From an edition of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel.
In the seventh canto of the Inferno, when the Pilgrim asks his guide who is Fortune and “what is she like / who holds all worldly wealth within her fists” (Musa 65), he responds:
For worldly splendors, He decreed the same
and ordained a guide and general ministress
who would at her discretion shift vain wealth
from nation unto nation, house to house,
without a chance of mankind’s interference;
…………………………………………
Your knowledge has no influence on her;
she provides for change, she judges, and she rules
her domain as do the other gods their own.
Her changing changes never take a rest;
necessity keeps her in constant motion;
men quickly come and go to take their turn. (Musa 65)
Her role is clearly defined and though “she is blest” (Musa 67), she “turns her sphere and, blest, turns it with joy.” The Pilgrim is incapable of denying his desire for heavenly intelligence, suggesting that man must therefore submit to Fortune since “vain wealth” changes hands at her will. She is constantly rearranging the world to alter the fates of men. Boethius echoes this sentiment in Philosophiae consolationis when Fortune claims it is impossible for her to remain stagnant:
Shall the insatiable desire of men tie me to constancy, so contrary to my custom? This is my force, this is the sport which I continually use. I turn about my wheel with speed, and take a pleasure to turn things upside down. Ascend, if thou wilt, but with this condition, that thou thinkest it not injury to descend when the course of my sport so requireth. (Stewart and Rand 181)
The significance—if not beauty—of Fortune is her ever-changing nature, which gives men hope that their fate may improve when things are seemingly difficult and hopeless.
