Nemesis, Hybris and Violence
p. 195-212
Note de l’éditeur
N.R.E. Fisher, Hybris: a study in the values of honour and shame in Ancient Greece, Warminster, 1992 (will be cited in the form Fisher, Hybris); M.B. Hornum, Nemesis, the Roman State, and the Games, Leiden, 1993 (Hornum, Nemesis); P. Karanastassi, F. Rausa and R. Vollkommer, s.v. “Nemesis”, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VI, 1992, 733-73 (LIMC, Nemesis); E.J. Stafford, Worshipping Virtues: personification and the divine in Ancient Greece, Swansea-London, 2000 (Stafford, Virtues).
Texte intégral
1What has the goddess Nemesis to do with violence? She is the personification of an abstract νοῦν νέμεσις which is variously translated into English as “retribution”, “retributive justice”, “righteous anger” or “indignation”; into French as rancune, vengeance, jalousie; into German as Vergeltung.1 What I want to explore here are the kinds of behaviour which arouse Nemesis’anger, many of which involve violence at some level, and the ways in which that anger is expressed, which vary from silent withdrawal, via active restraint of the offender, through to sometimes excessively violent punishment. One kind of behaviour traditionally thought to attract Nemesis’attentions is the hybris discussed elsewhere in this volume by Nick Fisher; as he makes clear here, the term, even as used in fourth-century legal discourse, is not synonymous with violence, although it certainly includes violent acts. The same scholar has quite convincingly demonstrated elsewhere that more emphasis has been put on the connection between the concepts of hybris and nemesis than is really supported by an examination of their appearances in the ancient texts.2 I would like to argue, however, that the goddess Nemesis does have a strong record of association with hybris, especially at her major sanctuary at Rhamnous in Attica, where the acts concerned are certainly violent. Elsewhere, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Nemesis develops a distinctive iconography which expresses her character as punisher of arrogance and excess in both word and deed–such behaviour is not always explicitly hybris, nor indeed necessarily violent in a physical sense, but Nemesis herself is increasingly represented as able to act with brute force. In this paper I shall review the evidence for Nemesis’association with violence in general and, in particular, examine the case for accepting a definition of Nemesis, seen most recently in Der Neue Pauly, as Rächerin der hybris.3
Archaic Nemesis and Aidôs
2We have no representations of Nemesis in archaic art, but even if we had it would be no surprise if she had little in the way of distinguishing attributes.4 In literature, however, Nemesis makes appearances in Hesiod and post-Homeric epic which do provide some early characterisation. In the Theogony (223-5), she is one of the assorted children of Night, described as a ph'ma, a “bane” for mortal men, and is in company with Eris among other ambivalent personifications.5 In the Works and Days (190-201), we get our first description of the kind of behaviour to which Nemesis is opposed:
There will be no return for the man who keeps his oath, nor for the just, nor for the good, but rather men will praise the doer of evil and the man hybris; justice will be in their hands; and there will be no aidôs, but the wicked will harm the better man, speaking with twisted words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Foul-faced Envy (Ζῆλος), discordant, rejoicing in evil, will walk beside all miserable men. And then will Aidôs and Nemesis go to Olympos from the wide-pathed earth, their fair forms wrapped in white cloaks (λευκοῖσιν ϕάρεσσι καλυψαμένω χρόα καλὸν), abandoning mankind for the company of the immortals; bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no defence against evil.
3Nemesis joins with Aidôs in fleeing from the dishonour, hybris and injustice of the “race of iron”. Both the races of silver and of bronze before this have committed hybris, but now it has become endemic, representing a complete breakdown of social order.6 The personifications of nemesis and aidôs are no more fully realised personalities than the “foul-faced” Envy who “walks beside all miserable men”, their anthropomorphism only indicated by their “fair forms” and their attire. Their opposition to the race of iron is entirely in accordance with the picture of the values in Homer, where neither nemesis nor aidôs is personified, but the two concepts are associated as defenders of proper relationships between people and of limits on excessive behaviour.7
4A more fully individualised Nemesis appears in a fragment of the Kypria (fr. 9 PEG, quoted in Athenaios 8.334b), where she attempts in vain to escape the pursuit of Zeus:
And after these he begat a third child, Helen, a wonder among mortals. Beautifulhaired Nemesis once bore her, after being joined in love by force with Zeus, king of the gods. She fled, and was unwilling to be joined in love with father Zeus, son of Kronos, for she was distressed in her heart by shame and indignation (ἑτείρετο γὰρ ϕρένας αἰδοῖ καὶ νεμέσει). By land and by the dark, barren sea she fled, but Zeus pursued and longed in his heart to catch her. Now over the waves of the loud-roaring sea, she sped across the great deep in the form of a fish, now over the river of Ocean and the boundaries of Earth, now over the much-furrowed land; she kept turning into such terrible beasts as the land nurtures, in order to escape him.
5This Nemesis, though able to change her shape, just like Thetis trying to evade capture by Peleus, is overcome by the superior force of the king of the gods, and so is herself subject to rape.8 She is described as feeling nemesis and aidôs, that is the emotion she herself personifies and the associated concept we have seen personified in the Works and Days passage, which further demonstrates the close relationship between the two ideas. Nemesis’“shame and indignation” is aroused by the prospect of rape, a violent and dishonouring act which, as Fisher discusses elsewhere in this volume, is one of a range of behaviours which may have been subject to the graphe hybreos in later Athenian law.9 As with all myths of divine rape, the encounter inevitably leads to the birth of a significant child, in this case Helen, to whose association with vengeance I shall return shortly. Later versions of the story by Apollodoros (Bibliotheke, 3.10.7) and Hyginus (2.8, s. v. Olor) add details of the metamorphoses involved and attempt to reconcile this genealogy of Helen with the alternative story of Leda and the swan.10
Rhamnousian Nemesis and Persian hybris
6Pseudo-Eratosthenes (Katasterismoi 25 D, s. v. Kuvknou) likewise gives details of the metamorphoses, but adds the crucial detail of a location for the rape:
It is said that Zeus took on this form because he was in love with Nemesis, since she changed into every shape in order to safeguard her virginity, and so he became a swan; thus he too took on the likeness of this bird and flew down to Rhamnous in Attika, and there he violated her; but she bore an egg, from which Helen was pecked out and born, as the poet Kratinos says.
7For this location at Rhamnous, in north-east Attica, he cites as authority the Athenian playwright Kratinos, who is known to have produced a comedy entitled Nemesis around 430 bc.11 The myth would therefore seem to have some standing as an aition for the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous, expressing the local goddess’fundamental character of righteous indignation. Worship at the sanctuary can be traced back in the archaeological record to at least the early sixth century bc, when the earlier of two archaic temples to Nemesis was built. The earliest building still visible at the site dates from around 500, and this small temple was probably dedicated to Themis, who certainly had a priestess at the sanctuary, although Nemesis was clearly the primary deity. The sanctuary may have suffered damage during the Persian invasions of 490 and 480 bc, but it quickly gained in prosperity thereafter, finally gaining a new temple to Nemesis around 430, built alongside the small Themis building, on what was probably the site of the successive sixth-century temples of Nemesis.12 The new temple was equipped with a new cult statue by Pheidias’pupil Agorakritos, of which we have numerous fragments as well as a number of Roman copies (fig. 1) from which to reconstruct the original.13 The copies present a fairly typical goddess of the period, and indeed a number of literary sources tell stories about the statue having originally been made as an image of Aphrodite.14 Some possibly distinguishing features are also mentioned, however, the lengthiest description being supplied by Pausanias (1.33.2-3):
A little way up from the sea is a sanctuary of Nemesis, the most implacable of the gods towards hybristic people (ἀνθρώποις ὑβρισταῖς). It seems that the wrath of this goddess fell upon the barbarians’Marathon landing; thinking contemptuously (καταϕρονήσαντες) that nothing could stop them from taking Athens, they brought a block of Parian marble for the making of a trophy for their achievements. Pheidias made this block into a statue of Nemesis, and on the goddess’head is a crown with deer and small images of Victory; in her left hand she has an apple branch, and in the right a phiale, and there are Ethiopians represented on the phiale…
8The crown must have been made separately in metal, as indicated by the holes in a surviving fragment of the original head where it would have been attached.15 The branch is also mentioned by Zenobios (5.82) and Photios (Lexicon s. v. Ῥαμνουσία Νέμεσις), the latter offering the unlikely explanation that it was left over from the statue’s supposed original identity as an Aphrodite. Pausanias continues with a lengthy digression about Ethiopians, but in the end he confesses himself unable to come up with a satisfactory rationale for their appearance on the phiale, although the phiale itself is a common enough attribute for deities.16 More straightforward are the images of Victory, which link in to a broader association of the sanctuary with the Greeks’victory over the Persians at Marathon, which is just ten kilometres to the south of Rhamnous.17 Pausanias’introductory characterisation of Nemesis as “the most implacable of the gods towards hybristic men” is also linked to Marathon, via the story of how the statue had been carved from a block of marble originally brought by the Persians, who intended it for a victory trophy. By Pausanias’time the Persian invasions were well established in Greek, and especially Athenian, rhetoric as the very epitome of hybris, the battle of Marathon as their entirely just punishment.18 The story about the statue obviously plays on the topos, adding yet another instance of the barbarians’arrogance. This moral tale also appears in various epigrams in the Greek Anthology, some of which dwell on the point that one side’s Victory is the other side’s Nemesis (Parmenion, AP 16.263; see also 16.221-2):
Once just a stone, the Persians brought me here so that they might set up a trophy of their victory; now I am Nemesis. I stand for both: I am a trophy of victory for the Greeks, for the Persians the vengeance (νέμεσις) of war.19
9Aelius Aristeides (Panathenaikos, 13) even suggests that there was something significant about the area of Marathon, the Persians being “rightly drawn by the nature of the place to pay the penalty for what they had plotted against the Greeks”.20
10Marathon’s geographical proximity to Rhamnous may be fortuitous, but the rhetorical linking of the two makes sense in the light of the sanctuary’s mythological association with the punishment of violence and dishonour. The Persians’invasion of Attic territory is a moral outrage to the people of Attica just as Zeus’rape is to the Kypria’s Nemesis;21 Zeus of course is not punished like the Persians, but his action provides an explanation for the goddess’subsequent disposition towards “hybristic people”. On top of this, a further layer of mythological outrage is provided by what happens to the child resulting from Nemesis’rape: Helen’s abduction by Paris from her home is a prime example of barbarian hybris,22 which precipitates the Trojan War and ultimately the Greeks’revenge against Paris’city. That the Rhamnousians made the connection between the fall of Troy and Nemesis is demonstrated by the imagery of their cult statue’s base. We again have fragments of the original, though these are quite difficult to reconcile with Pausanias’description of the dozen or so figures represented (1.33.7-8):23
The Rhamnousians say Nemesis was the mother of Helen, and that Leda only gave Helen the breast and reared her; in the same way they and everyone else believe that Helen’s father was Zeus and not Tyndareos. Pheidias, having heard this, carved Helen being led by Leda towards Nemesis, and he carved Tyndareos and his sons and a man named Hippeus standing by with a horse; there are Agamemnon and Menelaos, and Pyrrhos son of Achilles…
11The one group that scholars are reasonably agreed upon is the central trio of “Helen being led by Leda towards Nemesis”; the other figures include Agamemnon and Menelaos, and most significantly Achilles’son Pyrrhos, otherwise known as Neoptolemos, without whom Troy would not fall. What occasion would bring all these characters together, or why Helen might be introduced to her real mother by her foster-mother, is not explained by Pausanias, but the conjunction of Nemesis, Helen and Neoptolemos certainly calls to mind the grand plan of the Trojan War as outlined in Proklos’summary of the Kypria (EGF, p.31, ll. 5-6). Here, Themis advises Zeus to set the War in motion as a means of punishing the corruption of mankind and easing the over-population of the earth, something which is itself described explicitly towards the end of Euripides’Orestes (1638-42) as a hybrisma.24 Nemesis’role in the plan is crucial at a literal level in bearing Helen, whose abduction by Paris will be the immediate catalyst for the War, while at another level she provides the moral of the whole tale. The story is rather easier to read on the well known amphoriskos in Berlin by the Heimarmene Painter, which provides the only securely identifiable image of Nemesis in extant vase-painting (fig. 2), and is exactly contemporary with Agorakritos’statue of 430-20 bc.25 She and three other allegorical figures look on as Helen considers the proposition of running away with Paris, his suit strongly assisted by Aphrodite, Himeros and Peitho, “Persuasion” herself.
Hellenistic and Roman iconography
12Literary and visual incarnations of Nemesis in the Hellenistic and Roman periods usually display a number of allegorical attributes. While no extant example dates before the first century bc, it seems likely that a prototype was provided by the cult statues of the two Nemeseis of Smyrna. The double cult at Smyrna was probably established, or at least revitalised, at the time of the foundation of the Hellenistic city by Alexander’s generals Antigonos and Lysimachos, although the story recorded by Pausanias (7.5.2) attributes the foundation to Alexander himself, inspired by a dream in which the two Nemeseis appeared to him.26 Although we have no detailed descriptions of the cult statues, the Nemeseis appear on a number of second-and third-century ad coins of Smyrna, and on these the pair are always shown facing each other, one holding a measuring-rod the other a bridle, and both pulling at their peploi. On Hadrianic cistophors the two goddesses appear alone (fig. 3a) or inside their temple (fig. 3b); coins issued under Marcus Aurelius, Gordian and Philip I depict the two appearing to Alexander as he sleeps.27
13The Smyrna Nemeseis’measuring-rod and bridle remain the goddess’two most constant attributes in Roman imperial-period art, and they are conveniently explained by an epigram in the Greek Anthology (AP, 16.223, and cf. 224): “We must do nothing beyond measure nor be unbridled in our speech.” Another epigram, by Strato of Sardis, offers some possible explanation for the gesture of pulling at a fold of the peplos (AP, 12.229):
What a good goddess is Nemesis, Alexis, because of whom we spit into our cloak (δὶʹ ἣν ὑπὸ κόλττον... πτύομεν), dreading her as she follows behind us. You did not see her pursuing you, but thought you would have your jealous beauty for ever. Now it has perished utterly; the thrice-angry deity has come, and even we your servants now pass you by.
14Spitting “under the fold”, or “into the cloak”, is a generally apotropaic gesture, presumably in this context meant to ward off Nemesis’attentions. Strato’s epigram also suggests one kind of behaviour to which Nemesis is opposed: the arrogance of the stubborn young beloved. This particular aspect of Nemesis recurs in a number of instances in the Anthology, including another by Strato which refers explicitly to the Smyrna goddesses (AP, 12.193):
You don’t take any notice of what the Nemeseis of Smyrna tell you, Artemidoros: “Nothing beyond measure.” But, always playing a part, you talk so arrogantly and savagely (ὑττέροπτα καὶ ἄγρια) and as is not even becoming in a comic actor. You will remember this, haughty boy; you too will love and play the part of the “Locked-Out Lady”.
15The offence in all these cases is clearly not violent in any literal way, nor specifically hybristic, but consists rather of a more general attitude of pride and over-confidence in one’s present good fortune, which sometimes expresses itself in speech.28 It may be via Hellenistic literature that Nemesis enters into Latin elegy as early as Catullus, although it is also possible that the cult of Nemesis on the Capitol, attested by Pliny the Elder (NH, 28.22.5-6 and 11.251.3-4), was already established by this time.29 It has been quite plausibly argued that Catullus’use of the appellation Rhamnusia virgo was meant as an allusion to Rhamnous’mythological associations with the Trojan War story: at 66.71, the name may be derived from Kallimachos (Aitia fr. 110.71 Pfeiffer), but at 68.77-8, Rhamnusia fits with references in subsequent lines to the dire consequences of Helen’s adulterous relationship with Paris, and to Troy itself as deathplace of Catullus’brother as well as Laodamia’s lamented husband Protesilaus; even the textually problematic reference to Nemesis at 64.395 makes sense in the light of Nemesis’role in causing the War via her motherhood of Helen, which may be seen as paralleling Thetis’motherhood of Achilles.30 On the one occasion where Catullus calls the goddess simply “Nemesis” (50.18-21), he seems to be playing on the conventions of amatory epigram for comic effect:
Now beware of being proud (audax), and heed my prayers; be careful to spit on the ground (despuas), my love, lest Nemesis exact punishment from you. She is a powerful goddess; take care not to offend her.
16This is addressed to Catullus’friend and fellow-poet Licinius Calvus, so the love-sick language and threat of Nemesis’attentions are clearly hyperbolic, but both the general appeal to Nemesis and the specific motif of spitting to avert her punishment pick up on the “arrogant beloved” theme of epigram. Both Ovid and Tibullus also exploit this amatory aspect of Nemesis in various ways,31 although Ovid does also once refer to her as ultrix Rhamnusia, in a passage which seems to refer to more general arrogance (Tristia, 5.8.7-12):
Do you not fear the power of Fortune, standing on her precarious wheel (dubio… orbe), and of the goddess who hates arrogant words (exosae verba superba dea)? The avenging Rhamnousian exacts deserved punishments: why do you trample upon my fate with set foot? I have seen drowned in the sea one who laughed at shipwreck, and I said, “Never were the waves more just!”
17The association with Fortuna brings out an aspect already inherent in the meaning of νέμεσɩϛ" as the “apportioning of lots”, and Fortune’s “precarious wheel” is an attribute which Nemesis herself appropriates towards the end of the first century ad. While Nemesis particularly “hates arrogant words” (which she presumably curbs with her bridle), both goddesses seem to be implicated in the story of the man who “laughed at shipwreck” but then was drowned himself. This idea of the punishment fitting the crime can often be seen associated with the Nemesis of epigram in an erotic context, as in the second Strato epigram (AP, 12.193) quoted above, and there is an element of such reciprocity also in the story about the Rhamnous statue.
18The wheel can be seen in the hands, or at the feet, of numerous representations of Nemesis of the second century ad and later, usually alongside the measuring-rod and/or bridle of the Smyrna Nemeseis.32 The association with Fortune is underlined in the case of a pair of second-century Nemesis statues which flanked the athletes’entrance to the stadium at Olympia (fig. 4), each of which holds the rudder more usually attributed to Fortune, as well as a wheel and a measuring-rod.33 This aspect of Nemesis seems to underly the expansion of her cult during the Roman period, when she was especially worshipped by athletes and gladiators, and many statues and reliefs of Nemesis from the second century ad and later come from theatres, amphitheatres or gymnasia.34 Nemesis is likewise loosely associated with fortune in the collection of Orphic hymns, where she appears in the final section among other deities concerned with fate and with justice (Orphic Hymn 61: to Nemesis):
Nemesis, I call on you, goddess, greatest queen, all-seeing, who look upon the life of mortals’many races. Eternal, all-holy, alone rejoicing in the righteous, you change your much-varying ever-shifting word, you whom all mortals fear, placing your yoke upon their necks. For you care about all men’s thoughts, nor does the soul which is over-proud in words (ψυχὴ ὑπερϕρονέουσα λόγων), without discretion, escape you. You see all and hear all, and all do you arbitrate. In you reside the judgements (δίκαι) of mortals, highest deity. Come, blessed one, pure one, always helpful to initiates. Grant them to have good understanding, putting an end to hateful, unhallowed, altogether arrogant and fickle thoughts (πανεχθεῖς γνώμας οὐχ ὁσιας, πανυπέρϕρονας, ἀλλοπροσάλλας).
19Nemesis’omniscience is strongly emphasised, and this is one of very few Orphic hymns to attest an aspiration to moral improvement for initiates in the closing lines;35 what she seems to be opposed to here is not just arrogant words, as in Ovid, but even the thoughts underlying them. The association between Nemesis and justice has been present in much of what we have already seen, most noticeably in the Works and Days passage, but here it is spelt out: “In you reside the judgements of mortals”.
20Two other aspects of the Roman imperial-period Nemesis are displayed by a statue from Cypriot Salamis, found in a gymnasium, of late first century ad date (fig. 5).36 First, she has wings. When describing Agorakritos’statue at Rhamnous, Pausanias comments on the fact that “neither this statue of Nemesis nor any other made by the ancients has wings”, whereas “later artists, who want the goddess to appear because someone is in love, picture Nemesis with wings as they picture Love” (1.33.6). Such a borrowing would be consistent with Nemesis’appropriation of other deities’attributes, and apt for Nemesis’erotic role, but this is only a small part of the goddess’sphere of influence. It seems more plausible to me to understand the wings as borrowed from Nike, giving visual expression to the idea that retribution is inescapable, and that Nemesis is indeed Victory for those on the winning side, as seen in Parmenion’s version of the Rhamnous statue story quoted above. Secondly, at the Cypriot statue’s feet sits a griffin, a fantastic creature which usually has the body of a lion and the head of a bird, though this is damaged here; the griffin’s left paw was raised and rested on a wheel. The griffin may have been associated with the wheel independently before joining forces with Nemesis, although in most cases some connection with Nemesis can be argued for.37 In any case, the Egyptian griffin itself seems to share Nemesis’function as a figure of vengeance and dispenser of justice.
21This function would be served by an alternative explanation of Nemesis’wheel not as a symbol of blind chance, but as “an instrument of punishment especially for hubris”.38 Hornum cites the myth of Ixion in support of this function for the wheel, and Ixion’s actions are indeed driven by hybris in Pindar’s second Pythian ode (21-48).39 Ixion’s crime was of course the attempted rape of Hera, providing a possible link with Nemesis’opposition to violent sexual assault on her own account. Whether or not a reference to Ixion’s wheel is intended, texts of the second century and later certainly describe Nemesis’wheel very much as an instrument of punishment, and it is sometimes wielded with what sounds like considerable violence. An example is provided by the poem found inscribed on a stele in Herodes Atticus’Triopion, a shrine in which his dead wife Regilla was commemorated, invoking Nemesis’protection for the place and warning potential trespassers of the punishment that awaits them at her hands (IG, XIV. 1389. II):40
Thrice-born kindly lady of Athens, you who look upon the deeds of mortals, and Rhamnousian Oupis… But if these things are unheeded by anyone and he does not obey them, but dishonours them, may they not be unavenged, but unexpected (ἀπρόϕατος) Nemesis and her avenging wheel (ῥομβος ἀλάστωρ) will punish him, and will roll hateful misfortune upon him.
22This rather aggressive sounding Nemesis is reflected in images of the goddess trampling a prostrate figure, wheel in hand, a motif first seen on Trajanic coins minted in Alexandria. Later examples, such as a second-or third-century relief from Thessaloniki (fig. 6), add further details.41 Nemesis is still winged, carrying the wheel and trampling a youth, but now she has in her other hand a pair of scales, which are most easily explained as articulating her association with justice. It has been suggested that this type of Nemesis is symbolic of Roman imperial power, an idea strengthened by the fact that some thirdand fourth-century examples have Nemesis dressed in full military cuirass and cloak, the very image of the victorious general.42
23These last few images of Nemesis have all dated from the second half of the second century ad or later, but a full catalogue of the goddess’attributes can already be found at the beginning of the second century in Mesomedes’Hymn to Nemesis:43
Winged Nemesis, balance of life,
dark-eyed goddess, daughter of Justice (Dike),
you who hold in check the vainneighing
of mortals with adamantine bit (ἀδάμαντι χαλινῷ);
hating the deadly hybris (ὕβριν ὀλοάν) of mortals,
you drive out black envy;
beneath your wheel, ever-moving, leaving no track ( τροχόν ἄστατον ἀστιβῆ ),
turns the grim fortune of mortals;
stealthily you walk close at hand,
you make the proud neck to bend;
ever you measure life under your cubit-rule (πῆχυν),
ever you frown beneath your veil,
holding fast the scales (ζυγόν) in your hands;
be gracious blessed judge,
winged Nemesis, balance of life.
We sing of goddess Nemesis the immortal,
a long-winged mighty Victory,
and of her coadjutor, infallible Justice;
indignant at the pride (μεγαλανορίαν) of mortals,
you bring them down to Tartaros.
24Here Nemesis is explicitly identified with both Justice and Victory, and imagined as using the “adamantine bit”, the wheel, the measuring-rod and the scales. Moreover, the behaviour which it is her role to oppose is clearly delineated: it is the ‘vain neighing’,44 the ‘deadly hybris’, the ‘black envy’ and the ‘pride’ of mortals which she ‘holds in check’, crushes beneath the wheel, and even ‘brings down to Tartaros’. This seems to encapsulate both sides of Nemesis’potential association with violence, as the punishment she inflicts is described in such physical terms, and the offences she condemns include both pride and hybris.
25In conclusion, I hope to have demonstrated two things by this brief survey. Firstly, the kinds of behaviour that Nemesis is opposed to can be summarised as acts which display lack of moderation and aidôs, which often but not always constitute hybris; many forms involve active violence, such as rape or the invasion of your country, while other less serious forms may also be manifested in a more broadly defined arrogance, often expressed in words and sometimes particularly associated with lovers. The definition of Nemesis as Rächerin der hybris is sometimes true, but is too narrow to take account of her opposition to all forms of pride and excessive optimism. Secondly, while Nemesis herself is a “bane for mortal men” from her earliest appearance in Hesiod’s Theogony, she develops from the rather passive figure of indignation which we see in the Works and Days and the Kypria’s rape victim to take an ever more active, and indeed violent, role in the deliverance of retribution. In literature of the late Hellenistic and Roman periods Nemesis actively “pursues” her opponents, making “proud necks to bend” and “rolling misfortune” upon the unwary with her wheel. This is clearly reflected in the goddess’iconography, from Agorakritos’majestic but impassive cult statue at Rhamnous, via the Hellenistic Nemeseis of Smyrna with their measuring-rod and bridle, to the later Roman-period representations of a winged goddess with a whole armoury of attributes, trampling down anyone who has aroused her anger. I conclude with a final literary image of the goddess which seems to me to summarise this development nicely. In the last book of Nonnos’Dionysiaka, the nymph Aura has rashly mocked her mistress Artemis for having a body like Aphrodite’s, with full, soft, “womanly” breasts (ll. 351-69), and boasted of her own more obviously virginal physical charms, so Artemis seeks Nemesis’help (Dionysiaka, 48.375-88):
She (Artemis) took herself to Nemesis, and found the maiden on cloud-high Tauros, where beside neighbouring Kydnos she had put an end to the proud-necked boasting of Typhon’s threats. There was a self-turning wheel (τροχὸς αὐτοκύλιστος) at the queen’s feet, signifying that she rolls all the proud from on high to the ground with the avenging wheel of justice (δίκης ποινήτορι κύκλῳ), she the all vanquishing deity who turns the path of life. Around her flew beside her throne a bird of vengeance (ὄρνις ἀλάστωρ), a winged griffin, or it balances on its four feet, unbidden messenger of the hard-pressing goddess, because she too traverses the four quarters of the world; she bridles high-crested men with her unshakeable bit (ἀνέρας ὑψιλόϕους ἀλύτῳ σϕίγγουσα χαλινῷ), a corresponding image, and she rolls the haughty, as though with the whip of misery (κακότητος ἱμάσθλῃ), like a spinning-top.
26The magnificent description of Nemesis includes the by now familiar attributes of the wheel, the griffin and the bridle, adding as a final touch the “whip of misery” which she uses to “roll the haughty like a spinning top”. Artemis asks Nemesis to turn Aura to stone, like Niobe, but Nemesis suggests a punishment more fitting for the crime –since Aura has questioned Artemis’virginity, her own shall be taken from her. It is Dionysos who will carry out the actual rape, but only after Nemesis has prepared the way (48.458-63): Then she approached the haughty Aura. She lashed the proud neck of the wretched girl with her snaky whip, and struck her with the round wheel of justice, and bent the foolish unbending will; Argive Adrasteia curled the viperous whip around the maiden’s girdle.
27Nemesis’actions here, especially the final curling of the whip “around the maiden’s girdle”, all prefigure the violent act itself.45 This colourful account of Nemesis’complicity in a rape is a far cry from her own role as victim of rape, and the development is accompanied by appropriate visual imagery. Ultimately, then, Nemesis may be opposed to the arrogant violence of mortals, but she is certainly not averse to using violence herself in pursuit of retribution.
Bibliographie
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Notes de bas de page
1 For discussions of meaning and definitions, see: Stafford, Virtues, 75-6; E. Laroche, Histoire de la racine NEM- en Grec ancien, Paris, 1949, 256; J. Stenger, s. v. “Nemesis”, in Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, vol.8, Stuttgart-Weimar, 2000, 818; H. Herter, s. v. “Nemesis”, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Enzyclopädie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol.16, 2, Stuttgart, 1935, col. 2338-40. Nemesis has recently been described as a “forme divine d’une indignation sucitée par toute injustice, déesse implacable pour les êtres de violence et de démesure”: J. Rudhardt, Thémis et les Hôrai: recherche sur les divinités grecques de la justice et de la paix, = Recherches et rencontres, vol.14, Geneva, 1999.
2 Fisher, Hybris, 2-3, 181 n. 115, 300-1, 357-60, 427-8, 482, 490, 503. See also the refinements of definition proposed by D. L. Cairns, “Hybris, dishonour, and thinking big”, JHS, 116, 1996, 1-32.
3 J. Stenger, op. cit. (note 1), p.818; see also O. Roßbach (1902-9), s. v. “Nemesis”, in Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, vol.3, 1, Leipzig, 130-3.
4 Compare e. g. Themis and Hebe in the wedding procession on Sophilos’dinos of c. 580 bc (London, BM, 1971.11-1.1), who would not be identifiable without the accompanying inscriptions.
5 On Night’s family, see M. L. West, Hesiod’s Theogony, Oxford, 1966, 35-6 and 227-60; also J. Duchemin, “Personnifications d’abstractions et d’éléments naturels: Hésiode et l’Orient”, in Mythe et Personnification: travaux et mémoires (Actes du colloque du Grand Palais, Paris, 7-8 Mai 1977), J. Duchemin (ed.), Paris, 1980, 8-9.
6 On this passage see Fisher, Hybris, 191-3, and D. L. Cairns, Aidôs, Oxford, 1993, 152-6.
7 On nemesis as Homeric society’s primary expression of disapproval of lack of aidôs, see D. L. Cairns, op. cit. (n. 6), 51-4, 56, 84-6, 98; M. Scott, “Aidos and Nemesis in the works of Homer, and their relevance to social or co-operative values”, Acta Classica, 23, 1980, 13-35; J. M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: the tragedy of Hector, Chicago-London, 1975, 115-18. J.-Cl. Turpin, “L’expression aijdw'" kai; nevmesi" et les ‘actes de langage”’, REG, 93, 1980, 352-67, argues that a popular exclamation underlies Homeric usage of the terms. The evidence for a cult of Aidôs is summarised in Stafford, Virtues, 77-8, but for more discursive treatments of her reality as a cult figure, see J. Hani, “Aidos personnifiée et sa portée réelle chez les Grecs”, in Mythe et personnification, op. cit. (n. 5), 103-12, and N. Richer, “Aidos at Sparta”, in Sparta: New Perspectives, A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds)., Swansea-London, 1999, p.91-115.
8 On the shape-shifting motif as transferred to Nemesis from Thetis, see H. Herter, op. cit. (n. 1), col. 2346, M. Davies, The Epic Cycle, Bristol, 1989, 39, and Stafford, Virtues, 81-2. On the specific metamorphoses involved, see W. Luppe, “Zeus und Nemesis in den Kyprien: die Verwandlungssage nach Pseudo-Apollodor und Philodem”, Philologus, 118, 1974, 193-202.
9 See also Fisher, Hybris, 38-43. The application of the graphe hybreos especially to sexual misconduct is discussed by D. Cohen, “Sexuality, Violence and the Athenian Law of Hubris”, Greece & Rome, 38, 1991, 171-88 and E. E. Cohen, The Athenian Nation, Princeton, 2000, 160-6. On definitions of rape and rhetorical uses of hybris, see R. Omitowoju, “Regultaing rape: soap operas and self-interest in the Athenian courts”, in Rape in Antiquity, S. Deacy and K. F. Pierce (eds.), Swansea-London, 1997, 1-24, and most recently R. Omitowoju, Rape and the Politics of Consent in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 2002.
10 On the problem of Helen’s two mothers, see Stafford, Virtues, 80-1.
11 Poetae Comici Graeci, R. Kassel and C. Austin (eds.), Berlin, 1984-1989, IV, Cratinus, 114-27; on the production date, see F. R. B. Godolphin, “The Nemesis of Cratinus”, CPh, 26, 1931, 423-
12 For a more detailed summary of the sanctuary’s history, see Stafford, Virtues, 56-60, 82-9 and 94-6. The most comprehensive work on Rhamnous (the deme and its sanctuary) is now V. C. Petrakos, Ὀ δήμος τοῦ Ραμνοῦντος· σύνοψη των ἀνασκαϕών και των ἐρβυνών (1813-1998), Athens, 2000; see vol. I, 185-296 on the sanctuary of Nemesis.
13 On the reconstruction, see G. I. Despinis,, Athens, 1971. Roman copies: LIMC, Nemesis, nos. 2a-o; two of the most complete full-size copies are Copenhagen Glyptothek, 2086 (from Italy, early imperial period) and Athens, NM 3949 (from Athens, Antonine).
14 Pliny the Elder, HN, 36.4.17; Photios, Lexicon s. v. JRamnousiva Nevmesi". On the literary sources, see LIMC, Nemesis, 734, and Stafford, Virtues, 84-6.
15 London, BM 460; other fragments if the original are in Athens NM and Rhamnous (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 1).
16 Both branch and phiale appear in the hands of a female figure on a silver stater of c. 385 bc, attributed to king Timochares of Paphos (V. Karageorghis, Greek Gods and Heroes in Ancient Cyprus, Athens, 1998, 142, catalogue no. 91; O. Masson, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques: recueil critique et commenté, Paris, 1961, 121-2, no. 27, pl. IX. 4-5; G. F. Hill, A Catalogue of Coins in the British Museum. Cyprus, London, 1904, pl. VIII. 7). The figure is at least reminiscent of the Rhamnousian Nemesis, although it is not clear why she would be depicted on fourth-century Cypriot coinage; the question is discussed at length by L. Lacroix, Les reproductions de statues sur les monnaies grecques, Liège, 1949, 287-91.
17 That is measuring the distance directly. Pausanias estimates the distance as 60 stades (≅ 10.7km), although he seems to have travelled by the longer route along the coast (1.33.2): “Rhamnous is indeed 60 stades distant from Marathon for those going to Oropos beside the sea (τὴν παρὰ θαλάσσαν)”.
18 See Fisher, Hybris, 256-63 (on Aeschylus’Persians), 346-57 and 367-85 (on Herodotus’treatment of the Persians, “who are hybristai by nature”, Hdt, 1.89), and 501-4; Herodotus’use of hybris in relation to the Persians is discussed most recently by Fisher, “Herodotus and Popular Morality”, in A Companion to Herodotus, I. de Jong, E. Bakker and H. van Wees (eds.), Leiden, 2002, see especially 220-4. Cf. D. C. Cairns, op. cit. (note 2), 13-5, on the Persians’insulting actions as motivated by a general tendency to “think big”.
19 An inscription from Rhamnous (SEG, 19.222; Athens, EM 4212; J. Pouilloux, La forteresse de Rhamnonte, Paris, 1954, no. 52, pl. 62.4) dating from the first century bc or ad may also record the story about the statue. Although it is very fragmentary, it is clearly from a lyric poem, and the last line preserved mentions the “great-boasting” of the Persians (Άχαιμενιδάν μεγαλαύχων). It has been suggested that this might reflect the “song of Datis” mentioned in Aristophanes (Peace, 289-95): A. E. Raubitschek, “Das Datislied”, in Charites: Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft, K. Schauenburg (ed.), Bonn, 1957, 234-42; V. C. Petrakos, Τὸ Νεμέσιον τοῦ Ραμνοῦντος', in Φίλια ἔπη εἰς Γεώργιον Ε. Μυλωνᾶς, Athens, 1987, 305.
20 Elsewhere in the speech (115) Aristeides describes Xerxes’behaviour as hybrizein, surpassing even that of Darius.
21 There is a case for seeing the Kypria as written by an Attic author: see M. Davies, op. cit. (note 8), 3-5, and Stafford, Virtues, 80-2.
22 See e. g. Iliad, 13.620-39, Bakchylides, 15.53-63 and Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 369-84, discussed by Fisher, Hybris, 154-5, 227-9 and 271-4.
23 Fragments: Rhamnous (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 210). See most recently O. Palagia, “Meaning and narrative technique in statue bases of the Pheidian circle”, in Word and Image in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh Leventis Studies, I), K. Rutter and B. A. Sparkes (eds.), Edinburgh, 2000, 62-8. See also K. D. Shapiro Lapatin, “A family gathering at Rhamnous?”, Hesperia, 61, 1992, 107-19, and V. C. Petrakos, “Προβλήματα της βάσης του αγάλματος της Νεμέσεως”, Archaische und klassische griechische Plastik, 2, 1986, 89-107. Earlier reconstructions are usefully summarised in V. C. Petrakos, “La base de la Némésis d’Agoracrite”, BCH, 105, 1981, 227-53.
24 On which see Fisher, Hybris, 415-16.
25 Berlin 30036, ARV2, 1173,1 (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 211). For detailed discussion of the vase, see H. A. Shapiro, “The origins of allegory in Greek art”, Boreas, 9, 1986, 11-14, and Personifications in Greek Art: the representation of abstract concepts 600-400 BC, Zurich, 1993, 192-5.
26 I discuss the meagre evidence for the foundation of the Smyrna cult in Stafford, Virtues, 97-101.
27 LIMC, Nemesis, nos. 8-9 and 15 (see nos. 3-7, 10-14 and 16-28 for other representations of the Smyrna Nemeseis). On the coins, see D. O. Klose, Die Münzprägung von Smyrna in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Berlin, 1987, 28-30, pls. 39-40, 52, 54.
28 See also AP, 9.260; 12.12, 140-1; 16.251. I discuss these in “Tibullus’Nemesis: divine Retribution and the poet”, in What’s in a Name?, J. Booth and R. Maltby (eds.), Swansea-London, forthcoming.
29 See H. L. Axtell, The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman Literature and Inscriptions, Chicago, 1907, 37 and 44-5, although I see no reason for his assertion that Pliny’s Capitoline statue was “merely decorative” (44). Certainly the Capitol was already the site of cults of such Republican “Virtues” as Concordia, Fides, Mens, Iuventas and Ops: see J. R. Fears, “The cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideologyé, ANRW, II, 17, 2, 1981, 833-69.
30 M. B. Skinner, “Rhamnusia Virgo”, Classical Antiquity, 3, 1, 1984, 134-41; see n. 1 on palaeographical reasons for preferring the Renaissance conjecture Ramnusia to Baehrens’Amarunisa (i. e. Artemis) at 64.395, where the earliest manuscripts read ranusia (GRm) or ramunsia (O). On parallels between Nemesis and Thetis, see above (note 8).
31 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.403-6, 14.693-4; Tibullus’choice of “Nemesis” as the name for the mistress of Elegies, Book 2: on Nemesis and Latin elegy, see my paper op. cit. (n. 28).
32 Hornum, Nemesis, 25-8 (discussion of the wheel as an attribute) and 322-25 (list of examples), pls. VI-X, XII-XIII, XIX-XX, XXII and XXVI.
33 Olympia Museum, 963 and 1336 (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 180).
34 Nemesis’association with the games is discussed at most length by Hornum, Nemesis, 43-88; this provides a useful review of the evidence, although I would not agree with all of Hornum’s conclusions.
35 See A.-F. Morand, Études sur les Hymnes Orphiques, Leiden, 2001, especially 56, 114, 235-7.
36 Salamis Museum, St. II (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 145); Hornum, Nemesis, p.52; V. Karageorghis and C. C. Vermeule, Sculptures from Salamis, vol.I, Nicosia, 1964, 12-14, no. 4, pl. XII, and V. Karageorghis, op. cit. (note 16), 243, catalogue no. 188.
37 Hornum, Nemesis, 24-32 (discussion of the griffin and the wheel, with and without Nemesis) and 318-20 (list of examples).
38 Hornum, Nemesis, p.27. Hornum is taking up a suggestion made by C. Edwards, “Tyche at Corinth”, Hesperia, 59, 3, 1990, 532-3 and n. 18; see the whole paper for a discussion of the relationship between Tyche and Nemesis, with particular reference to Tyche’s sanctuary at Corinth.
39 On the Pindaric Ixion’s hybris, see Fisher, Hybris, p.235-9. Ixion is explicitly a hybristes, according to Hera, in Lucian’s comic account (Dialogues of the Gods, 9.1.6).
40 Hornum, Nemesis, Epigraphic Catalogue, no. 153; W. Ameling, Herodes Atticus, Hildesheim, 1983, vol.I, no. 146; see vol.II, 148-59 for discussion. C. Edwards, op. cit. (n. 38), 537, suggests that a portrait statue of Regilla, dedicated by Herodes Atticus in the sanctuary of Tyche at Corinth, might have represented her in the guise of Nemesis, but this is entirely speculative.
41 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, I 808 (Depot) (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 163); Hornum, Nemesis, pl. XIII. See Hornum, Nemesis, 321 for list of examples.
42 Hornum, Nemesis, p.32-6; see especially pl. X, a relief from Egyptian Thebes, Cairo Museum (LIMC, Nemesis, no. 165).
43 Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit, E. Heitsch (ed.), Göttingen, 1963, vol.I, p.26. The hymn is preserved with musical notation: see J. G. Landels, Music in Ancient Greece and Rome, London-New York, 1999, 258-60.
44 On the application of the term hybris to horses and other animals, see Fisher, Hybris, 119-21, and Cairns, op. cit. (n. 2), 22-5.
45 On the Aura episode as a whole, see R. Schmiel, “The story of Aura (Nonnos, Dionysiaca 48.238-978)”, Hermes, 121, 1993, 470-83, and most recently R. Shorrock, The Challenge of Epic: allusive engagement in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, Leiden, etc, 2001, 201-2. On the geographical location of Nonnos’Nemesis, see P. Chuvin, Mythologie et géographie dionysiaques: recherches sur l’œuvre de Nonnos de Panopolis, Clermont-Ferrand, 1991, 178-9.
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