Tyche&Fortuna
Chance, Fortune, & the Turning Wheel
Tyche
Tyche, Lady of Chance
Rudder, cornucopia, the wheel, a crown of towers
A Hellenistic goddess of a city's fortune, elevated as the guardian of urban fate.
Capricious and unappealable — she gives and takes without explanation.
Civic dedications, and the Fortuna of each city's shrine.
Chance as a force that even the wise must simply endure.
Fortuna
Fortuna Primigenia, Fortuna Redux
Wheel, rudder, cornucopia, the globe
A very ancient Italic fertility and chance goddess with temples at Praeneste and Rome.
A public deity with dozens of titles, tied to crops, births, and the emperor's safe return.
The Fors Fortuna festival, when commoners rowed down the Tiber in garlands.
Fortune as a manageable civic risk, courted with dozens of specialised altars.
Syncretism Analysis
Tyche is a philosophical symbol of caprice; Fortuna is a bureaucratic deity with so many epithets that Rome tried to bribe chance itself. One is a mystery, the other is a filing cabinet.