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Classical Philology
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the Wheel of Fortune is Cicero In Pisonem 22: "The house of your colleague
rang with song and cymbals while he himself danced naked at a feast, wherein,
even while he executed his whirling gyrations, he felt no fear of the Wheel of
Fortune" ("cum conlegae tui domus cantu
("When God's Fate sends up high prosperity"). The figure is that of a wheel.
In my Pindar3 some ten years ago, I
ney through Elysium. Vergil uses such expressions as perfecto temporis orbe, and he
2 PMLA, XXIV (1909), following DS, s.v. "Fortuna," 277.
3 D. I. Robinson, Pindar, a Poet of Eternal Ideas
P1. V.
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thus:
KVKXOS r(v avopwin7iwv eaTn 7p?y/aTrwv, Like to the pale moon's face, that cannot stay
7EpL4EpO/IEVOS be' OVK qi aleL rovs avrovsFor two nights ever in the same aspect,
eVTVxEEWv. Pindar, too, uses the verb
But first comes issuing from the dim-then
KVKX'O in Pyth. 2. 89 and has the idea also
grows
concerned with purgatory and metempsychosis, as we know from Plato and Vergil
(A en. vi. 748: "ubi mille rotam volvere per
of birth," yeveeOWs rpoxos; and an Anacreontic8 says: "Like the chariot's wheel
our running life is sped" (rpoxo's a`paros
or "the orb has come full-circle." Hippodamus, the Pythagorean, in IIepL roXt-
Tas 4vairobt4olas.
6 Viii. 14.
7 IG, XIV, 641.
BJ. M. Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus ("Loeb Classical Library"), II (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1931), 60, No. 32,11. 7-8.
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Bless Our Home"; etc. Above the inscripwhich was called 'AOpo3L1-r KaX?1, according to Lucian's Erotes 16. The Olynthian
dice; "quem Venus arbitrum dicet bibendi?" asks Horace.14 Rostovtzeff15 tells us
16 Aristophanes Eccl. 681 f., 834-37. On the kleroteria-allotment machines in which white and black
17 Eccl. 836-37.
18 AJA, XXXVIII (1934), 505, Fig. 2. The same
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Good Fortune.
as Nemesis had been in Roman art. In anthe sun, as Sir Arthur Evans26 and Miss
cient art the wheel was an attribute of
Anne Roes27 say. Not all such designs,
however, are symbols, and many may be Isis, of Nemesis, and of Dike, as well as of
only decorative; but metal wheels such as Tyche and Fortuna.32 Professor A. B.
those found at Olynthus were not for Cook, in his encyclopedic work on Zeus,33
decoration only.28 Even where painted on devotes more than a hundred pages to the
solar wheel in Greece, considering the
a vase, though it was in origin a solar
symbol with magical connotations, the wheels connected with Ixion, Triptolemus,
wheel, by the eighth and seventh centuries Circe, Medea, and especially the iynx,
which is probably of Iranian origin. PinB.C., on wine and oil amphoras and on
coins had become a hopeful sign of gooddar34 tells how Aphrodite helped Jason to
fortune in commerce.29
19381).
31 Louis Brehier, L'Art chretien, (Paris, 1928), ilus.
facing p. 248.
504).
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With Peitho's whip should spin her heart The bird, Sir D'Arcy Thompson39 has
on fire.
magical powers. In the center of the Bosor such as was found at Olynthus, where
it is a child's plaything and has no relation ton wheel is the wv-y rErpanKPa,os, as Pinto magic.36 It is very different from the dar calls it,40 with four spokes or, rather,
though the Greeks would think of Ivuy, aor humbler dwelling, the wheel, of brilliantly
sharp hiss such as a snake makes or a
painted terracotta or gleaming bronze, became
wheel or disk. 'Po6j4os means, I believe, a thus a mimic sun, credited with beneficent
"whipping top" or often a wooden instru-prophylactic powers.42
35 Cf. Cook, op. cit., I, 255-56; many references to
From what we have said it is apparent
vases from the sixth to the third century B.C. are
that
the Greeks associated the wheel with
given by F. V. Lorentz, RM, LII (1937), 190-92
(Glucksrad); Excavations at Olynthus, X, 512, n. 112;
38 See n. 37.
for coins see C. Seltman, Greek Coins (London, 1933),
Pls. 4, Nos. 16-17, and 5, No. 8.
39 A Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1936), pp.
36 Excavations at Olynthus, X, 496-500, 512-13.
L24-28.
40 Pyth. 5. 212.
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perfectly familiar with the ball as an attribute before Alexander. The present
text of Cebes' Pinax, known to Lucian
22).
Sre6a: Gliick und Schicksal im Volksglauben der Siidslaven (Vienna, 1886), pp.
190 f., thought that this Greek goddess of
pennis, cum rotis, cum gubernaculo reperias." Ammianus Marcellinus (born ca.
A.D. 330 in Antioch on the Orontes) says
of Adrastia (xiv. 11. 26): "pinnas autem
50 "The Sphere of Life and Death in Early Mediaeval Manuscripts," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942), pp.
292-303.
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may.
to Horace.53
Ammianus again, in xxvi. 8. 13, writing arm repaid all that had been lost in thirty
about the year A.D. 365, says: "By this
years,
ing adversity and prosperity, armed Bellona in the company of her attendant
Furies" ("Inter haec Fortunae volucris
rota, adversa prosperis semper alternans,
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century.
come todu
the National Mellon Gallery in
FranVois Villon et les themes poetiques
Washington
(Dedalo, XI [1931], 895).
moyen dge (1934), pp. 291-96, dealing
with
la roue de Fortune.
sance ("Vortrage der Bibliothek War55 (Harvard University Press, 1927), pp. 147-77;
cf. also Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, III
(1922), 131-235. Galpin (MLN, XLIII [1928], 563)
says: "Dr. Patch gives a compendium of the forms,
attributes, and activities of Fortuna as set forth in the
literature of the Middle Ages, the period with which
burg," Vol. II [1922-23], Part I), pp. 71144; McCartney in CJ, XXII (1927), 454-
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