Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hesiod names Nemesis among Night’s children—an affliction to mortal men—alongside Apate, Philotes, Geras, and Eris. In the *Theogony* she has no separate myth: she is the personified force of righteous indignation and retributive balance, born from Night like the other dark measures of human life. Attic cult at Rhamnus later honored a Nemesis whose statue and lore Pausanias records; the *Cypria* tradition makes Zeus pursue Nemesis (who flees in animal shapes) until she yields the egg from which Helen is born. Those narrative strands are catalogued elsewhere. Here isolate only the Hesiodic fact: Nemesis is Night’s daughter, a cosmic power of retribution before she is a Rhamnusian goddess or a mother of Helen.