| Fortuna | |
|---|---|
Goddess of Fortune, Chance, Luck, and Fate | |
 | |
| Abode | Rome |
| Symbol | Globe,Cornucopia,Wheel,Wreath |
| Equivalents | |
| Greek | Tyche |
Fortuna (Latin:Fortūna, equivalent to theGreek goddessTyche) is the goddess of fortune and thepersonification ofluck inRoman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique authorBoethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least theRenaissance. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomyfortuna / sfortuna (luck / unluck) plays a prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain "La [dea] fortuna è cieca" (latinFortuna caeca est; "Luck [goddess] is blind").
Fortuna is often depicted with agubernaculum (ship's rudder), a ball orRota Fortunae (wheel of fortune, first mentioned byCicero) and acornucopia (horn of plenty). She might bring good or bad luck: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions ofLady Justice, except that Fortuna does not hold a balance. Fortuna came to represent life's capriciousness. She was also a goddess offate: asAtrox Fortuna, she claimed the young lives of theprincepsAugustus' grandsonsGaius andLucius, prospective heirs to the Empire.[1] (In antiquity she was also known asAutomatia.)[2]
Fortuna's father was said to beJupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful (Copia). AsAnnonaria she protected grain supplies. June 11 was consecrated to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival ofFors Fortuna.[4][5] Fortuna's name seems to derive fromVortumna (she who revolves the year).[citation needed]
Roman writers disagreed whether her cult was introduced to Rome byServius Tullius[6] orAncus Marcius.[7] The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the right bank of the Tiber (in ItalianTrastevere). The first temple dedicated to Fortuna was attributed to theEtruscan Servius Tullius, while the second is known to have been built in 293 BC as the fulfilment of a Roman promise made during laterEtruscan wars.[8] 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.[9] Also Fortuna had a temple at theForum Boarium. Here Fortuna was twinned with the cult ofMater Matuta (the goddesses shared a festival on 11 June), and the paired temples have been revealed in the excavation beside the church ofSant'Omobono: the cults are indeed archaic in date.[10] Fortuna Primigenia ofPraeneste was adopted by Romans at the end of 3rd century BC in an important cult ofFortuna Publica Populi Romani (theOfficial Good Luck of the Roman People) on theQuirinalis outside thePorta Collina.[11] No temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine sanctuary.
Fortuna's identity as personification of chance events was closely tied tovirtus (strength of character). Public officials who lacked virtues invited ill-fortune on themselves and Rome:Sallust uses the infamousCatiline as illustration – "Truly, when in the place of work, idleness, in place of thespirit of measure and equity, caprice and pride invade, fortune is changed just as with morality".[12]
Anoracle at theTemple of Fortuna Primigena inPraeneste used a form of divination in which a small boy picked out one of various futures that were written onoak rods. Cults to Fortuna in her many forms are attested throughout the Roman world. Dedications have been found toFortuna Dubia (doubtful fortune),Fortuna Brevis (fickle or wayward fortune) andFortuna Mala (bad fortune).
Fortuna is found in a variety of domestic and personal contexts. During the early Empire, an amulet from theHouse of Menander inPompeii links her to the Egyptian goddessIsis, as Isis-Fortuna.[13] She is functionally related to the godBonus Eventus,[14] who is often represented as her counterpart: both appear onamulets and intaglioengraved gems across the Roman world. In the context of the earlyRoman Republic account ofCoriolanus, in around 488 BC theRoman senate dedicated a temple to Fortuna on account of the services of the matrons of Rome in saving the city from destruction.[15] Evidence of Fortuna worship has been found as far north asCastlecary,Scotland[16] and an altar and statue can now be viewed at theHunterian Museum inGlasgow.[17]
The earliest reference to theWheel of Fortune, emblematic of the endless changes in life between prosperity and disaster, is from 55 BC.[18] InSeneca's tragedyAgamemnon, 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 rainyAuster. ... 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.[19]
Ovid's description is typical of Roman representations: in a letter from exile[20] he reflects ruefully on the "goddess who admits by her unsteady wheel her own fickleness; she always has its apex beneath her swaying foot."
Fortuna did not disappear from the popular imagination with the ascendancy of Christianity.[21]Saint Augustine took a stand against her continuing presence, in theCity of God: "How, therefore, is she good, who without discernment comes to both the good and to the bad?...It profits one nothing to worship her if she is trulyfortune... let the bad worship her...this supposed deity".[22] In the 6th century, theConsolation of Philosophy, by statesman and philosopherBoethius, written while he faced execution, reflected the Christian theology ofcasus, that the apparently random and often ruinous turns of Fortune's Wheel are in fact both inevitable and providential, that even the most coincidental events are part of God's hidden plan which one should not resist or try to change. Fortuna, then, was a servant of God,[23][24] and events, individual decisions, theinfluence of the stars were all merely vehicles of Divine Will. In succeeding generations Boethius'Consolation was required reading for scholars and students. Fortune crept back into popular acceptance, with a new iconographic trait, "two-faced Fortune",Fortuna bifrons; such depictions continue into the 15th century.[25]
The ubiquitous image of the Wheel of Fortune found throughout the Middle Ages and beyond was a direct legacy of the second book ofBoethius'sConsolation. The Wheel appears in many renditions from tiny miniatures inmanuscripts to huge stained glass windows in cathedrals, such as atAmiens. Lady Fortune is usually represented as larger than life to underscore her importance. The wheel characteristically has four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures, usually labeled on the leftregnabo (I shall reign), on the topregno (I reign) and is usually crowned, descending on the rightregnavi (I have reigned) and the lowly figure on the bottom is markedsum sine regno (I have no kingdom). Medieval representations of Fortune emphasize her duality and instability, such as two faces side by side likeJanus; one face smiling the other frowning; half the face white the other black; she may be blindfolded but without scales, blind to justice. She was associated with thecornucopia, ship's rudder, the ball and the wheel. The cornucopia is where plenty flows from, the Helmsman's rudder steers fate, the globe symbolizes chance (who gets good or bad luck), and the wheel symbolizes that luck, good or bad, never lasts.
Fortune would have many influences in cultural works throughout the Middle Ages. InLe Roman de la Rose, Fortune frustrates the hopes of a lover who has been helped by a personified character "Reason". In Dante'sInferno (vii.67-96),Virgil explains the nature of Fortune, both a devil and a ministering angel, subservient to God.Boccaccio'sDe Casibus Virorum Illustrium ("The Fortunes of Famous Men"), used byJohn Lydgate to compose hisFall of Princes, tells of many where the turn of Fortune's wheel brought those most high to disaster, and Boccaccio essayDe remedii dell'una e dell'altra Fortuna, depends upon Boethius for the double nature of Fortuna. Fortune makes her appearance inCarmina Burana (see image). The Christianized Lady Fortune is not autonomous: illustrations for Boccaccio'sRemedii show Fortuna enthroned in atriumphal car with reins that lead to heaven.[26]
Fortuna also appears in chapter 25 of Machiavelli'sThe Prince, in which he says Fortune only rules one half of men's fate, the other half being of their own will. Machiavelli reminds the reader that Fortune is a woman, that she favours a strong, ambitious hand, and that she favours the more aggressive and bold young man than a timid elder. Monteverdi's operaL'incoronazione di Poppea features Fortuna, contrasted with the goddess Virtue. EvenShakespeare was no stranger to Lady Fortune:
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state...
Ignatius J Reilly, the protagonist in the famousJohn Kennedy Toole novelA Confederacy of Dunces, identifies Fortuna as the agent of change in his life. A verbose, preposterous medievalist, Ignatius is of the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of luck, as in "Oh, Fortuna, you degenerate wanton!"The Wheel of Fortune also has concerns withoccultism andSatanism.[27]
Inastrology, the termPars Fortuna represents a mathematical point in thezodiac derived by the longitudinal positions of theSun,Moon andAscendant (Rising sign) in the birth chart of an individual. It represents an especially beneficial point in the horoscopic chart. InArabic astrology, this and similar points are calledArabian Parts.
Al-Biruni (973 – 1048), an 11th-century mathematician, astronomer, and scholar, who was the greatest proponent of this system of prediction, listed a total of 97 Arabic Parts, which were widely used for astrological consultations.
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