NEMESIS (Niaecris), a female Greek divinity, who appears to have been regarded as the personification of the righteous anger of the gods. She is represented as inflexibly severe to the proud and insolent (Pans., i. 33, § 2.); but she also sets right the inequalities of fortune, and avenges wrong doing : In some respects' Nemesis is the equivalent of conscience. According to Ilesicel, she was the daughter of Night, by others she is called the (laughter of Erebus. (' Theog.; 229 ; compare I'aus vii. 5, § 1.) There was a celebrated temple sacred to her at Ithaninus, one of the demi of Attica, about sixty stadia distant from Marathon. In this temple there was a statue of the goddess, made from a block of Parian marble, which the Persians had brought thither to erect as a trophy of their expected victory at Marathon. Pausanias Lays that this statue was the work of Phidias (L 33, § 2, 3); but Pliny ascribes it to Agoracritus; and adds that it was preferred by M. Vert° to all other statues which existed. (' Hist Nat.,' xxxvi., 4, § 3.) A fragment, supposed by some to be the head of this statue, was found in the temple of Ithamuus, and was presented to the British Museum in 1S20: it is now No. 325, in the Elgin Saloon. The inhabitants of
Rhanume considered Nemesis to be the daughter of Oceanus. (Pans., vii. 5, § I.) . The practice of representing the statues of Nemesia with wings was. first introduced after the time of Alexander the Great by the inhabit ants of Smyrna, who worshipped several goddesses under this name. (Paul., vii. 5, 1 ; ix. 35, 2.) She is often figured on ancient coins and gems, and sometimes with the attributes of Tyche. According to Muller (`Arehliol. der Kunst; § 898 ; and see Denkraliler der Alten Kunst,' Taf. lxxiv.), in early art Nemesis bore a strong likeness to Aphrodite : later there was more of symbolism in representations of her.
According to a myth preserved by Pausanias, Nemesia was the mother of Helen by Zeus; and Leda, the reputed mother of Helen, was only her nurse (L 33, § 7); but this myth seems to have been invented in later times to represent the divine vengeance which was inflicted on the Greeks and Trojans through the instrumentality of Helen.
There was a statue of Nemesis in the capital at Rome; though we learn from Pliny that this goddess had no name in Latin. (` Hist. Nat., xiviii. 5 ; xi. 103.)