Relief of Nemesis trampling an enemy and flanked by small figures ofNike, 3rd century CE (Brindisi, Museo archeologico Francesco Ribezzo)
The wordnemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
O. Gruppe (1906) and others connect the name with "to feel just resentment". From the fourth century onward, Nemesis, as the just balancer ofFortune's chance, could be associated withTyche.
Divine retribution is a major theme in the Greek world view, providing the unifying theme of thetragedies ofSophocles and many other literary works.[8]Hesiod states: "Also deadlyNyx bore Nemesis an affliction to mortals subject to death" (Theogony, 223, though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epicCypria.
She is implacable justice: that ofZeus in theOlympian scheme of things, although it is clear she existed prior to him, as her images look similar to several other goddesses, such asCybele,Rhea,Demeter, andArtemis.[9]
In theGreek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher ofhubris, and as such is akin toAtë and theErinyes. She was sometimes calledAdrasteia, probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithetErinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and thePhrygian mother goddess,Cybele.
Justice (Dike, on the left) and Divine Vengeance (Nemesis, right) pursuing a murderer, in a painting byPierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808
In some less common traditions, it is Nemesis, rather than the mortal Spartan queenLeda, who is the mother ofHelen of Troy. This narrative is first found in the lost epicCypria, the prelude of theIliad. 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,[a] 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.[5]
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.[11][12] In another variation, Zeus desired Nemesis, but could not persuade her to sleep with him. So he taskedAphrodite 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 byHermes. Leda then raised Helen as her own.[13] According toEratosthenes in hisCatasterismi, this version was presented byCratinus.[14]
In Ovid'sMetamorphoses, Nemesis enacted divine retribution onNarcissus for his vanity.[15] After he rejected the advances of the nymphEcho, 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.
InNonnus' epicDionysiaca,Aura, one ofArtemis' 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 contactedEros, the god of love, and he struckDionysus 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.[16]
Stafford describes Nemesis as a regulator of justice and moral balance rather than simply a punisher of hubris. She analyzes Nemesis’s cult at Rhamnous and her earliest appearances in Hesiod, emphasizing her function in maintaining rightful measure and restoring equilibrium when moral boundaries are violated. Stafford also discusses Hellenistic and Roman iconography that depicts Nemesis as a guardian of order and divine justice.[17]
Kosachova characterizes Nemesis as the Greek personification of retributive justice who restores balance when moral or cosmic order is disturbed. This includes punishing arrogance, cruelty, or excessive good fortune, reflecting a broader cultural role that extends beyond simple vengeance.[18]
She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.[citation needed] In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis.[citation needed]
A festival calledNemeseia (by some identified with theGenesia) was held atAthens. 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).
As the "Goddess of Rhamnous", Nemesis was honored and placated in an archaic sanctuary in the district ofRhamnous, in northeasternAttica. There she was a daughter ofOceanus, the primeval river-ocean that encircles the world.Pausanias noted her iconic statue there. It included a crown of stags and littleNikes and was made byPheidias after theBattle of Marathon (490 BC), crafted from a block ofParian marble brought by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to make a memorialstele after their expected victory.[19]
AtSmyrna, there were two manifestations of Nemesis, more akin toAphrodite 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 martyrologyActs ofPionius, set in the "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.
Nemesis was one of severaltutelary deities of the drill-ground (asNemesis campestris). Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that arena personnel such asgladiators,venatores andbestiarii were personally or professionally dedicated to her cult. Rather, she seems to have represented a kind of "ImperialFortuna" who dispensed Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidized gifts on the other; both were functions of the popular gladiatorialLudi held in Roman arenas.[20] She is shown on a few examples of Imperial coinage asNemesis-Pax, mainly underClaudius andHadrian. In the third century AD, there is evidence of the belief in an all-powerfulNemesis-Fortuna. She was worshipped by a society called Hadrian's freedmen.
^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 inAeschylus (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 inNemesis, the Roman State and the Games, 1993:9.
^(Apollodorus) R. Scott Smith, Stephen Trzaskoma, and Hyginus.Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2007:60.
^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.
^In his translation of the passage,Hugh G. Evelyn-White wrote that Nemesis tried to escape from "her father Zeus", taking the ancient text to imply more than a casual usage of "father Zeus", which would provide an explanation for the shame and anger Nemesis feels. At the same time it has been argued that the impending rape is enough for Nemesis to react in such a manner, and it is rather far-fetched to suggest that incest (and the taboo against it) is the leading theme of the narrative.[10]
Lamari, Anna A.; Montanari, Franco; Novokhatko, Anna (2020).Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama.De Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-0621020.
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.
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