Already in Hesiod’s Theogony, abstract concepts considered fundamental to human society are treated as divine beings. Worship of these allegorical deities developed in response to the same impulse that made the poets sing of them, but in a much more idiosyncratic fashion, reflecting local needs and preferences. While the great heyday of these cults came during the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, when many personifications like Eirene (Peace) and Tyche (Fortune) were popularized, a religious impulse to acknowledge powerful and culturally weighty concepts through prayer and sacrifice was already active in the Archaic period.
The name Themis refers to “that which has been ordained,” the norms of society with respect to politics, social relations, and ritual. In Homer (II. 20.4-6) Themis is the deity who summons and dismisses assemblies, and in cult she sometimes has the epithet Agoraia (of the Meeting Place). Themis also governs the natural world, which likewise functions according to divine laws. Hesiod (Theog. 901-4) says her children are Eunomia (Lawfulness), Dike (Justice), Eirene (Peace), and the Moirai (Fates), but also the Horai (Seasons), who ensure the orderly cycle of plant growth and decay.27 Our sources hint that Themis (like Thetis and perhaps Gaia) once played a more important role in early Greek pantheons and cosmologies. Pindar (fr. 30 Snell-Maehler) made Themis the first wife of Zeus, and she seems to have occupied the place of Hera in the Archaic pantheon of Thessaly. We lack detailed information about her Thessalian worship, but a Thessalian month name Themistios, along with the prevalence of personal names like Themis-tion and Themistokles in the region, show that her cult was popular in the Archaic period. A fourth-century altar from Pherai, inscribed with the names of six major goddesses, lists Hestia, Demeter, Athena, Aphrodite, Enodia (another important local goddess), and Themis.28
As the personification of divine law, Themis was the confidante and frequent companion of Zeus, able to dispense knowledge of future events (hence the verb themisteuein, “to pronounce divine law” for the giving of oracles, and Themis’ strong mythic, though not cultic, presence at Delphi). In a lost seventh-century epic, the Cypria, she and Zeus planned the Trojan war as a way to reduce the population of the overburdened earth. Themis warned Zeus of the prophecy that the Nereid Thetis would bear a son more powerful than his father; hence Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus, resulting in the birth of Achilles, while Helen, the casus belli, was born from the union of Zeus with his own daughter Nemesis. Awareness of Themis’ role in these events may account for the construction of a shrine to Themis within the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica.29
The Attic cult of Nemesis is a rare early example of full-blown worship paid to a personification. Like the cult of Themis in Thessaly, it demonstrates the persistence of idiosyncratic local pantheons in opposition to the trend in poetry toward a canonical, Panhellenized system. Derived from the verb nemein, “to deal out, distribute,” Nemesis’ name evokes that which is allotted by fate, but also whatever is dealt out as just deserts and, finally, the appropriate reaction to wrongdoing: righteous indignation. Hesiod (Op. 197-201) pairs Nemesis with Aidos (Right Feeling), and predicts that the two will abandon the earth at the end of the age, leaving a world of shameless criminals. The cult at Rhamnous, however, confounds our expectations about the worship of “abstract concepts” because it emphasizes Nemesis’ concrete role in bringing about the Trojan war by giving birth to Helen, in contradiction to the Panhellenic version, which asserted that Helen’s mother was the Spartan queen Leda. The two versions were reconciled in the story that Nemesis, having shape-shifted to escape Zeus, was finally raped in goose form at Rhamnous and laid an egg containing Helen, whom Leda then nursed.
The Greek victory against the invading Persians, who burned the little Archaic temple, seems to have positively affected the fortunes of Nemesis’ cult, for all agreed that Nemesis had taken a hand in the downfall of the overweening foe, just as in the days of Troy. In the most prosperous period of the Athenian empire, Nemesis was one of the Attic deities selected to receive a lavish new peripteral temple (others outside the city included Poseidon at Sounion and Ares at Acharnai), and the story of Helen’s egg enjoyed a spike in popularity. A comedy Nemesis by Cratinus, presented around the time the temple was completed (c. 430), had Leda attempting to hatch the egg by sitting on it, while Attic and Italian vases also portrayed the story. The ruins of the temple have been excavated, and pieces of the marble cult statue by Agorakritos have been recovered and studied in detail. Twice life-size, the goddess held an apple branch in her left hand and a libation bowl in her right. The statue base was decorated with relief figures of Leda presenting young Helen to her true mother, along with a number of Trojan war heroes. Inscribed dedications from the site show that Themis and Nemesis had their own priestesses, and an annual festival called the Great Nemesia is attested, though only from the late fourth century on.30
World History
