Nemesis

Summary

Nemesis is, among the Greeks, the righteous anger that answers whoever oversteps his measure, and in the Theogony she is a daughter of Night: "deadly Night bare Nemesis to afflict mortal men". She had a temple at Rhamnus on the coast of Attica near Marathon.

Her oldest story is in the Cypria, the lost poem of the events before the Trojan War, from which Athenaeus preserved some lines. Nemesis of the lovely hair would not lie with Zeus, her father, for shame and indignation vexed her heart, so she fled from him over the land and the dark water, and Zeus pursued her, longing to catch her. She became a fish and sped over the waves of the sea, then over Ocean's stream and the ends of the earth, then over the ploughed land, turning each time into one of the creatures the dry land nourishes to escape him; he took her by force, and she bore him Helen. Apollodorus completes the story: she became a goose, Zeus became a swan, and she laid an egg; a shepherd found it in the woods and brought it to Leda, the wife of Tyndareus, who kept it in a chest, and when Helen hatched, Leda brought her up as her own daughter.

The fullest account of her worship at Rhamnus is in Pausanias. Her sanctuary is there, and she is "the most implacable deity to men of violence". Her anger is said to have fallen on the Persians who landed at Marathon: thinking Athens already theirs, they brought a block of Parian marble to set up a trophy, as if the war were over. From that marble the sculptor Pheidias made a statue of Nemesis, with a crown of deer and small figures of Victory on her head, an apple branch in her left hand and a cup in her right. On the statue's base Leda leads Helen to Nemesis, her mother.

The idea her story turns on is that everyone has a portion, and whoever takes more than his portion, or thinks he has, is struck down by her anger. Hesiod says that at the end of the age Shame and Nemesis will leave the earth, wrapped in white robes, and join the gods, when the evil-doer is praised and strength becomes right, and there will be no help against evil. Herodotus says that after Solon left Croesus, king of Lydia, "a great nemesis from god" fell on him, because he thought himself the most blessed of all men.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Νέμεσις, Nemesis, comes from the verb νέμω, to allot and distribute, whose base is νεμ-; the rest, -εσις, forms the verbal noun. The Greek essay reads it as niqma, vengeance and punishment: Nemesis is the punishment of pride and arrogance. In Lane naqama ʿalayhi is he exacted vengeance on him, intaqamtu minhu I punished him for what he had done, and niqma is vengeance, penal retribution. This is the Greek word's sense in use, as LSJ says: retribution, righteous anger aroused by injustice. LSJ also says its proper sense is "distribution of what is due", and this answers Arabic niʿma with the ʿ dropped, as the Juthoor laws drop it: in Lane niʿma is a benefit, a favour, what God bestows on a person. Nemesis gives each his niʿma in measure, and when he oversteps it the niqma falls on him; the two Arabic words differ by a single letter. It is a reading proposed on the method that takes in the essay's reading, and its limits are set out under the linguistic root.

Linguistic Root

LSJ gives νέμεσις from νέμω, properly, like νέμησις, the distribution of what is due, but in use always retribution, especially righteous anger aroused by injustice; it is not used of the gods in Homer, and the phrase "it is no nemesis" means it is no cause for blame or anger. In the Works and Days Shame and Nemesis are personified together.

N is n and m is m in both readings. The essay reads niqma and says the q has changed, that is, dropped out between n and m. Its sense is the one that came to prevail in the Greek word: punishment for injustice and pride. Niʿma takes the first sense, allotment and giving, and ʿ is the letter most often lost in the European languages in the Juthoor tables. On the two readings the name holds both ends of the story: the allotment, and the punishment of whoever oversteps it.

The essay gives a third reading, namma, to reveal and disclose; in Lane namma al-ḥadītha is to carry talk in a mischievous way, the nammām being one who sows discord, which is far from the story.

The limit of the reading is that Greek has no q, so niqma needs the q to drop, and niʿma reads the giving, not the anger, while the story makes Nemesis anger above all.

Key Mythic Narratives

Nemesis without wings

Pausanias says that neither the statue at Rhamnus nor any other ancient statue of Nemesis has wings, not even the holiest wooden images at Smyrna, and that later artists gave her wings as they give them to Eros, because they thought she shows herself most in matters of love.

Croesus after Solon

Herodotus tells that the Athenian Solon visited Croesus, was shown his treasures and asked who was the happiest of men; he did not name Croesus, and said to call no one happy until his end is seen. When Solon had gone, Croesus dreamed that his son Atys, the best of his sons, would be killed by an iron spear; he married him off and took the weapons out of the men's quarters, and Atys was later killed in a hunt by the spear of a man who had taken refuge with Croesus and been honoured by him.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Egypt Maat is the standard by which a human life is weighed: the dead man's heart goes in one pan and her feather in the other, and if it fails, Ammit eats it. Nemesis among the Greeks is not the balance but the anger that falls on whoever oversteps the limit in his lifetime. The known measure is the same in both: Maat weighs by it after death, Nemesis punishes by it before, as she punished the Persians before the battle and Croesus through his son.

In the Theogony the Moirai come just before Nemesis among the children of Night, and Hesiod says they pursue the transgressions of men and gods and never cease from their anger until they punish the sinner: the Moirai allot the portion at birth, and Nemesis punishes its overstepping. Ate blinds the powerful until they do what ruins them: blindness comes first with Ate, and the punishment after it with Nemesis.

The egg of Nemesis from which Helen hatched is one of the witnesses of the cosmic egg, though here the egg gives birth to a person, not a world.