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The Wheel of Fortune, or ''Rota Fortunae'', is a concept in medieval and ancient philosophy referring to the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna, who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel - some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Fortune appears on all paintings as a woman, sometimes blindfolded, "puppeteering" a wheel. ==Origins== The origin of the word is from the "wheel of fortune" - the zodiac, referring to the Celestial spheres of which the 8th holds the stars, and the 9th is where the signs of the zodiac are placed. The concept was first invented in Babylon and later developed by the ancient Greeks. The concept somewhat resembles the ''Bhavacakra'', or Wheel of Becoming, depicted throughout Ancient Indian art and literature, except that the earliest conceptions in the Roman and Greek world involve not a two-dimensional wheel but a three-dimensional sphere, a metaphor for the world. It was widely used in the Ptolemaic perception of the universe as the zodiac being a wheel with its "signs" constantly turning throughout the year and having effect on the world's fate (or fortune). Vettius Valens, a second century BC astronomer and astrologer, wrote: ::There are many wheels, most moving from west to east, but some move from east to west. ::Seven wheels, each hold one heavenly object, the first holds the moon... ::Then the eighth wheel holds all the stars that we see... ::And the ninth wheel, the wheel of fortunes, moves from east to west, ::and includes each of the twelve signs of fortune, the twelve signs of the zodiac. ::Each wheel is inside the other, like an onion's peel sits inside another peel, and there is no empty space between them. In the same century, the Roman tragedian Pacuvius wrote: The idea of the rolling ball of fortune became a literary topos and was used frequently in declamation. In fact, the ''Rota Fortunae'' became a prime example of a trite topos or meme for Tacitus, who mentions its rhetorical overuse in the ''Dialogus de oratoribus''. Fortuna eventually became Christianized: the Roman philosopher Boethius (d. 524) was a major source for the medieval view of the Wheel, writing about it in his ''Consolatio Philosophiae'' - "I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected. … Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune." ~ Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rota Fortunae」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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