Themis personifies themis, established custom, right order, what is laid down, as distinct from dike, the verdict in a particular case; she is the principle by which gods and mortals alike keep to their proper bounds. A tradition preserved by Aeschylus and others made her an early holder of the Delphic oracle, between Gaia and Apollo, so that lawful order and prophecy share a source.
As a consort of Zeus she bears the Horai, the Seasons that regulate the year, and the Moirai, the three Fates, offspring that make her the mother of both natural and moral order. Shown holding scales and, later, blindfolded, she is the ancient model behind the modern allegory of Justice, though the blindfold and sword are post-Classical additions to her ancient balance. Themis's afterlife as an emblem of abstract Justice, holding scales and later a sword and blindfold, became one of the most widely reproduced allegorical figures in Western art and public architecture from the Renaissance onward, adorning courthouses and legal texts across Europe and its colonies; the blindfold, absent from ancient images of either Themis or her Roman counterpart Iustitia, is a distinctly later addition, generally traced to fifteenth-century German art, where it began as a satirical comment on corrupt justice before it was reinterpreted as a positive symbol of impartiality.