Nemesis (mythology)

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Nemesis (mythology)

Nemesis (in Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
, ), also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia ("the goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheism system that includes several deities in a pantheon .Common associations of goddesses are the Earth goddess, the Mother Goddess, Love goddess, and the hearth goddess, reflecting historical gender roles....
of Rhamnous

Rhamnous

The site of Rhamnous , the remote northernmost deme of Attica, lies 39km NE of Athens and 12.4km NNE of Marathon, Greece, Greece overlooking the Euboea....
"), at her sanctuary at Rhamnous

Rhamnous

The site of Rhamnous , the remote northernmost deme of Attica, lies 39km NE of Athens and 12.4km NNE of Marathon, Greece, Greece overlooking the Euboea....
, north of Marathon

Marathon, Greece

Marathon is an ancient Greek city-state, a contemporary town in Greece, the site of the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, in which the heavily outnumbered Athens army defeated the Persian Empirens....
, in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
was the spirit of divine punishment against those who succumb to hubris

Hubris

Hubris or hybris , mythology is a term used in modern English to indicate overweening pride, superciliousness, or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution....
, vengeful fate personified as a remorseless goddess.

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Background

Inexorable divine retribution is a major theme in the Hellenic world view, providing the unifying theme of the tragedies of Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
and many other literary works. In some metaphysical mythology, Nemesis produced the egg from which hatched two sets of twins: Helen

Helen

In Greek mythology, Helen , better known as Helen of Sparta later Helen of Troy, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda , wife of King Menelaus of Sparta and sister of Castor and Pollux, Castor and Pollux and Clytemnestra....
of Troy

Troy

Troy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer....
and Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greece kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon—said by Euripides to be her second husband—and his concubine Cassandra....
, and the Dioscuri, Castor

Castor and Pollux

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux were the twin sons of Leda and Zeus/Tyndareus , the brothers of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra and the half-brothers of Timandra , Phoebe, Heracles, Philonoe....
(Kástor) and Polydeukes

Castor and Pollux

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
states: "Also deadly Nyx bore Nemesis to afflict mortal men." (Theogony
Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogy of the polytheism of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC....
, 223, though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epic Cypria.

She is the implacable executrix of justice: that of Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
in the Olympian

Twelve Olympians

The Twelve Olympians or younger gods, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal Greek Godss of the Greek pantheon , residing atop Mount Olympus, having supplanted the Titan or older gods in the greek mythogical narrative....
scheme of things, but it was clear she existed before him, for her images look similar to several goddesses like Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was the Phrygian deification of the Earth Mother. As with Greek Gaia , or her Minoan civilization equivalent Rhea , Cybele embodies the fertile Earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals ....
, Rhea

Rhea (mythology)

This page is about the Greek mythological figure. For the bird, see Rhea .Rhea was the Titan daughter of Ouranos , the sky, and Gaia , the earth, in Classical Greece mythology....
, Demeter

Demeter

File:Demeter in horse chariot w daughter kore 83d40m wikiC Tempio Y di Selinunte sec VIa.JPGDemeter , in Greek mythology, is the Goddess of cereal and fertility, the pure....
and Artemis

Artemis

In Greek mythology, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of forests and hills, child birth/virginity/fertility, the hunt and was often depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows.....
.

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

Attica

Attica is a Peripheries of Greece in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. Attica is subdivided into the prefectures of Greece of Athens Prefecture, Piraeus Prefecture, East Attica and West Attica....
. There she was a daughter of Oceanus

Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
, the primeval river-ocean that encircles the world. Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
noted her iconic statue there. It included a crown of stags and little Nikes

Nike (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Nike , was a goddess who personified triumph throughout the ages of the ancient Greek culture. The Roman equivalent was Victoria ....
and was made by Pheidias after the Battle of Marathon

Battle of Marathon

The Battle of Marathon, Greece during the Greco-Persian Wars took place in 490 BC and was the culmination of the first attempt by the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate Ancient Greece....
(490 BC), crafted from a block of Parian

Paros

Paros is an island of Greece in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos , from which it is separated by a channel about wide....
marble

Marble

Marble is a nonfoliated metamorphic rock resulting from the metamorphism of limestone, composed mostly of calcite . It is extensively used for Marble sculpture, as a architecture material, and in many other applications....
brought by the over-confident Persians, who had intended to make a memorial stele after their expected victory.

The word Nemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to his deserts; then, nemesis came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice which could not allow it to pass unpunished. O. Gruppe (1906) and others connect the name with "to feel just resentment". From the fourth century onwards, Nemesis, as the just balancer of Fortune

Fortuna (mythology)

File:TomisFortuna2.JPGIn Roman mythology, Fortuna goddess of fortune, was the personification of luck; hopefully she brought good luck, but she could be represented veiled and blind, as modern depictions of Justice are seen, and came to represent the capriciousness of life....
's chance, could be associated with Tyche

Tyche

In Ancient Greek religion, Tyche was the presiding tutelary deity that governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. Increasingly during the Hellenistic period, cities had their own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown ....
.

In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris

Hubris

Ate

At?, a Greek word for "ruin, folly, delusion", is the action performed by the hero, usually because of his or her hubris that leads to his or her death or downfall....
and the Erinyes

Erinyes

In Greek mythology the Erinyes or Eumenides or Furies in Roman mythology were female, chthonic deities of revenge or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead....
. She was sometimes called Adrasteia

Adrasteia

In Greek mythology, Adrasteia was a nymph who was charged by Rhea with nurturing the infant Zeus, in secret, to protect him from his father Cronus in the Dictaean cave....
, probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet Erinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
n mother goddess, Cybele

Cybele

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
. 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

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
, Electra
Electra

In Greek mythology, Electra was an Argosian princess and daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and was a sibling to sisters Iphigeneia, Chrysothemis, and brother Orestes....
, 792; E. Rohde, Psyche, 1907, i. 236, note I).

At Smyrna

Smyrna

Smyrna is an ancient city in Izmir in Turkey. Located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean Sea coast of Anatolia and aided by its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence before the Classical Era....
there were two manifestations of Nemesis, more akin to Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
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
Pionius

Saint Pionius is a Christian saint. He was Christian martyred at Smyrna during the reign of Decius.Pionius, with Sabina, Asclepiades, Macedonia, and Limnos, was arrested on 23 February, the anniversary of Polycarp martyrdom....
, set in the "Decian persecution

Decius

Gaius Messius Quintus Decius was the Roman Emperors from 249 - 251. In the last year of his reign, he co-ruled with his son Herennius Etruscus until both of them were killed in the Battle of Abrittus....
" of AD 250–51, mentions a lapsed Smyrnan Christian who was attending to the sacrifices at the altar of the temple of these Nemeses.

Nemesis has been described as the daughter of Oceanus

Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
or Zeus

Zeus

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
she was a child of Erebus

Erebus

In Greek mythology, Erebus or Erebos or Erebes was the son of a primordial god, Chaos , and represented the personification of darkness and shadow, which filled in all the corners and crannies of the world....
and Nyx

Nyx

In Greek mythology, Nyx was the primordial goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation, and was the mother of personification gods such as Hypnos and Thanatos ....
. She has also been described as the daughter of Nyx alone. Her cult may have originated at Smyrna

Smyrna

Rome

Invidia

In Roman mythology, invidia was the sense of envy or jealousy, an extension of invidere, "to look against, to look at in a hostile manner", as when Jupiter, ruminating on Aeneas' apparent lack of drive towards founding a kingdom at Rome, wonders whether, as father, he feels invidia for his son Ascanius' future inheritance of Roman cit...
(sometimes called Pax-Nemesis) was also worshipped at Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
by victorious generals, and in imperial times was the patroness of gladiator

Gladiator

A Gladiator was a slave, criminal or professional fighter in ancient Rome. Gladiators fought other gladiators, wild animals and condemned criminals, sometimes to the death, for the entertainment of Spectator sport in cities and towns of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, from the 3rd century BCE to the 5th century CE....
s and of the venatores, who fought in the arena with wild beasts, and was one of the tutelary

Tutelary

A tutelary spiritual being or patron deity serves as the guardian of, or an entity to watch over and protect, a particular site, person, culture, or nation....
deities of the drilling-ground (Nemesis campestris). Invidia was sometimes, but rarely, seen on imperial coining, mainly under Claudius

Claudius

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or Claudius I was the fourth Roman Emperor, a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from January 24, AD 41 to his death in AD 54....
and Hadrian

Hadrian

Publius Aelius Hadrianus , as emperor Imperator Caesar Divi Traiani filius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, and Divus Hadrianus after his apotheosis, known as Hadrian in English language, was Roman Emperor of Roman Empire from AD 117 to 138, as well as a Stoicism and Epicureanism philosopher....
. In the 3rd century AD there is evidence of the belief in an all-powerful Nemesis-Fortuna. She was worshipped by a society called Hadrian's freedman. The poet Mesomedes

Mesomedes

Mesomedes of Crete was a Roman Greece lyric poetry poet and composer of the early 2nd century.He was a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian, on whose favorite Antinous he is said to have written a panegyric, specifically called a Citharoedic Hymn ....
wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early 2nd century CE, 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 herself sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis. Later, as the maiden goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime

Retributive justice

Retributive justice is a theory of justice that considers that punishment, if Eye for an eye, is a morally acceptable response to crime, with an eye to the satisfaction and psychological benefits it can bestow to the aggrieved party, its intimates and society....
, she has as attributes a measuring rod

Measuring rod

A Measuring rod is a kind of ruler. This phrase is often used without mention of a particular kind or length of ruler and has been used since ancient times....
(tally stick), a bridle

Bridle

A bridle is a piece of equipment used to direct a horse. As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, the "bridle" includes both the headstall that holds a Bit that goes in the mouth of a horse, and the reins that are attached to the bit....
, scales

Scale armour

Scale armour , Lorica squamata, lorica plumata consists of many small scales attached to a backing material of either leather or cloth....
, a sword

Sword

A sword is a long, edged piece of metal, used as a cutting, thrusting, and clubbing weapon in many civilizations throughout the world. The word sword comes from the Old English language wikt:sweord, cognate to Old High German swert, Middle Dutch swaert, Old Norse sver? Old Frisian and Old Saxon swerd and Dutch langua...
and a scourge

Scourge

A scourge is a whip or lash, especially a multi-thong type used to inflict severe physical punishment or self-mortification on the back....
, and rides in a chariot

Chariot

The chariot is the earliest and simplest type of carriage, used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Chariots were built in Mesopotamia by the Mesopotamians as early as 3000 BC and in China during the 2nd millennium BC....
drawn by griffin

Griffin

The griffin is a fantasy creature with the body of a lion and the head and often wings of an eagle. As the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of the birds, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature....
s.

External links

Anthology of quotes from Classical sources