Adrasteia

In early fragments and local tradition Adrasteia appears as a mountain-mother figure in Phrygia, described in the Phoronis as a mountain goddess served by the Idaean Dactyls. In later Greek myth she appears as a Cretan nymph, entrusted by Rhea to nurse and hide the infant Zeus from Cronus. Over time literary tradition identifies or associates her with other divine personifications of necessity and retribution, most prominently Nemesis, and with mother-goddess figures such as Cybele and Rhea.

The cited sources do not preserve a sustained iconographic description. Pausanias records seeing a statue of Adrasteia in a temple of Apollo, Artemis, and Leto at Cirrha, indicating she was represented in sanctuaries, and earlier fragments frame her as a 'mountain goddess' whose cult imagery would be consistent with mountain-mother motifs; no detailed physical attributes are preserved in the provided material.

Adrasteia personifies inevitability and pressing necessity: she represents the inescapability of punishment and enforces or symbolizes necessary retribution. In mythic narrative she also performs nurturing protective acts (notably nursing the infant Zeus in Cretan tradition). Cultic evidence shows she received public worship and temple support, linking her function to civic acknowledgement of cosmic and moral order. Later literary sources explicitly identify or equate her with Nemesis and associate her with other personifications of necessity such as Ananke and with mother-goddess figures like Cybele and Rhea.