MARCUS AURELIUS OLYMPIUS, a Latin bucolic poet, flourished at the court of the Emperor Carus towards the close of the third century; and is supposed, from the epithet "Carthaginensis" generally attached to his name, to have been a native of Africa. In the poetical contests of that day he owned no superior except the young prince Numerianus. "He shone out," says Vopiscus, "adorned with all the crowns of victory." His bucolic poems were three; and under the several names of Cynegetica, Halieutica, and Nautica, treated of hunting, fishing, and aquatics. A fragment of the first of these, amounting to 325 hexameter verses, is the only authenticated production of Nemesianus that is extant. It contains instructions for the rearing of dogs and horses, and the forming of nets and other hunting apparatus. The best edition is that of Stern, 8vo, Halle, 1832.

Wernsdorff, in his Latina Poetae Minores, argues, on grounds somewhat plausible, that the piece entitled Laudes Herculis, usually printed among the works of Claudian, belongs to Nemesianus. Four of the eclogues generally ascribed to T. Calpurnius Siculus are sometimes erroneously attributed to the same author.

NEMESIS is generally represented in Grecian mythology as the daughter of Night. The ideas regarding her character seem to have been gradually developed. In the days of Hesiod she was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraiding of conscience, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after a sin has been committed. But as the feeling of remorse may be considered the vengeance of the offended moral law, Nemesis came to be held, especially among the tragic poets, as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable woe and ruin. In performing this function, however, she often suddenly cast the minions of fortune from the summits of prosperity down into the lowest depths of misery. By this circumstance a new phase of her character was developed. She came to be regarded as the personification of that supposed divine jealousy that is kindled at the sight of great human felicity, never rests until it has brought a serenely happy life to a gloomy and tragical close, and thus acts as the impartial distributor of happiness and unhappiness among the sons of men. Nemesis had several surnames. She was called Rhamnusia or Rhamnusia, from Rhammus, a town of Attica, where she was worshipped; and Adrasteia, from Adrastus, King of Argos, who first built a temple to her on the River Asopus (Apopo). The ancients generally represented Nemesis as a crowned virgin, majestic in her bearing, and closely resembling Venus in the grace of her person and the beauty of her countenance, with a whip in one hand and a pair of scales in the other.