, always turning into
such dread creatures as the dry land
nurtures, that she might escape him.
 Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 127 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd AD) :

Nemesis, as she fled from Zeus' embrace, took the form of a goose; whereupon Zeus as a swan
had intercourse with her. From this union, she laid an egg, which some herdsman found among
the trees and handed over to Lede (Leda). She kept it in a box, and when Helene was hatched
after the proper length of time, she reared her as her own.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 33. 4 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd AD) :

I will now go on to describe what is figures on the pedestal of the statue [of Nemesis at
Rhamnos], having made this preface for the sake of clearness. The Greeks say that Nemesis
was the mother of Helene (Helen), while Leda suckled and nursed her. The father of Helene the
Greeks like everybody else hold to be not Tyndareos (Tyndareus) but Zeus. Having heard this
legend [the sculptor] Pheidias has represented Helene as being led to Nemesis by Leda, and he
has represented Tyndareos and his children.

Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 8 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd AD) :

Constellation Swan (Cygnus). When Jupiter [Zeus], moved by desire, had begun to love
Nemesis, and couldn't persuade her to lie with him, he relieved his passion by the following
plan. He bade Venus (Aphrodite), in the form of an eagle, pursue him; he, changed to a swan as
if in flight from the eagle, took refuge with Nemesis and lighted in her lap. Nemesis did not
thrust him away, but holding him in her arms, fell into a deep sleep. While she slept, Jupiter
[Zeus] embraced her and then flew away. Because he was seen by men flying high in the sky,
they said he was put in the stars. To make this really true, Jupiter put the swan flying and the
eagle pursuing in the sky. But Nemesis, as if wedded to the tribe of birds, when her months
were ended, bore an egg. Mercurius (Mercury) Hermes took it away and carried it to Sparta and
threw it in Leda's lap. From it sprang Helen, who excelled all other girls in beauty.

Telchines

One source of the myth says that Nemesis was the mother of the Telchines, whom others say were children
of Pontus and Gaea or Thalassa.

Bacchylides, Fragment 52 (from Tzetzes on Theogony) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV)
(Greek lyric C5th BC) :

The four famous Telkhines (Telchines), Aktaios (Actaeus), Megalesios (Megalesius), Ormenos
(Ormenus) and Lykos (Lycus), whom Bakkhylides (Bacchylides) calls the children of Nemesis
and Tartaros.

[N.B. Tartaros is the spirit of the great pit beneath the earth.]
Acts and deeds

Narcissus

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.[8]

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

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 "Decian persecution" of AD 250–51, mentions
a lapsed Smyrnan Christian who was attending to the sacrifices at Nemesis on a brass sestertius of
Hadrian, struck at Rome AD 136
the altar of the temple of these Nemeses.

Rome

Nemesis was one of several 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.[9] 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
Gallus Caesar.[1]

See also
(Goddesses of Justice): Astraea, Dike, Themis, Prudentia
(Goddesses of Injustice): Adikia
(Aspects of Justice): (see also: Triple deity/Triple Goddess (neopaganism))
(Justice) Themis/Dike/Justitia (Lady Justice), Raguel (the Angel of Justice)
(Retribution) Nemesis/Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia/Adrasteia/Adrestia/Invidia
(Redemption) Eleos/Soteria/Clementia, Zadkiel/Zachariel (the Angel of Mercy)
Notes
a. /ˈnɛməsɪs/ Ancient Greek: Νέμεσις

1. Ammianus Marcellinus 14.11.25

2. "Nemesis – Origin and history of nemesis by Online Etymology Dictionary" (http://www.etymonl
ine.com/index.php?term=nemesis). www.etymonline.com.
3. R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, pp. 1005–06.
4. Examples of Nemesis in Literature (http://literarydevices.net/nemesis/), retrieved October 12,
2013
5. The primeval concept of Nemesis is traced by Marcel Mauss (Mauss, The Gift: the form and
reason for exchange in archaic societies, 2002:23: "Generosity is an obligation, because
Nemesis avenges the poor... This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a
principle of justice". Jean Coman, in discussing Nemesis in Aeschylus (Coman, L'idée de la
Némésis chez Eschyle, Strasbourg, 1931:40–43) detected "traces of a less rational, and
probably older, concept of deity and its relationship to man", as Michael B. Hornum observed
in Nemesis, the Roman State and the Games, 1993:9.
6. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.33.2–3.
7. (Pseudo-Apollodorus) R. Scott Smith, Stephen Trzaskoma, and Hyginus. Apollodorus' Library
and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub.,
2007:60.
8. "Metamorphoses (Kline) 3, the Ovid Collection, Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center" (http://ovid.lib.vi
rginia.edu/trans/Metamorph3.htm#476975712). virginia.edu. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
9. 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.

References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh,
ed. (1911). "Nemesis". Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
p. 369.
GreekMythology.com – Nemesis (http://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Nemesis/neme
sis.html)
Important Facts on Nemesis in Greek Mythology (http://classroom.synonym.com/important-ne
mesis-greek-mythology-13936.html)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nemesis&oldid=938290627"

This page was last edited on 30 January 2020, at 07:36 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.