Saturday, November 7, 2015

Fortuna fortibus favet

"Fortuna fortibus favet" was one of our verba sapienti's in Latin and it translates to "Fortune favors the brave/bold." Our discussion on Fortune's role inspired me to blog about this. Fortune was the Roman goddess of luck, chance, and of course, fortune. She might grind good fortune/luck but she might also bring bad fortune/luck. She is usually depicted holding a cornucopia, which indicates her ability to give the gift of prosperity. In other representations, she is holding a ship's rudder that symbolizes how she is able to control people's lives. She wears a blindfold to represent how sometimes she brings good luck to those who don't necessarily seem like they deserve it. One day someone could be really lucky and on top, and then the next day they could lose everything and be on the bottom. I thought that this verba sapienti was interesting because Fortune doesn't really favor any specific type of person. It is all random. Fortune works in mysterious ways and no one is prepared for what She might do next.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you're right when you say that fortune is mysterious and works in random ways. We saw this concept in Dante when Virgil tells the pilgrim about fortune. He says that God placed Fortune on earth in order to distribute the money, which belongs to God in the first place. Virgil tells Dabte that Fortune distributes the wealth at random, going back to Abbey's point. Also, it's definitely true that Fortune had a very powerful mythological presence. Else wise, why would God have given her this important job?

master123 said...

I would like to point out that when you say fortune favors the bold, I feel as if fortune would not favor Hamlet. Fortune would not favor hamlet because he is viewed by some critics to be a coward. When I say coward I am referring to how Hamlet can be seen as hesitant to revenge his fathers death, even though in The Middle Ages revenge was frowned upon, since hamlets father was king of the land the action of taking revenge for his life would be somewhat acceptable during the Middle Ages time period. The hesitation from Hamlet could be seen as cowardly there for fortune might not be in his favor.

Unknown said...

Again, I agree with you Anastasia. Back to the suicide point i made on the other post, Hamlet is a coward. I, for one, am very into getting revenge and correcting what was wrong. Fortune would not favor Hamlet because he doesn't do anything worth praise. If Hamlet would have found out the truth about his father then went and confronted his uncle, he would have been considered so much more courageous. Maybe everything else in Hamlet's life that is going on, like Ophelia dying, is the opposite of fortune working its magic on Hamlet. Fortune favors the bold is true and that is why Hamlet has horrible luck.