FORTUNE (Ttm ), a name which, amongst the ancients, seems to have denoted a principle by which things came to pass, without being necessitated thereto; but what that principle was, or whence it proceeded, they do not seem to have precisely considered. Hence their philosophers often intimate that men only conjured up the phantom of Fortune to hide their own ignorance; and that thus they call Fortune whatever befals a man without his know ing for what purpose. Hence Juvenal (Sat. x. ver. 3t(>) affirms, there were men who made a deity of fortune.

N ullum numen abest, si sit prudentia; sed to Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus.
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According to the opinion of the heathens, therefore, Fortune was in reality only the occurrence of things in a sudden and unexpected manner, without any apparent cause or reason; so that the philosophical sense of the word coincides with what is commonly called chance.

But in religion the term had much greater force į for altars and temples in great numbers were consecrated to Fortune as a deity. This intimates that the heathens had personified, and even deified chance; conceiving it a sort of goddess who disposed at pleasure of the fate of men. Hence the invocation of Horace, 0 diva, gratum qua regis Antium, in which he recommends Augustus, then preparing for a visit to Britain, to the protection of this divinity. From all this it may be inferred that the ancients at one time considered Fortune as a peremptory cause, operating in order to do good to some, and evil to others; and at another as a blind inconstant cause, without any view or determination at all. If, then, the word Fortune had no certain meaning even amongst those who erected altars in honour thereof, much less can it be ascertained what the term denotes in the minds of those who now use the word in their writings. They who would substitute the term Providence instead of that of Fortune, cannot give any tolerable sense to half the phrases in which the word occurs.

Horace paints the goddess as preceded by Necessity, holding nails and wedges in her hands, with a cramp-iron, and molten lead to fasten it, but rarely accompanied with Fidelity, unless when she abandons a family, in which case Fidelity never fails to depart with her, as well as friends. Fortune is disrespectfully spoken of by most of the Roman writers, and represented as blind, inconstant, unjust, and delighting in mischief (Ovid, ad Liv. ver. 52, ver. 374; Hor. lib. i. od. 34, ver. 26, lib. iii. od. 29, ver. 15; Statius, Theb. xii. ver. 505). However, they had a good as well as a bad fortune, a constant and an inconstant fortune, the latter of which was represented with wings, and a wheel beside her (Hot. lib. iii. od. 29, ver. 56). Juvenal alludes to a statue of Fortune, which exhibited lier under a good character, as the patroness of the poor infants who were exposed by their parents in the streets {Sat. vi. ver. 605). The painters commonly represent her in a woman’s habit, with a bandage over her eyes, to show that she acts without discernment; and standing on a wheel, to express her instability. The Romans, says Lactantius, represented Fortune with a cornucopia, and the helm of a ship, to show that she distributes riches, and directs the affairs of the world. In effect, it is by such characters that we see her represented upon so many medals, with the inscription, Fobtuna avg. fobtuna bedvx, fobtvnae avg. or fob-tunae REDVcis, and so on. Sometimes she is seen pointing at a globe before her feet, with a sceptre in one hand, and holding the cornucopia in the other.

The Romans had a male as well as a female Fortune which were objects of adoration; the Fortuna virilis being honoured by die men, and the Fortuna muliebris by the women. They appear to have derived the worship of Fortune from the Greeks under the reign of Servius Tullius, who dedicated to her the first temple in the public marketplace. Nero also built a temple to Fortune. The Fortune worshipped at Antium was probably the most exalted of any amongst the Romans, if we may judge by the account which Horace gives us of the solemn processions that were made to her (Hor. lib. i. od. 35, ver. 22). But the most celebrated temple of Fortune was at Praeneste; and Statius speaks of several, whom he calls die Prcenestinoe Sorores (lib. i. Sylv. iii. ver. 80).