Nemesis- Greek GodDeity"The Inescapable"

Daughter of Night

Hesiod names Nemesis as a daughter of Nyx, born without a father from primordial darkness, alongside Death and Sleep and the Fates. Her name comes from nemein, to give what is due.

Some later traditions name her a daughter of Oceanus. But Hesiod places her among forces older than the gods themselves. In the Works and Days, he envisions a degenerate age when Nemesis and Aidos, Shame, will wrap their fair forms in white robes and depart from the earth to Olympus, leaving mortals to their own ruin. Pindar invokes her in Olympian 8: even victorious athletes must not boast beyond their portion.

The Sanctuary at Rhamnus

Nemesis's cult center was at Rhamnus, a coastal deme in northeastern Attica, where she was worshipped as Rhamnusia. The sanctuary stood on a terrace overlooking the sea toward Euboea. The cult statue, attributed to Phidias or his student Agoracritus, stood ten cubits high. Pausanias describes it: the goddess held a branch of apple tree, and her crown bore deer and small Nike figures. At her feet stood a wheel. Sacrifices at her shrine were poured into the earth, not burned on raised altars.

On the base of the statue, a relief depicted Leda leading Helen to Nemesis.

The marble for the statue had its own story. The Persians brought a block of Parian stone with them to Marathon in 490 BCE, intending to carve a victory trophy after conquering Greece. They lost the battle. The Greeks carved their marble into the goddess's image.

Nemesis and Croesus

Croesus, king of Lydia, displayed his wealth to the Athenian sage Solon and asked him to confirm that no man alive was happier. Solon refused: "Count no man happy until he is dead." Croesus dismissed this as the prattle of an old philosopher.

His son Atys was killed in a hunting accident, struck by the spear of the very man Croesus had taken into his household and purified of a previous killing. When Croesus then attacked Persia, confident in the Delphic oracle's promise that a great empire would fall, it was his own empire that crumbled. On the pyre, about to be burned alive by Cyrus, Croesus remembered Solon's words and cried them aloud.

The Punishment of Narcissus

At Narcissus's birth, his mother asked the seer Tiresias whether her son would live to old age. Tiresias answered: "If he never knows himself." In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus grew into a youth of extraordinary beauty who rejected all who loved him. The nymph Echo wasted away from unrequited desire until only her voice remained. A young man Narcissus had spurned cried out: "So may he himself love, and not possess what he loves." Nemesis heard and answered.

She led him to a still, clear pool in the forest. Not recognizing himself, Narcissus fell in love with the face in the water. He lay beside the pool, unable to touch or embrace the reflection, wasting away just as Echo had. He died gazing at his own image and was transformed into the flower that bears his name.

Nemesis and Helen

In a tradition from the lost epic Cypria, Nemesis was the mother of Helen. Zeus pursued her with desire, but she fled him across land and sea, changing shape to escape. She became a fish, then other creatures, and finally a goose. Zeus transformed himself into a swan and caught her. Nemesis laid an egg that was found by a shepherd and brought to Leda, queen of Sparta, who kept it in a chest until Helen hatched from it. Apollodorus preserves the same account. On the base of the Rhamnus statue, the sculptor carved Helen being led to Nemesis by Leda: the daughter returned to her true mother's image.

The Weight of Fortune

Herodotus weaves Nemesis through his Histories without naming her directly. Polycrates of Samos enjoyed fortune so unbroken that his ally Amasis of Egypt wrote to warn him: the gods would not tolerate a mortal who never suffered. Polycrates threw his most prized ring, a gold-and-emerald signet, into the sea. Days later a fisherman caught a great fish and brought it as a gift. When the cooks cut it open, the ring lay inside. Polycrates could not shed his luck. Amasis broke their alliance, unwilling to watch what was coming. The Persian satrap Oroetes lured Polycrates to the mainland and crucified him.

Xerxes ordered the Hellespont lashed with whips and branded with hot irons when a storm destroyed his bridge of boats. He crossed into Greece. His fleet sank at Salamis.

The second-century poet Mesomedes still addressed Nemesis in his hymn as one who "bends the vaunting neck" and measures mortal life with her cubit. Sculptors showed her with one finger pressed to her lips.