Of all the pagan deities, Fortune was the most absolute and the most universally worshiped; for she kept all men at her feet, the prosperous through fear and the unfortunate through hope.[236] She was also an eccentric goddess, not only favoring the brave, according to the familiar maxim of Terence, but likewise being decidedly partial to fools, if we may believe another classical saying, _Fortuna favet fatuis_. And again, as an ancient poet wrote, _Legem veretur nocens, Fortunam innocens_. The satirist Juvenal said that, if men were discreet, Fortune had no power over them. When she entered Rome she folded her wings as a sign that she wished to remain there; and, as has been aptly remarked, she is there still, for the modern Roman is as firm a believer in luck, whether good or bad, as was the Roman citizen two thousand years ago.[237] Among the ancients, a lucky event, something opportune occurring unexpectedly, was ascribed to a sudden caprice or whim on the part of the goddess, while success in an undertaking was thought to be due to her favor when in a sober mood.[238] “Why was Fortune made a goddess?” asked St. Augustine, since she is so blind that she runs to anybody without distinction, and often passes by her admirers to cling to those who despise her.[239] And Cicero remarked that Fortune was not only blind herself, but often deprived her votaries of sight. Pliny, in discoursing about the religious beliefs current in his time, says:— All over the world, in all places and at all times, Fortune is the only God whom every one invokes: she alone is spoken of; she alone is accused and is supposed to be guilty; she alone is in our thoughts, is praised and blamed, and is loaded with reproaches; wavering as she is, conceived by the generality of mankind to be blind, wandering, inconstant, uncertain, variable, and often favoring the unworthy. To her are referred all our losses and all our gains, and, in casting up the accounts of mortals, she alone balances the two pages of our sheet. We are so much in the power of chance, that chance itself is considered as a God. The representations of Fortune, which are to be seen in ancient statues, bas-reliefs, medals, and coins, exhibit the many different attributes of her character. The earliest image of the goddess was probably at Smyrna, and was the work of the eminent sculptor Bupalus, who lived in the sixth century B. C. She was here shown as bearing on her head a hemisphere, and with the horn of Amalthæa in her left hand, thus typifying the distribution of all good things.[240]