Fortuna

What it is

Fortuna is the Roman goddess of luck and fortune, and also of fate. Latin speakers called her Fortūna, English writers sometimes say Fortune, and the Greeks knew her counterpart as Tyche. She stands for the way life turns without warning, lifting one person and dropping another. A further epithet, Automatia, is Greek and means 'she who does what she will'. Romans held that both good and bad fortune came through her. Her images carried a ship's rudder, a ball, a wheel and a horn of plenty.

Where it comes from

Roman writers never agreed on how her worship reached Rome. Some credited Servius Tullius, an Etruscan king, others Ancus Marcius. The first temple was attributed to Servius Tullius; a second was built in 293 BC, after a promise made during the later Etruscan wars. Two of the earliest shrines stood in Trastevere, across the Tiber from the city. Her name is thought to come from Vortumna, 'she who revolves the year'. Near the end of the third century BC Rome took up the sanctuary and oracle of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste.

How it is done

Her public cult centred on her temples. On 24 June, the dedication day and Midsummer's Day, people travelled from Rome downriver to the shrines beyond the city, then rowed home wearing garlands. At the sanctuary at Praeneste enquirers used a form of divination: a boy chose one of several possible futures, each written on a rod of oak. Cults of Fortuna in her many forms are recorded right across the Roman world, and she also had a place in private and family life.

Tools and materials

The objects shown with her each carry a meaning: plenty pours from the horn, the ship's rudder is a steersman guiding fate, the globe stands for chance, since no one knows who will be favoured, and the wheel stands for luck that does not last. She may appear veiled and blind, and unlike Lady Justice she holds no scales. Small amulets and engraved gems carried her image; a find from a house in Pompeii pairs her with the Egyptian goddess Isis.

What it is for

People turned to Fortuna for outcomes they could not control. Sailors asked for a safe return, which is Fortuna Redux; farmers looked to Fortuna Annonaria for the grain supply; couples sought her favour in marriage; a first child's prospects were tied to her. A person might also court her privately, for daily luck. Because her gifts were thought to shift, Roman writers tied her to virtus, strength of character: officials who behaved badly, they said, drew misfortune on the state as well as on themselves.

Who does it

Her worship was at once public and domestic. The state founded temples, and the senate vowed one to her around 488 BC after the matrons of Rome were credited with saving the city from destruction. The earliest shrines were said to go back to a king. Ordinary households kept her cult beside their other gods. At the Praeneste oracle a young boy drew the lots. Festivals drew crowds, and her many titles, such as Fortuna Publica, the luck of the people, show how widely she was called on.

Peoples and places

Fortuna was worshipped across the Roman world, and dedications in her name have been found far from Italy. In Britain, traces of her cult came to light at Castlecary in Scotland, and an altar and statue are kept at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. In Rome she shared a festival with Mater Matuta, an older goddess, and their paired temples were found in excavation beside the church of Sant'Omobono. At Praeneste her sanctuary outshone anything in the capital.

What people believe

Behind her cult lies a view of events as unstable and beyond human control. Romans personified that instability as a goddess who might raise a man or bring him down. She was said to be a daughter of Jupiter and, like him, generous, and she was addressed as Copia. Later Christian writers kept her while changing her role. Augustine argued in the City of God that a goddess who visits good and bad alike without judgement is no true deity, and Boethius made her the servant of a hidden divine plan.

When it is done

Two days were fixed to her. On 11 June her rites were joined with those of Mater Matuta, and that day was consecrated to her. On 24 June, Midsummer's Day, her temples held the dedication festival called Fors Fortuna, and Romans went out to the shrines by water. Life events also called for her: the arrival of a first child, a marriage, a safe return. In medieval and Renaissance art a wheel with four stages, regnabo, regno, regnavi and sum sine regno, stood for the rise and fall of a life.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Roman writers themselves disagreed about her, and whether her cult arrived with Servius Tullius or Ancus Marcius was never settled. Augustine pressed the hardest case against her, asking how a goddess could be called good when she comes to good and bad people without distinction, and holding that worship of her profits nobody. Boethius, writing in prison, turned the turns of her wheel into providence: events that look random belong to a plan that is not to be resisted. Machiavelli later granted her only half of human fate, the rest belonging to human will.

Compare and confuse

Her nearest counterpart is the Greek Tyche, and the two are usually treated as one figure. She is also paired with Bonus Eventus, a god shown as her opposite number; both appear on amulets and engraved gems. In astrology a point in the birth chart, the Pars Fortuna, carries her name, and in Arabic astrology points of this kind are called Arabian Parts. Her blindfold is often likened to that of Lady Justice, though she holds no scales.

Today

The blindfolded Fortuna still appears in many corners of Italian life, where people speak of fortuna and sfortuna, good and bad luck, and repeat the saying La (dea) fortuna è cieca, luck is blind, known in Latin as Fortuna caeca est. Writers keep returning to her: she speaks in Carmina Burana, and a modern American novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, makes her the force behind its hero's misfortunes. Astrologers still work out the Pars Fortuna for a birth chart.

Questions people ask about Fortuna

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Fortuna on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data