Dysnomia is lawlessness and civic disorder personified — one of the grim children whom Eris (Strife) bore without a father, the dark powers that beset mortal life.1
When hard-hearted Eris had herself been born of Night without a father, she continued the dark genealogy in turn, bringing forth a brood of grim children with no father of their own. Among them Hesiod names Dysnomia — Lawlessness, the spirit of anarchy and the collapse of right order — set near the end of Strife's catalogue, paired with Ate (Ruin), so that the breakdown of law and the ruin that follows are made siblings of one nature.2
Her name is the negation of eunomia, the Greek ideal of good government and obedience to just law. Dysnomia is therefore the personified opposite of Eunomia, the Horae of Good Order whom Hesiod makes a daughter of Themis by Zeus: the two stand as moral poles, the well-ordered city and the city undone by disorder. Hesiod gives her no cult and no adventure of her own — her place in the litany is her identity, the inward lawlessness that Strife sows wherever it touches mortal life.3
She shares Strife's litany with Ponos (Toil), Lethe (Forgetfulness), Limos (Famine), the tearful Algea (Sorrows), the Hysminai (Combats), the Machai (Fights), the Phonoi (Murders), the Androktasiai (Manslaughters), Neikea (Quarrels), Pseudea (Lies), Logoi (Disputes), Amphillogiai (Ambiguities), Ate (Ruin) and Horkos (Oath) — all, the poet says, born of one hateful mother and all of one grim nature.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story