After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated. 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. 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 two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the right bank of the Tiber (in Italian Trastevere).

Roman writers disagreed whether her cult was introduced to Rome by Servius Tullius or Ancus Marcius. Fortuna's name seems to derive from Vortumna (she who revolves the year). June 11 was consecrated to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of Fors Fortuna. As Annonaria she protected grain supplies. (In antiquity she was also known as Automatia.) Ancient cult Fortuna governs the circle of the four stages of life, the Wheel of Fortune, in a manuscript of Carmina Burana Heraldic Fortuna in the arms of Glückstadt.įortuna's father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful ( Copia). She was also a goddess of fate: as Atrox Fortuna, she claimed the young lives of the princeps Augustus' grandsons Gaius and Lucius, prospective heirs to the Empire. Fortuna came to represent life's capriciousness. She might bring good or bad luck: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice, except that Fortuna does not hold a balance.

The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomy fortuna / sfortuna (luck / unluck) plays a prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain 'La fortuna è cieca' ( latin Fortuna caeca est 'Luck is blind').įortuna is often depicted with a gubernaculum (ship's rudder), a ball or Rota Fortunae (wheel of fortune, first mentioned by Cicero) and a cornucopia (horn of plenty). Fortuna ( Latin: Fortūna, equivalent to the Greek goddess Tyche) is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance.

Rise of kingdoms wheel of fortune