Quaestiones Romanae

Why did King Servius Tullius build a shrine of Little Fortune, which they call Brevis?[*](Hartman’s theory that Plutarch is rendering Occasio = Fortuna Brevis) is very doubtful.)

Is it because although, at the first, he was a man of little importance and of humble activities and the

son of a captive woman, yet, owing to Fortune, he became king of Rome? Or does this very change reveal the greatness rather than the littleness of Fortune, and does Servius beyond all other men seem to have deified the power of Fortune,[*](Cf. 273 b, supra.) and to have set her formally over all manner of actions? For he not only built shrines[*](Cf. 322 f, infra: the Latin equivalents here are perhaps Felix (?), Averrunca, Obsequens, Primigenia, Virilis, Privata, Respiciens, Virgo, Viscata.) of Fortune the Giver of Good Hope, the Averter of Evil, the Gentle, the First-Born,[*](Cf. 289 b, infra.) and the Male: but there is also a shrine of Private Fortune, another of Attentive Fortune, and still another of Fortune the Virgin. Yet why need anyone review her other appellations, when there is a shrine of the Fowler’s Fortune, or Viscata, as they call her, signifying that we are caught by Fortune from afar and held fast by circumstances?

Consider, however, whether it be not that Servius observed the mighty potency of Fortune’s ever slight mutation, and that by the occurrence or nonoccurrence of some slight thing, it has often fallen to the lot of some to succeed or to fail in the greatest enterprises, and it was for this reason that he built the shrine of Little Fortune, teaching men to give great heed to events, and not to despise anything that they encountered by reason of its triviality.

Why did they not extinguish a lamp, but suffered it to go out of itself?[*](Cf.Moralia, 702 d ff.)

Did they reverence it as akin and closely related to the inextinguishable and undying fire, or is this also a symbolic indication that we should not destroy

nor do away with any living thing, if it does us no harm, since fire is like a living thing? For it needs sustenance, it moves of itself, and when it is extinguished it gives out a sound as if it were being slain.

Or does this custom teach us that we should not destroy fire, water, or any other necessity when we have enough and to spare, but should allow those who have need of these things to use them, and should leave them for others when we ourselves no longer have any use for them?