Editing Nemesis (section)

=== Fortune and retribution ===
[[Image:ADurerFortunaengraving.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Albrecht Dürer]]'s engraving of ''Nemesis'', c 1502]]
[[File:The Abandoned Ariadne, ancient fresco from Pompeii, National Archaeological Museum.jpg|thumb|Ancient fresco from [[Pompeii]] depicting the abandoned [[Ariadne]], [[Cupid]], and probably Nemesis. [[National Archaeological Museum, Naples]]]]

The word ''nemesis'' originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved.{{Citation needed|date=May 2015}} Later, ''Nemesis'' came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished.{{Citation needed|date=May 2015}}

[[O. Gruppe]] (1906) and others connect the name with "to feel just resentment". From the fourth century onward, Nemesis, as the just balancer of [[Fortuna (mythology)|Fortune]]'s chance, could be associated with [[Tyche]].

Divine retribution is a major theme in the Greek world view, providing the unifying theme of the [[Greek tragedy|tragedies]] of [[Sophocles]] and many other literary works.<ref>{{citation | url = http://literarydevices.net/nemesis/| title = Examples of Nemesis in Literature | date = 19 August 2013 | access-date = October 12, 2013 }}</ref> [[Hesiod]] states: "Also deadly [[Nyx (mythology)|Nyx]] bore Nemesis an affliction to mortals subject to death" (''[[Theogony]]'', 223, though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epic ''[[Cypria]]''.

She is implacable justice: that of [[Zeus]] in the [[Twelve Olympians|Olympian]] scheme of things, although it is clear she existed prior to him, as her images look similar to several other goddesses, such as [[Cybele]], [[Rhea (mythology)|Rhea]], [[Demeter]], and [[Artemis]].<ref>The primeval concept of Nemesis is traced by Marcel Mauss (Mauss, ''The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies'', 2002:23: "Generosity is an obligation, because Nemesis avenges the poor... This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a principle of justice". Jean Coman, in discussing Nemesis in [[Aeschylus]] (Coman, ''L'idée de la Némésis chez Eschyle'', Strasbourg, 1931:40–43) detected "traces of a less rational, and probably older, concept of deity and its relationship to man", as Michael B. Hornum observed in ''Nemesis, the Roman State and the Games'', 1993:9.</ref>

In the [[Greek tragedies]] Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of [[hubris]], and as such is akin to [[Atë]] and the [[Erinyes]]. She was sometimes called [[Adrasteia]], probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet ''Erinys'' ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the [[Phrygians|Phrygian]] mother goddess, [[Cybele]].

[[File: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon - Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime.JPG|thumb|Justice (Dike, on the left) and Divine Vengeance (Nemesis, right) pursuing a murderer, in a painting by [[Pierre-Paul Prud'hon]], 1808]]