We learn from the historian Suetonius that the early Roman emperors were wont to cherish small images of Fortune, which they venerated as special tutelary deities.
The goddess is said to have once appeared in a vision to the Emperor Galba, who reigned A. D. 68-69, and to have informed him that she was standing weary before his door, and that, if she were not quickly admitted, every one dear to him would become her prey. On awakening he found outside the entrance-hall of his palace a bronze figure of Fortune, which he concealed beneath his garments and carried to his summer residence at Tusculum. There he set apart a sanctuary for the image, and offered prayers to it each month, keeping, moreover, in its honor an all-night vigil every year. On one occasion Galba had intended to present his little guardian genius with a necklace of pearls and precious stones, but changed his mind and gave it to the Capitoline Venus. The following night Fortune, in angry mood, again appeared to the emperor in a dream, complaining that she had been cheated out of the intended gift, and threatening to take away the many benefits which she had bestowed upon him. Alarmed at this, Galba sent a messenger early in the morning to prepare a sacrificial offering, and he himself hastened to Tusculum, but found on the altar of the sanctuary nothing but warm ashes; and near by stood an old man clothed in black, holding in one hand a glass plate containing incense, and in the other an earthenware vessel full of sacrificial wine.[245]
Some verses containing uncomplimentary allusions to the character of Fortune were formerly to be seen on the wall of a chamber in Wressell Castle, Yorkshire, a building of the latter part of the fourteenth century, which was destroyed by fire in 1796:—
The Proverbis in the syde of the utter chamber above of the Hous in the Gardyng at Wresyll.
No thynge to fortune thou apply,
For her gyftis vanyshithe as doth fantasy,
The more thou receyvethe of her gyftis moste unsure,
The more to the aprochethe displeasure.
Then in blynde fortune put not thy truste.
For her brightness sone receyveth ruste.