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Julia Domna – Roman Empress Wife of Emperor Septimius Severus
193-211 A.D. –
Bronze 24mm (7.66 grams) of Serdica in Thrace.
ΙΟΛΙΑ ΔOMNAC- Draped bust right.
CЄPΔΩN – Tyche standing facing with rudder and cornucopia.
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The cornucopia (from Latin cornu copiae) or horn of plenty
is a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container
overflowing with produce, flowers, nuts, other edibles, or wealth in some form.
Originating in
classical antiquity
, it has continued as a
symbol in
Western art
, and it is particularly associated
with the
Thanksgiving
holiday in
North America
.
Allegorical
depiction of the Roman
goddess
Abundantia
with a cornucopia, by
Rubens
(ca. 1630)
In Mythology
Mythology
offers multiple
explanations of the origin
of the cornucopia.
One of the best-known involves the birth and nurturance of the infant
Zeus, who had to be hidden from his devouring father
Cronus
. In a cave on
Mount Ida
on the island of
Crete
, baby Zeus was cared for and protected by
a number of divine attendants, including the goat
Amalthea
(“Nourishing Goddess”), who fed him
with her milk. The suckling future king of the gods had unusual abilities and
strength, and in playing with his nursemaid accidentally broke off one of her
horns
, which then had the divine power to
provide unending nourishment, as the foster mother had to the god.
In another myth, the cornucopia was created when
Heracles
(Roman
Hercules
) wrestled with the river god
Achelous
and wrenched off one of his horns;
river gods were sometimes depicted as horned. This version is represented in the
Achelous and Hercules
mural painting
by the
American Regionalist
artist
Thomas Hart Benton
.
The cornucopia became the attribute of several
Greek
and
Roman deities
, particularly those associated
with the harvest, prosperity, or spiritual abundance, such as personifications
of Earth (Gaia
or
Terra
); the child
Plutus
, god of riches and son of the grain
goddess Demeter
; the
nymph
Maia
; and
Fortuna
, the goddess of luck, who had the power
to grant prosperity. In
Roman Imperial cult
, abstract Roman deities who
fostered peace (pax
Romana) and prosperity were also depicted with a cornucopia,
including Abundantia
, “Abundance” personified, and
Annona
, goddess of the
grain supply to the city of Rome
.
Pluto
, the classical ruler of the underworld in
the
mystery religions
, was a giver of agricultural,
mineral and spiritual wealth, and in art often holds a cornucopia to distinguish
him from the gloomier Hades
, who holds a
drinking horn
instead.
Modern depictions
In modern depictions, the cornucopia is typically a hollow, horn-shaped
wicker basket filled with various kinds of festive
fruit
and
vegetables
. In North America, the cornucopia
has come to be associated with
Thanksgiving
and the harvest. Cornucopia is
also the name of the annual November Wine and Food celebration in
Whistler
, British Columbia, Canada. Two
cornucopias are seen in the
flag
and
state seal
of
Idaho
. The Great
Seal
of
North Carolina
depicts Liberty standing and
Plenty holding a cornucopia. The coat of arms of
Colombia
,
Panama
,
Peru and
Venezuela
, and the Coat of Arms of the State of
Victoria, Australia
, also feature the
cornucopia, symbolising prosperity.
The horn of plenty is used on body art and at Halloween, as it is a symbol of
fertility, fortune and abundance.
Gallery
-
-
-
Base of a statue of
Louis XV of France
-
-
Cornucopia as an object used in interior decoration
Fortuna (Latin:
Fortūna, equivalent to the
Greek
goddess
Tyche
) was the goddess of fortune and
personification
of
luck in
Roman religion
. She might bring good luck or
bad: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of
Justice
, and came to represent life’s
capriciousness. She was also a goddess of
fate
: as Atrox Fortuna, she claimed the
young lives of the
princeps
Augustus
‘ grandsons
Gaius
and
Lucius
, prospective heirs to the Empire.
Her father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful . As
Annonaria
she protected grain supplies.
June 11 was sacred to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of
Fors Fortuna
.
Cult
Fortuna and Pontos
Fortuna’s Roman cult was variously attributed to
Servius Tullius
– whose exceptional good
fortune suggested their sexual intimacy
– and to
Ancus Marcius
.
The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on
the right bank of the Tiber (in Italian
Trastevere
). The first temple dedicated to Fors
was attributed to the Etruscan Servius Tullius, while the second is known to
have been built in 293 BC as the fulfilment of a Roman promise made during later
Etruscan wars
[6]
The date of dedication of her temples was 24 June, or Midsummer’s Day, when
celebrants from Rome annually floated to the temples downstream from the city.
After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated.[7]
Also Fortuna had a temple at the
Forum Boarium
. Here Fortuna was twinned with
the cult of
Mater Matuta
(the goddesses shared a festival
on 11 June), and the paired temples have been revealed in the excavation beside
the church of
Sant’Omobono
: the cults are indeed archaic in
date.[8]
Fortuna Primigenia of
Praeneste
was adopted by Romans at the end of
3rd BC in an important cult of Fortuna Publica Populi Romani (the
Official Good Luck of the Roman People) on the
Quirinalis
outside the
Porta Collina
.[9]
No temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine
sanctuary.
Fortuna lightly balances the
orb
of sovereignty between thumb
and finger in a Dutch painting of ca 1530
(Musée
des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
Fortuna’s identity as personification of chance events was closely tied to
virtus
(strength of character). Public
officials who lacked virtues invited ill-fortune on themselves and Rome:
Sallust
uses the infamous
Catiline
as illustration – “Truly, when in the
place of work, idleness, in place of the
spirit of measure and equity
, caprice and pride
invade, fortune is changed just as with morality”.
An oracle
at the
Temple of Fortuna Primigena
in
Praeneste
used a form of divination in which a
small boy picked out one of various futures that were written on
oak
rods. Cults to Fortuna in her many forms are attested throughout the Roman
world. Dedications have been found to Fortuna Dubia (doubtful fortune),
Fortuna Brevis (fickle or wayward fortune) and Fortuna Mala (bad
fortune).
She is found in a variety of domestic and personal contexts. During the early
Empire, an amulet from the
House of Menander
in
Pompeii
links her to the Egyptian goddess
Isis, as Isis-Fortuna.[11]
She is functionally related to the God
Bonus Eventus
,[12]
who is often represented as her counterpart: both appear on
amulets
and intaglio
engraved gems
across the Roman world.
Her name seems to derive from Vortumna (she who revolves the year).[citation
needed]
The earliest reference to
the Wheel of Fortune
, emblematic of the endless
changes in life between prosperity and disaster, is from 55 BC.
In
Seneca
‘s tragedy Agamemnon, a chorus
addresses Fortuna in terms that would remain almost proverbial, and in a high
heroic ranting mode that Renaissance writers would emulate:
“O Fortune, who dost bestow the throne’s high boon with mocking hand, in
dangerous and doubtful state thou settest the too exalted. Never have
sceptres obtained calm peace or certain tenure; care on care weighs them
down, and ever do fresh storms vex their souls. …great kingdoms sink
of their own weight, and Fortune gives way ‘neath the burden of herself.
Sails swollen with favouring breezes fear blasts too strongly theirs;
the tower which rears its head to the very clouds is beaten by rainy
Auster
…. Whatever Fortune has raised
on high, she lifts but to bring low. Modest estate has longer life; then
happy he whoe’er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the
shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with
unambitious oar keeps close to land.”
Ovid
‘s description is typical of Roman
representations: in a letter from exile
he reflects ruefully on the “goddess who admits by her unsteady wheel her own
fickleness; she always has its apex beneath her swaying foot.”
Middle Ages
Fortuna did not disappear from the popular imagination with the ascendancy of
Christianity by any means.
Saint Augustine
took a stand against her
continuing presence, in the
City of God
: “How, therefore, is she good,
who without discernment comes to both the good and to the bad? …It profits one
nothing to worship her if she is truly fortune… let the bad worship
her…this supposed deity”.
In the 6th century, the
Consolation of Philosophy
, by statesman and
philosopher
Boethius
, written while he faced execution,
reflected the Christian theology of casus, that the apparently random and
often ruinous turns of Fortune’s Wheel are in fact both inevitable and
providential, that even the most coincidental events are part of God’s hidden
plan which one should not resist or try to change. Fortuna, then, was a servant
of God,[18]
and events, individual decisions, the
influence of the stars
were all merely vehicles
of Divine Will. In succeeding generations Boethius’ Consolation was
required reading for scholars and students. Fortune crept back in to popular
acceptance, with a new iconographic trait, “two-faced Fortune”, Fortuna
bifrons; such depictions continue into the 15th century.
Albrecht Dürer
‘s engraving of
Fortuna, ca 1502
The ubiquitous image of
the Wheel of Fortune
found throughout the
Middle Ages and beyond was a direct legacy of the second book of Boethius’s
Consolation. The Wheel appears in many renditions from tiny miniatures in
manuscripts
to huge stained glass windows in
cathedrals, such as at
Amiens
. Lady Fortune is usually represented as
larger than life to underscore her importance. The wheel characteristically has
four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures, usually labeled on the
left regnabo (I shall reign), on the top regno (I reign) and is
usually crowned, descending on the right regnavi (I have reigned) and the
lowly figure on the bottom is marked sum sine regno (I have no kingdom).
Medieval representations of Fortune emphasize her duality and instability, such
as two faces side by side like
Janus
; one face smiling the other frowning;
half the face white the other black; she may be blindfolded but without scales,
blind to justice. She was associated with the
cornucopia
, ship’s rudder, the ball and the
wheel. The cornucopia is where plenty flows from, the Helmsman’s rudder steers
fate, the globe symbolizes chance (who gets good or bad luck), and the wheel
symbolizes that luck, good or bad, never lasts.
Fortune would have many influences in cultural works throughout the Middle
Ages. In
Le Roman de la Rose
, Fortune frustrates the
hopes of a lover who has been helped by a personified character “Reason”. In
Dante’s
Inferno
(vii.67-96)
Virgil
explains the nature of Fortune, both a
devil and a ministering angel, subservient to God.
Boccaccio
‘s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium
(“The Fortunes of Famous Men”), used by
John Lydgate
to compose his
Fall of Princes
, tells of many where the
turn of Fortune’s wheel brought those most high to disaster, and Boccaccio essay
De remedii dell’una e dell’altra Fortuna, depends upon Boethius for the
double nature of Fortuna. Fortune makes her appearance in
Carmina Burana
(see image). The
Christianized Lady Fortune is not autonomous: illustrations for Boccaccio’s
Remedii show Fortuna enthroned in a triumphal car with reins that lead to
heaven,[20]
and appears in chapter 25 of Machiavelli’s
The Prince
, in which he says Fortune only
rules one half of men’s fate, the other half being of their own will.
Machiavelli reminds the reader that Fortune is a woman, that she favours a
strong, or even violent hand, and that she favours the more aggressive and bold
young man than a timid elder. Even
Shakespeare
was no stranger to Lady Fortune:
- When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes
- I all alone beweep my outcast state … —
Sonnet 29
Pars Fortuna in
Astrology
llustration by Al-Biruni (973-1048) of different phases of the moon,
from the Persian Kitab al-tafhim
In Astrology
the term ‘Pars Fortuna’ represents a
mathematical point in the
zodiac
derived by the longitudinal positions of
the Sun
,
Moon and
Ascendant
(Rising sign) in the birth chart of
an individual. It represents an especially beneficial point in the horoscopic
chart. In
Arabic
Astrology
, this point is called
Arabian Parts
.
The procedure followed for fixing one’s Pars Fortuna in ancient and
traditional astrology depended on the time of birth, viz., during daylight or
night time (whether the Sun was above or below the
horizon
). In modern
western astrology
the day time formula only was
used for many years, but with more knowledge of ancient astrology, the two
calculation methods are now often used.
The formula for calculating the day time Part of Fortune (PF) is (using the
360 degree positions for each point):
PF = Ascendant + Moon
–
Sun
The formula for the night-time Part of Fortune is PF = Ascendant + Sun – Moon
Each calculation method results in a different
zodiac
position for the
Part of Fortune
.
Al Biruni
(973 – 1048), an 11th-century
mathematician, astronomer and scholar, who was the greatest proponent of this
system of prediction, listed a total of 97 Arabic Parts, which were widely used
for astrological consultations. Paul Vachier has prepared an Arabic Parts
Calculator for all the Arabic Parts.
Tyche (pronounced Too-kee; Greek for luck; the Roman equivalent was Fortuna)
was the presiding tutelary deity that governed the fortune and prosperity of a
city, its destiny. Increasingly during the Hellenistic period, cities had their
own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown (a crown like the
walls of the city).
The history of Sofia
, Bulgaria
‘s capital and largest city, spans thousands of years from
Antiquity
to modern times, during which the city has been a commercial,
industrial, cultural and economic centre in its region and the
Balkans
.
Sofia was originally a
Thracian
settlement called Serdica or Sardica (Greek: Σερδική, Σαρδική), named
after the Celtic
[1]
tribe Serdi
that
had populated it.For a short period during the 4th century BC, the city was
possessed by
Philip of Macedon
and his son
Alexander the Great
.
Around BC 29, Sofia was conquered by the
Romans
and renamed Ulpia Serdica. It became a municipium, or centre of an
administrative region, during the reign of Emperor
Trajan
(98-117). The city expanded, as
turrets
,
protective walls, public baths, administrative and cult buildings, a civic
basilica
and a large
amphitheatre
called Bouleutherion, were built. When Emperor
Diocletian
divided the province of
Dacia
into Dacia
Ripensis (on the banks of the
Danube
) and
Dacia Mediterranea, Serdica became the capital of Dacia Mediterranea. The city
subsequently expanded for a century and a half, which caused
Constantine the Great
to call it “my Rome”. In 343 A.D. , the
Council of Sardica
was held in the city, in a church located where the
current 6th century
Church of Saint Sofia
was later built.
Serdica was of moderate size, but magnificent as an urban concept of planning
and architecture, with abundant amusements and an active social life. It
flourished during the reign of
Byzantine Emperor
Justinian
I
, when it was surrounded with great fortress walls whose remnants can still
be seen today.
The city was destroyed by the
Huns in 447 but was
rebuilt by
Byzantine Emperor
Justinian
and renamed Triaditsa. Although also often destroyed by the
Slavs, the town remained under Byzantine dominion until 809.
Julia
Domna (unknown date–217)
was a member of the
Severan dynasty
of the
 Roman
Empire. Empress and wife of
Roman
Emperor
Lucius
Septimius Severus
and mother of Emperors
Geta
and Caracalla
, Julia was among the most important women ever to exercise power
behind the throne in the Roman Empire.
//
Family
background
Julia was of Syrian origin from the ancient city of
Emesa. Her
ancestors were Kings Priest of the famous temple of
Baal. The family
lost its kingdom to Rome but continued domination of the temple of Baal. The
family had an enormous wealth and was promoted to Roman senatorial aristocracy.
She was the youngest daughter of high-priest Gaius
Julius Bassianus
and her eldest sister was
Julia
Maesa
.
Reign
In the late 180s, Julia married future Emperor
Septimius Severus
who himself was in part of
Punic
background. The marriage proved to be a happy one and Severus
cherished his wife and her political opinions, since she was very well read and
keen on philosophy. Together, they had two sons, Lucius Septimius Bassianus (Caracalla)
in 186 and
Publius Septimius Geta
in 189.
Civil
War
When Severus became emperor in 193 he had a civil war waiting
for him, against rivals such as
Pescennius Niger
and
Clodius Albinus
. Julia accompanied him in his campaigns in the East, an
uncommon event in a time when women were expected to wait in Rome for their
husbands. Nevertheless, she remained with the emperor and among the several
proofs of affection and favour are the minting of coins with her portrait and
the title mater castrorum (mother of the camp).
Julia now had complete power and ruled behind the Roman
Empire. Many early Romans disliked the fact of her ruling over the throne when
Septimius Severus was at war.
Controversy
and transition of power
As empress, Julia was often involved in intrigues and had
plenty of political enemies who accused her of treason and adultery. None of
these accusations were proven, Severus continued to favour his wife and insisted
on her company in the campaign against the
Britons
that started in 208. When Severus died, in 211 in
York, Julia became
the mediator between their two sons.
Caracalla
and
Geta
who were to rule as joint emperors, according to their father’s wishes
expressed on his will. But the two young men were never fond of each other and
quarrelled frequently. Geta was murdered by Caracalla’s soldiers in the same
year.
Caracalla was now sole emperor, but his relations with his
mother were difficult, as attested by several sources, probably due to his
involvement in Geta’s murder. Nevertheless, Julia accompanied Caracalla in his
campaign against the
Parthian empire
in 217. During this trip, Caracalla was assassinated and
succeeded (briefly) by
Macrinus
.
On hearing about the rebellion, Julia chose to commit suicide. Her body was
brought to Rome and placed in the Sepulcrum C. et L. Caesaris (perhaps a
separate chamber in the
Mausoleum of Augustus
). Later, however, both her bones and those of Geta
were transferred by her sister
Julia
Maesa
to the
Mausoleum of Hadrian
.
She was later deified.
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