Tyche

Tyche, whose name means “Fortune” or “Luck”, was the goddess of chance and good fortune in Greek mythology. In the earliest sources she is a minor Oceanid, one of the daughters of Oceanus who played with Persephone; by Pindar’s time she was invoked as a powerful saviour of cities and ships. The Romans identified her with Fortuna.

Parents and Early Sources

Hesiod lists Tyche among the Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys (Hesiod, Theogony 346–362, with Tyche named at 360). In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Tyche is one of the Oceanid companions of Persephone who are gathering flowers in the meadow when Hades seizes her (Hymn to Demeter 417–420). Pausanias quotes these lines as Homer’s and notes that he says nothing more about her and does not treat her as the most powerful of the gods in human affairs (Pausanias 4.30.4–5).

Pindar gives her a different parentage and a larger role. He calls her “child of Zeus the Liberator” and “saviour Tyche” (Pindar, Olympian 12.1–2). Through her, he says, swift ships are steered on the sea, and wars on land and the assemblies where decisions are made; the hopes of men are tossed up and down, and no one has ever found a reliable sign from the gods about what will happen, since the minds of men are blind to the future (Olympian 12.3–9). Many things, he says, fall out contrary to expectation (Olympian 12.10–12). Pausanias adds that Pindar was the first to call her “Supporter of the City” (Pherepolis) (Pausanias 4.30.6) and that in a poem he made Fortune one of the Fates (Moirai), more powerful than her sisters (Pausanias 7.26.8).

Images and Attributes

Pausanias says that Bupalus, who made the statue of Fortune at Smyrna, was the first known to represent her with the heavenly sphere (polos) on her head and the horn of Amaltheia in one hand (Pausanias 4.30.6). At Aegira in Achaea he saw an image of Fortune carrying the horn of Amaltheia, with a winged Eros at her side, which he understood to mean that success in love depends on fortune rather than beauty (Pausanias 7.26.8). At Thebes there was a sanctuary of Fortune who carries the child Wealth (Ploutos) in her arms, and Pausanias says the image suggests that she is his mother or nurse (Pausanias 9.16.1–2).

Cult

Pausanias records sanctuaries of Fortune at Pharae in Messenia (4.30.3), at Corinth, where a temple held a standing marble image (2.2.8), at Argos, where the temple was thought to be the one in which Palamedes dedicated the dice he had invented (2.20.3), at Hermione, where the sanctuary was the newest in the city and held a marble colossus (2.35.3), at Sicyon, where the image of Fortune of the Height stood on the citadel (2.7.5), and at Thebes and Aegira, mentioned above.

Tyche Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 346–362; Homeric Hymn to Demeter 417–420; Pindar, Olympian 12.1–12; Pausanias 2.2.8, 2.7.5, 2.20.3, 2.35.3, 4.30.3–6, 7.26.8, 9.16.1–2.

See Also: Oceanus, Tethys, Persephone, Zeus, Moirai, Nemesis