Fortuna
‘But who is that woman over there? She appears to be blind and mad, standing on a round stone.’
‘Her name,’ he said, ‘is Fortune. Not only is she blind and made, but also deaf.
‘And what is her task?’
‘She goes about everywhere,’ he said, ‘snatching from those the things they happen to have, and giving them to other people; and then immediately she takes away what she has given them and gives it yet to others, entirely at random. Thus you might say that her symbol rightly declares her nature.’
‘What symbol is that?’ I asked.
‘That she is standing on a round stone.’
‘What does that signify?’
‘That any gift from her is neither safe nor certain. For severely bitter and harsh are the disappointments that follow for those who put their trust in her.’
‘But this huge crowd that throngs around her, what do they want and what are they called?’
‘These are the people who take no thought for the morrow, and each is begging for what she throws them.’
‘Why is it, then, that these people do not appear similar in appearance? Some seem to rejoice, whilst others despair, reaching out their hands to her.’
‘These people here,’ he said, ‘rejoicing and laughing, are the ones who have received something from her. They call her Good Fortune. But those who look as though they are crying and stretching out their hands to her are the ones from whom she has taken back the things that earlier she had given them. These others call her Bad Fortune.’
‘What,’ I asked, ‘are the things that she gives which make those who receive them so happy, whilst those who lose them weep?’
‘Just those things,’ he answered, ‘which most people consider good.’
‘But what are these things?’
‘Why, wealth and reputation, high birth, children, thrones and kingdoms, and things such as these.’
‘But surely these are good things?’
From The Tablet of Cebes, written c. 1st or 2nd century CE (translated from the Greek by Keith Seddon)
