Note 493 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 5)

See on Fortuna the exhaustive article by R. Peter in the Mythological Lexicon; Wissowa, R.K. 206 foll.; R.F. p. 161 foll., and 223 foll.; Carter, op. cit. p. 50 foll. Dr. Carter seems to me to be too certain of the absence of any idea of luck or chance in the original conception of Fortuna: the word fors, so far as we know, never had any other meaning, and the deity Fors must be a personification of an abstraction, like Ops, Fides, and Salus. See Axtell, Deification of abstract idea in Roman literature, p. 9, with whom I agree in rejecting the notion of Marquardt and Wissowa that she was a deity of horticulture. He rightly points out that she is not included in the list of agricultural deities in Varro, R.R. i. 1. 6.