Nomos
Human-made law and custom, as opposed to the natural order (physis).
The Meaning of Nomos
Nomos governed the relationship between the individual and the community — the laws that held the polis together. Antigone defied Creon's nomos (human law) in favour of the gods' unwritten law when she buried Polynices. The tension between divine and human nomos is the central conflict of Sophocles' play. At Athens, Solon reformed the nomoi to establish justice. Themis, the Titaness, embodied divine nomos — the deeper law beneath human legislation. Zeus Xenios enforced the nomos of xenia (hospitality) that Paris violated when he took Helen.
Symbols
Fun Fact
The word "economy" comes from nomos + oikos (household) — literally "household law," reflecting how the Greeks saw financial management as a matter of orderly custom.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Antinomia
💭 conceptlaw, philosophy
A contradiction between two laws or principles — the tension when equally valid rules yield opposite conclusions in the same case.
Goddess of Justice
💭 conceptJustice, law, moral order, custom
Themis upholds divine law and natural order, counselling Zeus on what is right and presiding over assemblies.
Dikē
💭 conceptreligion, ethics, law
Justice, right order, or the way things ought to be — both the divine personification of justice and the principle of cosmic and social rightness.
Dike
💭 conceptJustice and the natural order
Dike was both a goddess and the concept of justice — not human legislation but the cosmic order that governs right and wrong.
Divine Justice
💭 conceptEthics
The principle that the gods punish wrongdoing and uphold moral order in the cosmos
Asebeia
💭 conceptreligion, law
Impiety — the crime of failing to honor the gods properly, disrespecting sacred things, or introducing foreign religious practices.
Aidos
💭 conceptShame, modesty, and reverence
Aidos was the Greek concept of shame, reverence, and the inner sense of propriety that restrained people from acting dishonourably — the opposite of hubris.
Polemos
💭 conceptphilosophy, mythology
War or conflict — personified as a deity and understood by Heraclitus as the fundamental generating principle of all existence.
Sacred Marriage
💭 conceptReligion
A ritual union between a god and goddess symbolising cosmic fertility and renewal
Eunomos
💭 conceptUnderworld
A daemon of the underworld associated with lawful order among the dead and proper burial rites
Xenia
💭 conceptSacred law of hospitality
The sacred law of hospitality that governed host-guest relationships, enforced by Zeus himself as Zeus Xenios.
Nomos basileus
💭 conceptphilosophy, law
Law is king — the principle that law, not any individual ruler, holds supreme authority; the Greek foundation of the rule of law concept.