page_title: Rota Fortunae
section_title: In the middle ages
hierarchical_section_title: Rota Fortunae / In the middle ages
caption_attribution_description: English: The Wheel of Fortune. Musée d'Orsay.
context_page_description: In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. The metaphor was already a cliche in ancient times, complained about by Tacitus, but was greatly popularized for the Middle Ages by its extended treatment in the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius from around 520. It became a common image in manuscripts of the book, and then other media, where Fortuna, often blindfolded, turns a large wheel of the sort used in watermills, to which kings and other powerful figures are attached.
caption: The Wheel of Fortune by Edward Burne-Jones, 1875-83
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1919", "Image ImageLength": "3780", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "Edward Burne-Jones: The Wheel of Fortune.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:10:23 14:55:45", "Image Copyright": "\u00a9 Photo RMN \u2013 G\u00e9rard Blot", "Image ExifOffset": "352", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "490", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5293", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1919", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3780"}