Fortuna

The Goddess of Luck and Fate

Domain: Luck, Chance & Fate
Alignment: True Neutral
Element: Air
Relics of Power: Wheel of Fortune

Speak with Fortuna

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Romans

Region

Rome & the Roman Empire

Period

8th c. BC – 4th c. AD

The Romans worshipped their gods as guardians of the state, the home, and war, identifying many of them with Greek deities. The official cult was led by colleges of priests and by the emperor himself, with temples in the heart of Rome. Their religion followed the Empire's expansion across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

The December Saturnalia reversed social roles in days of feasting and gifts, and the Lupercalia purified the city in February. The Vestal Virgins guarded Vesta's sacred fire, and victorious generals paraded in triumph to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

At a glance

Fortuna is the Roman divinity of luck and chance, attested in local cults and traditions that the sources link through epithets and narratives without forming a single biography. At Praeneste, Cicero describes the oak lots and the statue of Fortuna with the infant Jupiter and Juno on her lap, and criticizes them as superstition. In Rome, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus tell how the matrons made Coriolanus withdraw and how the temple of Fortuna Muliebris was built; Ovid describes the festival of Fortuna Fortis on 24 June beside the Tiber and discusses why the statue of Servius Tullius is veiled, one explanation being that the goddess loved him. Plutarch ties the rise of Rome and that of Servius to Fortune, and Pliny observes that she alone is invoked everywhere.

15 min read · Reviewed on Invalid Date · How we research

Sacred symbols

The wheel, the cornucopia, the rudder and the blindfold

Family

Fortuna

Unions

Servius Tullius (king of Rome; according to one of Ovid's explanations and a belief reported by Plutarch, Fortuna visited him by night through a window)

Genealogy according to Cícero (De Divinatione 2.85–87); Ovídio (Fastos 4.133–150, 6.569–636, 6.771–784); Lívio (Ab Urbe Condita 1.46–48, 2.40); Dionísio de Halicarnasso (Antiguidades Romanas 8.39–56); Plutarco (De Fortuna Romanorum 5, 10; Quaestiones Romanae 36, 74); Plínio, o Velho (Naturalis Historia 2.22, 8.194–197)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Cicero, De Divinatione (Book II). translation: English translation by W. A. Falconer, Loeb Classical Library (1923), at LacusCurtius. read
Ovid, Fasti (Books IV and VI). translation: Latin text on Wikisource (Fasti, Liber VI; Liber IV in the same series). read
Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita (Books I–II). translation: English translation by Canon Roberts (1912), at Perseus. read
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities (Book VIII, chs. 39–62). translation: English translation by E. Cary, Loeb Classical Library (1940), at LacusCurtius. read
Plutarch, Moralia IV: De Fortuna Romanorum and Quaestiones Romanae. translation: English translation by F. C. Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 305 (1936), with the editor's notes. read
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia (Books II and VIII). translation: English translation by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), at Perseus. read

Studies

Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles, Entries fors and fortuna of A Latin Dictionary. Clarendon Press, 1879. open

Name and epithets

According to the Lewis and Short dictionary, fors (genitive fortis) derives from fero, ‘to bring’, and fortuna is a lengthened form of fors; both terms mean chance, luck, fate, and fors, as a common noun, occurs only in…

In the ancient sources

De Divinatione, 44 BCE. In De Divinatione 2.86, Cicero says that honey flowed from an olive tree at the site, and the diviners ordered a chest made from its wood to hold the lots. Fasti, c. 8 CE.

The myths

Servius Tullius, the window and the veiled statue. In Fasti 6.569–636, Ovid reaches the day on which, he says, Fortuna has the same day, the same founder and the same place as Mater Matuta: ‘Lux eadem, Fortuna, tua est,…

Worship and archaeology

The testimonies gathered here show distinct cults, with different names, places and dates, rather than a single calendar.

How the god was depicted

The passages by Cicero, Ovid, Pliny, Dionysius and Plutarch describe images of Fortuna, but not a fixed type. At Praeneste, according to Cicero, the statue showed Fortuna with the infant Jupiter and Juno on her lap, and…

What scholars debate

One goddess or several Fortunes?. Plutarch lists more than a dozen shrines with different names and says most were established by Servius (De Fortuna Romanorum 10; Quaestiones Romanae 74); Pliny speaks of a single godde…

After antiquity

The ancient texts already rework Fortuna in different ways. Cicero sees her within a critique of divination (De Divinatione 2.85–87).

Did you know?

Ovid tells the matrons not to touch the garments covering the statue of Servius and says that the head of Rome's seventh king must always be covered with a Roman mantle.

Codex relic

Wheel of Fortune. A spinning wheel that raises the humble and topples the powerful at the whim of chance.

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