A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Smith, William

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. William Smith, LLD, ed. 1890

(Τύχη).

1. The personification of chance or luck, the Fortuna of the Romans, is called by Pindar (Ol. xii. init.) a daughter of Zeus the Liberator. She was represented with different attributes. With a rudder, she was conceived as the divinity guiding and conducting the affairs of the world, and in this respect she is called one of the Moerae (Paus. 7.26.3; Pind. Fragm. 75, ed. Heyne); with a ball she represents the varying unsteadiness of fortune; with Plutos or the horn of Amalthea, she was the symbol of the plentiful gifts of fortune. (Artemid. 2.37 ; comp. Müller, Anc. Art and its Rein. § 398.) Tyche was worshipped at Pharae in Messenia (Paus. 4.30.2); at Smyrna, where her statue, the work of Bupalus, held with one hand a globe on her head, and in the other carried the horn of Amalthea (4.30.4); in the arx of Sicyon (2.7.5); at Aegeira in Achaia, where she was represented with the horn of Amalthea and a winged Eros by her side (7.26.3; comp. Plut. De Fort. Rom. 4; Arnob. ad v. Gent. 6.25); in Elis (Paus. 6.25.4); at Thebes (9.16.1); at Lebadeia, together with ἀγαθὸς δαίμων (9.39.4); at Olympia (5.15.4), and Athens. (Aelian, Ael. VH 9.39; comp. FORTUNA.)