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Fortuna

Ancient Roman goddess of fortune and luck

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Fortuna was often depicted with a gubernaculum (ship's rudder), a ball or wheel of fortune (first mentioned by Cicero) and a horn of plenty. She could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice, except that Fortuna does not hold a balance. She was believed to bring either fortune or misfortune: As Atrox Fortuna ("Cruel Fortune"), she was said to have claimed the young lives of the princeps Augustus' grandsons Gaius and Lucius, prospective heirs to the Empire.

Fortuna remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance, largely thanks to the late antique author Boethius, in whose work she appears as a personification of the hidden will of God. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of modern Italian culture, where the dichotomy of fortuna (good luck, fortune) and sfortuna (bad luck, misfortune) plays a prominent role in everyday social life, as represented in the common maxim La (dea) fortuna è cieca, "(The goddess) Luck is blind" (Latin Fortuna caeca est).

Ancient cult

Fortuna's father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful (Copia). As Annonaria she protected grain supplies. June 11 was consecrated to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of Fors Fortuna. Fortuna's name seems to derive from Vortumna (she who revolves the year).

Roman writers disagreed whether her cult was introduced to Rome by Servius Tullius or Ancus Marcius. The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the right bank of the Tiber (in Italian Trastevere). The first temple dedicated to Fortuna was attributed to the Etruscan Servius Tullius, while the second is known to have been built in 293 BC as the fulfilment of a Roman promise made during later Etruscan wars. The date of dedication of her temples was 24 June, or Midsummer's Day, when celebrants from Rome annually floated to the temples downstream from the city. After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated. Also Fortuna had a temple at the Forum Boarium. Here Fortuna was twinned with the cult of Mater Matuta (the goddesses shared a festival on 11 June), and the paired temples have been revealed in the excavation beside the church of Sant'Omobono: the cults are indeed archaic in date. Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste was adopted by Romans at the end of 3rd century BC in an important cult of Fortuna Publica Populi Romani (the Official Good Luck of the Roman People) on the Quirinalis outside the Porta Collina. No temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine sanctuary.

Fortuna's identity as personification of chance events was closely tied to virtus (strength of character). Public officials who lacked virtues invited ill-fortune on themselves and Rome: Sallust uses the infamous Catiline as illustration – "Truly, when in the place of work, idleness, in place of the spirit of measure and equity, caprice and pride invade, fortune is changed just as with morality".

An oracle at the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste used a form of divination in which a small boy picked out one of various futures that were written on oak rods. Cults to Fortuna in her many forms are attested throughout the Roman world. Dedications have been found to Fortuna Dubia (doubtful fortune), Fortuna Brevis (fickle or wayward fortune) and Fortuna Mala (bad fortune).

Fortuna is found in a variety of domestic and personal contexts. During the early Empire, an amulet from the House of Menander in Pompeii links her to the Egyptian goddess Isis, as Isis-Fortuna. She is functionally related to the god Bonus Eventus, who is often represented as her counterpart: both appear on amulets and intaglio engraved gems across the Roman world. In the context of the early Roman Republic account of Coriolanus, in around 488 BC the Roman senate dedicated a temple to Fortuna on account of the services of the matrons of Rome in saving the city from destruction. Evidence of Fortuna worship has been found as far north as Castlecary, Scotland and an altar and statue can now be viewed at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow.

The earliest reference to the Wheel of Fortune, emblematic of the endless changes in life between prosperity and disaster, is from 55 BC. In Seneca's tragedy Agamemnon, a chorus addresses Fortuna in terms that would remain almost proverbial, and in a high heroic ranting mode that Renaissance writers would emulate:

O Fortune, who dost bestow the throne's high boon with mocking hand, in dangerous and doubtful state thou settest the too exalted. Never have sceptres obtained calm peace or certain tenure; care on care weighs them down, and ever do fresh storms vex their souls. ... great kingdoms sink of their own weight, and Fortune gives way 'neath the burden of herself. Sails swollen with favouring breezes fear blasts too strongly theirs; the tower which rears its head to the very clouds is beaten by rainy Auster. ... Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low. Modest estate has longer life; then happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to land.

Ovid's description is typical of Roman representations: in a letter from exile he reflects ruefully on the "goddess who admits by her unsteady wheel her own fickleness; she always has its apex beneath her swaying foot."

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