Everything about Nemesis Mythology totally explained
Nemesis (in
Greek,
Νέμεσις), also called
Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia ("the
goddess of
Rhamnous"), at her sanctuary at
Rhamnous, north of
Marathon, in
Greek mythology was the spirit of divine
retribution against those who succumb to
hubris, vengeful fate personified as a remorseless goddess. The name
Nemesis is related to the
Greek word
νείμειν, meaning "to give what is due". The
Romans equated the Greek Nemesis as
Invidia (
Aronoff 2003)
.
Nemesis is now often used as a term to describe one's worst enemy, normally someone or something that's the exact opposite of oneself but is also somehow similar. For example,
Professor Moriarty is frequently described as the nemesis of
Sherlock Holmes.
Background
Inexorable divine retribution is a major theme in the Hellenic world view, providing the unifying theme of the
tragedies of
Sophocles and many other literary works. In some metaphysical mythology, Nemesis produced the egg from which hatched two sets of twins:
Helen of
Troy and
Clytemnestra, and the
Dioscuri,
Castor (Kástor) and
Polydeukes (Polydeúkes).
The only sense in which
nemesis is used in
Homer is as an abstract
personification.
Hesiod states: "Also deadly
Nyx bore Nemesis to afflict mortal men." (
Theogony, 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 in the
Olympian scheme of things, but it was clear she existed before him, for her images look similar to several goddesses like
Cybele,
Rhea,
Demeter and
Artemis.
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 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 ; then,
nemesis came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice which couldn't 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'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
Ate and the
Erinyes. She was sometimes called
Adrasteia, probably meaning "one from whom there's no escape"; her epithet
Erinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the
Phrygian mother goddess,
Cybele.
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).
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's 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 presecution" 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 or
Zeus, but according to
Hesiod she was a child of
Erebus and
Nyx. She has also been described as the daughter of Nyx alone. Her cult may have originated at
Smyrna.
Rome
Invidia (sometimes called
Pax-Nemesis) was also worshipped at
Rome by victorious generals, and in imperial times was the patroness of
gladiators and of the
venatores, who fought in the arena with wild beasts, and was one of the
tutelary deities of the drilling-ground (
Nemesis campestris). Invidia was sometimes, but rarely, seen on imperial coining, mainly under
Claudius and
Hadrian. In the
3rd century AD there's evidence of the belief in an all-powerful
Nemesis-Fortuna. She was worshipped by a society called Hadrian's freedman. The poet
Mesomedes 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."
(External Link).
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, she's as attributes a
measuring rod (
tally stick), a
bridle,
scales, a
sword and a
scourge, and rides in a
chariot drawn by
griffins.
Further Information
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