Myth Library · Moral Departure
Aidos and Nemesis Leave Humanity
1 source witness · 1 source-scoped variant · reviewed 2026-08-30
As violence, broken kinship, and shamelessness consume the human world, Aidos and Nemesis veil themselves in white and depart for Olympus.
Canonical narrative
Hesiod looks toward a human generation in which the ordinary bonds of life have rotted. Children dishonor aging parents. Guest turns against host, friend against friend, brother against brother. Strength becomes the only justice, towns are sacked, and the wicked injure the honorable with crooked words and false oaths.
Two goddesses still stand inside that ruin: Aidos, the reverence or shame that restrains a person before a boundary is crossed, and Nemesis, the answering indignation that meets the crossing. They do not descend with weapons. They cover their beautiful bodies in white garments and leave the broad roads of earth.
Their destination is Olympus and the company of the deathless gods. Their absence is the punishment. Mortals keep grievous troubles, but no defense against evil remains. The poem therefore reveals a limit on Nemesis’s presence. She is not an automatic machine that strikes every offender on schedule. A society can drive out the very powers that make conduct answerable.
The scene gives Nemesis a moral gravity larger than revenge. She belongs beside the recognition that an act is intolerable. When she departs, violence is not corrected because the human world has lost both reverence and the force that resents its violation.
Episodes in this myth
Episode 1
The human bonds collapse
Kinship, hospitality, friendship, justice, and oath lose their force among mortals.
Episode 2
Aidos and Nemesis leave earth
The goddesses veil themselves in white and depart for Olympus.
Participants and roles
Nemesis
leaves corrupt humanity for Olympus
Her departure removes the answering force of indignation.Aidos
veils herself and departs beside Nemesis
Reverence or shame remains distinct from Nemesis.The iron-age mortals
break bonds of kinship, hospitality, friendship, and oath
The poem describes a collective moral collapse.The deathless gods
receive Aidos and Nemesis on Olympus
The group is the destination of the departing goddesses.Source-scoped variants
The white-veiled departure
Aidos and Nemesis leave a violent, oath-breaking human world and go to Olympus.
What differs: This Archaic moral narrative is a departure, not a scene of Nemesis directly striking an offender.
Greek Archaic · Ancient GreeceSource witnesses
EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed
Works and Days
Hesiod; edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White · 1914
Entry Works and Days · Line 174-201
Describes human corruption and the white-veiled departure of Aidos and Nemesis.
Open reviewed source