Themistes
idea · 2 works · 5 mentions · 8 anchored passages
decrees of heaven · themistes · Themis (singular, custom) · Themises
in the texts
Ancient Law
The earliest conceived judicial awards, believed to be divinely dictated to kings, prior to custom or law.
Themistes, Themises, the plural of Themis, are the awards themselves, divinely dictated to the judge.
Here we have the germ or rudiment of a custom, a conception posterior to that of Themistes or judgments.
The “Themistes” have too, it should be remarked, the characteristic which, in the view of Bentham and Austin, distinguishes single or mere commands from laws.
Iliad
The Greek term for divine decrees or judgments, invoked in the simile of Zeus punishing men who judge crookedly.
As the whole dark earth bows before some tempest on an autumn day when Zeus rains his hardest to punish men for judging [ krinô] crookedly in their courts, and arriving justice there from without heed to the decrees [ themistes] of heaven - all the rivers run full and the torrents tear many a new channel as they roar headlong from the mountains to the dark sea, and it fares ill with the works of m …
Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath - nay, by this my scepter which shall sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains - for the axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear it as judges and guardians of the decrees [ themistes] of heaven - so surely and solemnly do I swear that hereafter they sh …