account of this festival, nor does he expand on his obscure comment that ‘‘they keep
no statue in secret, and there is no openly shown one either, though they do have a
sacred story to explain this custom.’’
Two personifications worth special mention here are those who shared the sanc-
tuary at Rhamnous on the northeast coast of Attica. It is quite exceptional for such a
sanctuary to be dedicated to a personification with no major Olympian as associate,
but both Nemesis and Themis have substantial mythological profiles in archaic
literature and art to support their claim to cult status (Stafford 2000:45–96). The
wordnemesisis used in an abstract sense in Homer, denoting ‘‘righteous anger’’ or
‘‘indignation’’ aroused by injustice. She first appears personified in Hesiod, as a
daughter of Night (Theogony223–4) and abandoning the corrupt world at the end
of the race of iron, in company with Shame (Works and Days197–201). A similarly
allegorical element can be seen in the account of her rape by Zeus, which makes her
mother of Helen, as related in the sixth-century Epic Cycle poem theCypria: the
reluctant Nemesis keeps changing shape as she flees by land and sea, ‘‘for shame and
indignation [nemesis] distressed her heart’’ (fr. 9 Bernabe ́ ¼fr. 7 Davies). Like
nemesis,themisis hard to translate exactly, but means something like ‘‘divine law’’
or ‘‘the natural order of things,’’ a set of ideas articulated in the genealogy which
makes her mother (by Zeus) of the Fates and the Seasons, the latter named by Hesiod
as Lawfulness, Justice, and Peace (Theogony901–6; see Rudhardt 1999). Homer
presents Themis as a regular denizen of Olympus, described like many other female
characters as ‘‘fair-cheeked’’; she offers wine and sympathy to Hera, who tells her to
‘‘rule over the gods in their house at the fairly divided feast’’ (Iliad15.87–92), and
she summons assemblies, both of the gods (Iliad20.4–6) and of mortals (Odyssey
2.68–9). Later archaic poems make her Zeus’ advisor: at the beginning of theCypria
she plays a vital role by suggesting to Zeus that he punish man’s corruption and
reduce the earth’s over-population by setting the Trojan War in train. This literary
profile is further fleshed out by a few appearances in archaic art: Themis is amongst
the deities (names inscribed) attending the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the Attic
black-figure dinos by Sophilos, ca. 580 BC (London 1971.11–11.1), which also
features Youth; Pausanias mentions a statue of Themis in the temple of Hera at
Olympia by a mid-sixth-century sculptor, which stood beside a seated group of the
Seasons (5.17.1); and around 525 BC Themis, her name again inscribed, takes part in
the Gigantomachy portrayed on the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi.
The rape of Nemesis is localized by later sources at Rhamnous, where she was
clearly the principal of the two deities. Extensive archaeological exploration (Petrakos
2000) has demonstrated that the sanctuary was already in use in the archaic period:
there are remains of an early sixth-century building which was probably the first
temple of Nemesis, replaced towards the end of the century by another; a third
building erected shortly after 500 BC may have been added to provide an independ-
ent location for worship of the sanctuary’s second deity, Themis. The sanctuary
probably suffered damage during the Persian Wars, and underwent significant refur-
bishment and expansion in the middle of the fifth century, culminating with the
erection ca. 430 BC of the temple the remains of which can still be seen today.
Inscriptions recording the sanctuary’s financial affairs support the picture of rapid
expansion, with just a few hundred drachmas being paid to the sanctuary’s adminis-
trators at the beginning of the fifth century, while in the years ca. 450–440 the
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_004 Revise Proof page 76 30.10.2006 4:25pm76 Emma Stafford