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Deity

Themis

Θέμις

TitanpersonificationOrphic

Titaness of divine law and right order — the deep ground beneath all justice.

Themis is the Titaness of divine law, custom, and right order — the personification of that which is laid down and established. A consort and counsellor of Zeus, she is mother of the Seasons and, in some accounts, of the Fates; she summons the gods to assembly and keeps the bounds of right. Before Apollo held it, the oracle at Delphi was hers.

Where Dikē is justice in the particular case, Themis is the deeper ground — the eternal, customary order of how things ought to be, the divine sanction beneath all human law. The philosophers' search for a justice rooted in the nature of things has its mythic image in her.

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