Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Themis

THEMIS, the Greek mythological personification of custom. In Homer the word occurs both in the singular and in the plural (themistes), with the sense of "custom," "unwritten law." But even in Homer Themis is also spoken of as a goddess who, at the command of Zeus, calls the gods to an assembly and summons or disperses the assemblies of men. But after all she is a thin abstraction, a faint shadow, by the side of the fall-blooded gods of Olympus. Hesiod furnished her with a pedigree (making her the daughter of Sky and Earth), and married her to Zeus, by whom she became the mother of a brood of wellbred abstractions, Legality, Justice, Peace, the Hours, and the Fates. Pindar, no doubt with a full sense of her abstract nature, speaks of her as the assessor of Zeus. In one passage (Prom., 209) ^Eschylus seems to regard her as identical with Earth, and "Earth-Themis" had a worship and priestess at Athens, where Athene also appears with the surname Themis. There was a tradition that the oracle at Delphi had first been in the hands of Earth, who transferred it afterwards to Themis, who in turn gave it up to Apollo. Themis had temples at Athens, Thebes, Tanagra, and Epidaurus. At Olympia she had an altar, and at Trcezen there was an altar of the Themides (plural of Themis). In modern writers Themis sometimes stands as a personification of law and justice, an idea much more abstract and advanced than the priginal sense of "traditional custom."