Fortuna
Roman goddess of fortune
Fortuna (Latin: Fortūna), sometimes anglicized as Fortune, is the goddess of luck or fortune in Roman religion. She came to represent life's capriciousness, and was a goddess of fate. In antiquity she was also known by the epithet Automatia (Latin: Automatia; Greek: Αὐτοματία, "she who does what she will"). Her Greek equivalent is Tyche.
Fortuna was often depicted with a gubernaculum (ship's rudder), a ball or wheel of fortune (first mentioned by Cicero) and a horn of plenty. She could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice, except that Fortuna does not hold a balance. She was believed to bring either fortune or misfortune: As Atrox Fortuna ("Cruel Fortune"), she was said to have claimed the young lives of the princeps Augustus' grandsons Gaius and Lucius, prospective heirs to the Empire.
Fortuna remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance, largely thanks to the late antique author Boethius, in whose work she appears as a personification of the hidden will of God. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of modern Italian culture, where the dichotomy of fortuna (good luck, fortune) and sfortuna (bad luck, misfortune) plays a prominent role in everyday social life, as represented in the common maxim La (dea) fortuna è cieca, "(The goddess) Luck is blind" (Latin Fortuna caeca est).
Ancient cult
Fortuna's father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful (Copia).
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4654. VIAF identifies the subject as 69727614. The Library of Congress control number is n2014070334. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fortuna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.