“Operation Iraqi Freedom” began 16 years ago today, on March 19, 2003, so perhaps this is a good day to nod respectfully to Nemesis. After resigning (24 February, 2003), I invited my U.S. Embassy now-ex-colleagues to join me at the most beautiful (and least known) archaeological site in Attica. I poured out a libation of Nemean wine on the altar of Nemesis, who happens to be the patron goddess of Rhamnous, with a fine temple just behind the altar, aimed at the battlefield of Plataia. She was rather hard on the Persians in 479 BCE, and I didn’t want her to be equally hard on the USA.
We went back to Rhamnous (Ραμνούντα) last Sunday with friends for another look. Still a gorgeous spot, in full spring flowering.
Nemesis was in a good mood, apparently. The lower site isn’t normally open before summer (lack of staff) but the Ephoreia of Antiquities of Eastern Attiki very kindly let us in, and the superb site guard Thodoris showed us the storeroom in which the marble superstructure of the 5th century BC Nemesis temple has been pieced together.
The deme site is on a promontory between an ancient creek port and another little harbour, walled off in the 4th century to become a major Athenian fortress. It has been excavated and partly restored by Vasilios Petrakos, Secretary General of the Archaeological Society, but the remoteness and lack of mobile phone coverage means that no Athenian ever goes there – most have never heard of it. Thus a pristine landscape.
Nemesis presumably gets her name from the verb νεμειν, to apportion (or to graze), and she is a goddess who probably first earned her devotion by painfully reeducating the jerks who pastured an unsustainable number of goats on their neighbour’s hillside. She likes to work by indirection, hence the idea, probably hers, of losing Helen of Troy on a world that even back then suffered from poor impulse control.
“When Jupiter, moved by desire, had begun to love Nemesis, and couldn’t persuade her to lie with him, he relieved his passion by the following plan. He bade Venus, in the form of an eagle, pursue him; he, changed to a swan, as if in flight from the eagle, took refuge with Nemesis and lighted in her lap. Nemesis did not thrust him away, but holding him in her arms, fell into a deep sleep. While she slept, Jupiter embraced her, and then flew away … Nemesis, as if wedded to the tribe of birds, when her months were ended, bore an egg. Mercury took it away and carried it to Sparta and threw it in Leda’s lap. From it sprang Helen, who excelled all other girls in beauty. Leda called her her own daughter. Others say that Jove, in the form of a swan, lay with Leda. We shall leave the matter undecided.” (Hyginus 2.8)
Brady Kiesling is a former political counsellor of the US Embassy in Athens who now lives in Greece.
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