Themis
Divine Law
THEE-miss
Titaness of the way things are properly done, the one member of her generation the Olympians kept on, seated beside the throne.
The Story
Themis is not law as legislation but law as the order underneath things: the right way to hold an assembly, treat a guest, or approach a god. She held Delphi after Gaia and before Phoebe, and she convenes the divine council in Homer.
By Zeus she bore the Horae, Good Order, Justice, and Peace, and, in Hesiod, the three Moirai who allot every mortal life. She also carried the prophecy that the son of Thetis would surpass his father, which is the warning that kept Zeus away from Thetis and sent her to a mortal instead, and so set up the Trojan War.
Did You Know?
- The blindfold on modern statues of Justice is a Renaissance addition. Themis and her Roman counterpart were shown clear-eyed: the point was seeing correctly, not impartially.
- In Homer the word themis is a common noun before it is a name, the right way of doing a thing. The goddess is that noun grown a personality.
- In Aeschylus she is identified outright with Gaia, which would make the first two owners of the Delphic oracle the same deity under two names.