ortune, Frakes looks back at the beginnings of the Roman Imperium. He comments, ôNow that the state had been essentially reduced to one man, the good fortune of the state depended upon that of this single individual. As a result, there developed the cults of the personal Fortuna of the Emperor Augustus . . . and later of succeeding emperors.ö
As a further consequence, all the various goddesses Fortunae collapsed into a single Fortuna, and the Roman pantheon, long in decline, collapsed into the single goddess Fortuna Panthea. ôShe usurped the functions, symbols, and even the names (as secondary epithets) of the other deities, and in the end eclipsed them altogether. This is the seemingly omnipotent Lady Fortuna of the Boethian PrisonerÆs complaint in the Consolatio.ö
Frakes says that there appears to be little ôcharacter developmentö of Fortuna in the Roman literature, in which, at her very first appearance, she displays characteristics that are not different in any significant way from those associated with her in the Consolatio; she is already the capricious controller of human affairs, to which men have no choice but to submit of necessity.
The Roman Stoics believed that human natura and uirtus could override whatever obstacles Fortuna might put in peopleÆs paths, in the sense that her power is over only external matters, whereas the true Stoic is turned inward. However, even beyond an inner freedom from the vicissitudes of Fortuna, the Roman Stoics saw that one could to some extent escape FortunaÆs control by developing and exercising oneÆs own uirtus. This sort of Stoicism lies in the background of BoethiusÆ concept of Fortune as well.
VirgilÆs understanding of Fortuna was affected by his overall politico-ideological task as the ôofficialö poet of the new Imperium. In attempting to create a solid mythological and historical basis for AugustusÆ new order of things, he needed to take a strong p...