in Ancient Mythology, the goddess of fortune, was worshipped with especial honours in various parts of Italy. Her name does not occur in the earlier Greek authors, who refer the chances of life to the will of Jupiter and the decrees of the Fates. The worship of this goddess seems to have been common in Italy at a very early period. Before the Roman era, the Etruscans (among whom she was known by the name of Nursia) had erected a temple in her honour at Volsinii, and the Latins at Praeneste. But the most splendid of all her temples was that at Antium, which Horace has celebrated in his ode beginning—

O Diva, gratae qua regis Antium,

and of which the sortes or oracular responses were very celebrated. Fortuna was sometimes represented as blind, with winged feet, resting on a wheel, at others with a sun and crescent moon on her head. The Romans had a tradition, that when this goddess entered their city she laid aside her wings and sandals, indicating by this means that she intended to remain there for ever. Fortuna is mentioned by Roman writers with a great variety of epithets attached to her name, such as publica, privata, multiebris, virilis, &c. &c. At Rome alone the number of her temples amounted to twenty-six.

FORTUNATÆ INSULE, the name by which the Canary Islands were known to the ancients. The Carthaginians were no doubt acquainted with these islands at an early period; but it was the selfish nature of their policy to confine such knowledge to themselves, for the sake of the commercial advantages to be derived from it. It was not, therefore, till the fall of Carthage that the Greeks and Romans acquired any accurate information respecting the islands on the west coast of Libya. Statius Sebosus, the friend of Lutatius Catulus, consul 242 B.C., who flourished in the time of the Cimbrian war, could not have been the first who made the discovery, though he was probably the first who gave a description of them to the public. Of this account we possess only a few notices by Pliny, who seems to have derived no information from any other quarter. Yet there must have been considerable intercourse with these islands, as we find that Sertorius, when flying before the superior force of the party of Sylla, was so charmed with the account of them he received from some sailors, that he was strongly tempted to take refuge there. The name seems at first to have been restricted to two, Convallis, the island of Teneriffe, and Planaria, now Canaria, from which the Canary Islands derive their name. Ptolemy extends the name to six islands. (Strab. i. 3; Plin. vi. 32; Plut. Sert. 9; see Miñano, Diccionario Geografico, &c., Madrid, 1826.)