Tyche

Tyche, the Roman Fortuna, is the goddess of fortune, chance, and luck — the unpredictable power that raises mortals up and casts them down without regard to desert. Her worship rose to special heights in the Hellenistic age, an era keenly aware of life's instability, when every great city honoured its own guardian Tyche.

The philosophers were wary of her. Against the worship of blind chance, the Stoics and the Platonists set providence and fate: what looks like the random turning of Fortune's wheel is, they held, woven into a rational order — and the wise soul, anchored in virtue, stands unshaken by her gifts and her blows alike.

Epithets

• Agathe Tyche Ἀγαθὴ Τύχη — Good Fortune
• Soteira Σώτειρα — the savior
• Fortuna Primigenia Lat. — the firstborn Fortune of Praeneste
• Fortuna Redux Lat. — Fortune who brings one home safely