Temples in honor of the Goddess Tyche were built at Elis, Corinth, and
in other Grecian cities; and in the second century A. D. the eminent
philanthropist, Herodes Atticus, erected for her a temple in Athens, the
ruins of which are believed still to exist.[249]
The western suburb of Syracuse, in Sicily, was called Τύχη, after a
temple of Tyche which adorned it.
Among the Italians the worship of Fortune became so popular that her
temples outnumbered all others. “We have built a thousand temples to
Fortune and not one to Reason,” remarked Fronto, the worthy tutor of
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Of all these pagan edifices in Rome, but a
single one now remains, the temple of Fortuna Virilis, now the church of
Santa Maria Egiziaca.[250] It is a small Ionic tetrastyle building on the
left bank of the Tiber, a little north of the so-called Temple of the
Sun. But the most famous Italian temple of Fortune was at Preneste, an
ancient Latin town, now called Palestrina. Here oracles were consulted
and fugitives found a place of refuge.
In Great Britain there still exist a number of altars in honor of
Fortune, which date from the Roman occupation. One of these, on the line
of the wall of Antoninus in Scotland, was erected by soldiers of the
second and sixth legions. Another altar, dedicated to the same goddess,
was found at the headquarters of the sixth legion at Eboracum, the modern
city of York, and is still to be seen at the museum there.[251] The
inscription on this altar was copied by the writer during a recent visit
to York, and reads as follows:—
DEÆ FORTUNÆ
SOSIA
IUNCINA
Q. ANTONI
ISAURICI
LEG. AUG.