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Nemesis

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Nemesis

In late Greek mythology, the goddess of retribution, who especially punished hubris (Greek hybris), violent acts carried through in defiance of the gods and human custom.

Nemesis was originally a goddess of distribution, concerned with preserving order and proportion in the affairs of men. She personified the indignation felt at the unjustified or excessive prosperity in others, and became the agency which restored the natural balance, as in the legend of Polycrates of Samos who met an untimely death after Amasis, king of Egypt, abandoned his alliance with Samos because of Polycrate's success.

In one story she was pursued by Zeus, father of the gods, and changed herself into various forms, principally fish and birds. Finally she laid an egg, which a shepherd gave to Leda, traditionally mother of Helen and the brothers Castor and Pollux (Greek Polydeuces).



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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
) with its catalogue of wrongdoings and violence ever increasing until Aidos and Nemesis are forced to leave mankind who thenceforward shall have `no remedy against evil'.
But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors, that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them into a crime: there is no proof in favor of the man outside his own consciousness and assertion.
For which reason the antients used, on such occasions, to sacrifice to the goddess Nemesis, a deity who was thought by them to look with an invidious eye on human felicity, and to have a peculiar delight in overturning it.
 
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