Nemesis

Nemesis, according to Hesiod, the daughter of Night, was originally the personification of the moral feeling of right and a just horror of criminal actions—in other words, of the conscience. Afterwards, when an enlarged experience convinced men that a divine will found room for its activity amid the little occurrences of human life, Nemesis came to be regarded as the power who constantly preserves or restores the moral equilibrium of earthly affairs—preventing mortals from reaching that excessive prosperity which would lead them to forget the reverence due to the immortal gods, or visiting them with wholesome calamities in the midst of their happiness. Hence originated the latest and loftiest conception of Nemesis, as the being to whom was entrusted the execution of the decrees of a strict retributive providence—the awful and mysterious avenger of wrong, who punishes and humbles haughty evil-doers in particular. Nemesis was thus regarded as allied to Atë (q.v.) and the Eumenides (q.v.). She was represented in the older times as a young virgin, resembling Venus; in later times, as clothed with the tunic and peplos, sometimes with swords in her hands and a wheel at her foot, a griffin also having his right paw upon the wheel; sometimes in a chariot drawn by griffins. There was a famous temple of Nemesis at Rhamnus in Africa, where important fragments of the statue of Nemesis by Phidias were discovered in 1890.