Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/387

 Poetae Latini Minores, iii. (1881); Cynegetica: ed. M. Haupt (with Ovid's Halieutica and Grattius Faliscus) 1838, and R. Stern, with Grattius (1832); Italian translation with notes by L. F. Valdrighi (1876). The four eclogues are printed with those of Calpurnius in the editions of H. Schenkl (1885) and E. H. Keene (1887); see L. Cisorio, Studio sulle Egloghe di N. (1895) and Dell’ imitazione nelle Egloghe di N. (1896); and M. Haupt, De Carminibus Bucolicis Calpurnii et N. (1853), the chief treatise on the subject.

 NEMESIS, the personification of divine justice. This is the only sense in which the word is used in Homer, while Hesiod (Theog. 223) makes Nemesis a goddess, the daughter of Night (some, however, regard the passage as an interpolation); she appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the Cypria. The word Nemesis originally meant the distributor (Gr.  ) of fortune, whether good or bad, in due proportion to each man according to his deserts; then, the resentment caused by any disturbance of this proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished. Gruppe and others prefer to connect the name with ,  (“to feel just resentment”). In the tragedians Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of arrogance, and as such is akin to Ate and the Erinyes. She was sometimes called Adrasteia, probably meaning “one from whom there is no escape”; the epithet is specially applied to the Phrygian Cybele, with whom, as with Aphrodite and Artemis, her cult shows certain affinities. She was specially honoured in the district of Rhamnus in Attica, where she was perhaps originally an ancient Artemis, partly confused with Aphrodite. A festival called Nemeseia (by some identified with the Genesia) was held at Athens. Its object was to avert the nemesis of the dead, who were supposed to have the power of punishing the living, if their cult had been in any way neglected (Sophocles, Electra, 792; E. Rohde, Psyche, 1907, i. 236, note 1). At Smyrna there were two divinities of the name, more akin to Aphrodite than to Artemis. The reason for this duality is hard to explain; it is suggested that they represent two aspects of the goddess, the kindly and the malignant, or the goddesses of the old and the new city. Nemesis was also worshipped at Rome by victorious generals, and in imperial times was the patroness of gladiators and venatores (fighters with wild beasts) in the arena and one of the tutelary deities of the drilling-ground (Nemesis campestris). In the 3rd century there is evidence of the belief in an all-powerful Nemesis-Fortuna. She was worshipped by a society called Nemesiaci. In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who herself sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis. Later, as the goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she has as attributes a measuring rod, a bridle, a sword and a scourge, and rides in a chariot drawn by griffins.

 NEMESIUS (fl. c. 390), a Christian philosopher, author of a treatise  (On Human Nature), was, according to the title of his book, bishop of Emesa (in Syria); of his life nothing further is known, and even his date is uncertain, but internal evidence points to a date after the Apollinarian controversy and before the strife connected with the names of Eutyches and Nestorius, i.e. about the end of the 4th century. His book is an interesting attempt to compile a system of anthropology from the standpoint of the Christian philosophy. Moses and Paul are put side by side with Aristotle and Menander, and there is a clear inclination to Platonic doctrines of preexistence and metempsychosis. In physiological matters he is in advance of Aristotle and Galen, though we can hardly assert—as has sometimes been thought—that he anticipated Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. The treatise is conclusive evidence as to the mutual influence of Christianity and Hellenism in the 4th century. John of Damascus and the schoolmen, including Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, held Nemesius in high esteem, believing his book to be the work of Gregory of Nyssa, with whom he has much in common.

 NEMORENSIS LACUS (mod. Nemi), a lake in the Alban Hills, in an extinct subsidiary crater in the outer ring of the ancient Alban crater, E. of the Lake of Albano. It is about 3 m. in diameter and some 110 ft. deep; the precipitous slopes of its basin are over 300 ft. high, and on the side towards the modern village a good deal more, and are mainly cultivated. It is now remarkable for its picturesque beauty. In ancient times it was included in the territory of Aricia, and bore the name “Mirror of Diana.” The worship of Diana here was a very ancient one, and, as among the Scythians, was originally, so it was said, celebrated with human sacrifices; even in imperial times the priest of Diana was a a man of low condition, a gladiator or a fugitive slave, who won his position by slaying his predecessor in fight, having first plucked a mistletoe bough from the sacred grove, and who, notwithstanding, bore the title of rex (king). It is curious that in none of the inscriptions that have been found is the priest of Diana mentioned; and it has indeed been believed by Morpurgo and Frazer that the rex was not the priest of Diana at all, but, according to former, the priest of Virbius, or, according to the latter, the incarnation of the spirit of the forest. The temple itself was one of the most splendid in Latium; Octavian borrowed money from it in 31, and it is frequently mentioned by ancient writers. Its remains are situated a little above the level of the lake, and to the N.E. of it. They consist of a large platform, the back of which is formed by a wall of concrete faced with opus reticulatum, with niches, resting against the cliffs which form the sides of the crater. Excavations in the 17th and the last quarter of the 19th centuries (now covered in again), and also in 1905, led to the discovery of the temple itself, a rectangular edifice, 98 by 52 ft., and of various inscriptions, a rich frieze in gilt bronze, many statuettes (ex-votos) from the favissae of the temple in terra-cotta and bronze, a large number of coins, &c. None of the objects seem to go back beyond the 4th century A road descended to it from the Via Appia from the S.W., passing through the modern village of Genzano. The lake is drained by a tunnel of about 2 m. long of Roman date. On the W. side of the lake remains of two ships (really floating palaces moored to the shore) have been found, one belonging to the time of Caligula (as is indicated by an inscription on a lead pipe), and measuring 210 ft. long by 66 wide, the other even larger, 233 by 80 ft. The first was decorated with marbles and mosaics, and with some very fine bronze beamheads, with heads of wolves and lions having rings for hawsers in their mouths (and one of a Medusa), now in the Museo delle Terme at Rome, with remains of the woodwork, &c. &c. Various attempts have been made to raise the first ship, from the middle of the 15th century onwards, by which much harm has been done. The neighbourhood of the lake was naturally in favour with the Romans as a residence. Caesar had a villa constructed there, but destroyed again almost at once, because it did not satisfy him.

 NEMOURS, LORDS AND DUKES OF. In the 12th and 13th centuries the lordship of Nemours, in Gâtinais, France, was in possession of the house of Villebeon, a member of which, Gautier, was marshal of France in the middle of the 13th century. The lordship was sold to King Philip III. in 1274 and 1276 by Jean and Philippe de Nemours, and was then made a county and given to Jean de Grailly, captal de Buch in 1364. In 1404 Charles VI. of France gave it to Charles III. of Evreux, king of Navarre, and erected it into a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie). Charles III.’s daughter, Beatrix, brought the