NEMESIS

A post-Homeric personification of the moral indignation felt at all derangements of the natural equilibrium of things, whether by extraordinarily good fortune or by the arrogance usually attendant thereon. According to Hesiod she is daughter of Night, and with Aidos, the divinity of Modesty, left the earth on the advent of the iron age. As goddess of due proportion she hates every trangression of the bounds of moderation, and restores the proper and normal order of things. As, in doing this, she punishes wanton boastfulness, she is a divinity of chastisement and vengeance. She enjoyed special bonour in the Attic district of Rhamnus (where she was deemed to be the daughter of Oceanus), and is often called the Rhamnusian goddess; her statue there was said to have been executed by Phidias out of a block of Parian marble which the Persians bad brought with them in presumptuous confidence to Marathon, to erect a trophy of victory there. She was also called Adrasteia, that name, appropriate only to the Phrygian Rhea-Cybele, being interpreted as a Greek word with the, meaning, "She whom none can escape." She was also worshipped at Rome, especially by victorious generals, and was represented as a meditative, thoughtful maiden with the attributes of proportion and control (a measuring-rod, bridle and yoke), of punishment (a sword and scourge) and of swiftness (wings, wheel, and chariot drawn by griffins).