Nemesis Character Analysis

Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution. According to myth, Nemesis punishes those who display hubris, and Clytemnestra implies that Orestes’s death at the Pythian Games (which turns out to have been a lie) is one of Nemesis’s acts of retribution. In this way, both Clytemnestra and Sophocles imply that Orestes’s desire to kill his own mother is a display of excessive pride that itself requires punishment, and that Orestes should instead honor and respect his mother instead of plotting her death.