Myth Library · Foundation Dream And Oracle
The Nemeses Guide the Founding of Smyrna
1 source witness · 1 source-scoped variant · reviewed 2026-08-30
Pausanias says two local Nemeses appeared to Alexander beside their sanctuary, ordered the Smyrnaeans' move, and received confirmation from the oracle at Claros.
Canonical narrative
Alexander hunts on Mount Pagus and falls asleep beside the sanctuary of the two Nemeses. In the dream the goddesses stand before him and command a civic change: a city is to be founded on the mountain, and the Smyrnaeans are to leave their former home for it.
The community does not move on one dream alone. Envoys go to Claros, where the oracle confirms that life will be happier beyond the sacred stream of Meles. Dream and oracle now point in the same direction, and the Smyrnaeans relocate.
Pausanias binds the foundation story to a sharply local theology. Smyrna has two Nemeses and calls Night their mother. That pair is not multiplied across every Greek tradition, and the singular goddess of Rhamnous is not erased. The story belongs to a spring, plane tree, mountain sanctuary, and city remembering its own beginning.
Episodes in this myth
Episode 1
The two Nemeses appear
Alexander sleeps beside their Mount Pagus sanctuary and receives the command to found a city and move the Smyrnaeans.
Episode 2
Claros confirms the command
The oracle at Claros confirms the movement beyond the sacred stream of Meles.
Episode 3
The Smyrnaeans move
The community leaves the old city and establishes the new settlement on the mountain.
Participants and roles
The two Nemeses of Smyrna
appear in Alexander's dream and command the foundation move
The shared Nemesis entity preserves the local plural without inventing two global deity records.Alexander
sleeps beside the sanctuary and receives the foundation dream
The narrative role is source-scoped; no additional historical identification is forced.The Smyrnaeans
consult Claros and relocate to the new city
The community's movement makes this a civic foundation story.The oracle at Claros
confirms the command to move beyond the sacred stream of Meles
The oracle confirms the dream without becoming a correspondence or genealogy edge.Source-scoped variants
The two Nemeses of Smyrna
Two local Nemeses direct Alexander's foundation dream and the Claros oracle confirms the Smyrnaeans' move.
What differs: The pair and their Night genealogy belong to Smyrna's local theology and do not divide the singular Rhamnousian goddess into two universal entities.
Greek Roman Imperial · SmyrnaSource witnesses
EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed
Description of Greece
Pausanias; Spiro Greek edition and Jones/Ormerod translation volumes · 1935
Entry Description of Greece · Book 7 · Chapter 5 · Section 2-3
Pausanias preserves the dream, the Claros oracle, the relocation, and Smyrna's local pair of Nemeses.
Open reviewed source