But the chief argument is based on the cult of Fortuna Primigenia, ‘the first-born of the gods,’ as he translates the word, in accordance with a recent elaborate investigation of its meaning[679]. This cult does indeed show very curious and interesting characters. It belonged originally to Praeneste, where Fortuna was the presiding deity of an ancient and famous oracle. Here have been found inscriptions to Fortuna, ‘DIOVO[S] FILEA[I] PRIMOGENIA[I],’ the first-born daughter of Jupiter[680]. Here also, strange to say, Cicero describes[681] an enclosure sacred to Jupiter Puer, who was represented there with Juno as sitting in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammam appetens.’ This very naturally attracted Prof. Max Müller’s keenest attention, and he had no difficulty in finding his explanation: Fortuna is ‘the first-born of all the bright powers of the sky, and the daughter of the sky; but likewise from another point of view the mother of the daily sun who is the bright child she carries in her arms.’ This is charming; but it is the language and thought, not of ancient Italians, but of Vedic poets. The great Latin scholar, who had for years been soaking his mind in Italian antiquities, will hardly venture on an explanation at all: ‘haud ignarus quid deceat eum qui Aboriginum regiones attingat[682].’ I shall have occasion later on[683] to say something of this very interesting and mysterious cult at Praeneste. At present I must be content with pointing out that it is altogether unsafe to regard it as representative of any general ideas of ancient Italian religion. As Italian archaeologists are aware, Praeneste was a city in which Etruscan and Greek influences are most distinctly traceable, and in which foreign deities and myths seem to have become mixed up with native ones, to the extreme bewilderment of the careful inquirer[684]. We may accept the Professor’s explanation of it with all respect as a most interesting hypothesis, but as no more than a hypothesis which needs much more information than we as yet possess to render it even a probable one. By his own account the Professor would not have been led so far afield for an explanation of Fortuna if he had not been struck by the apparent difficulty involved in such a goddess as ‘she who brings.’ Towards the removal of this difficulty, however, the late Mr. Vigfusson did something in a letter to the _Academy_ of March 17, 1888[685]. He equated Fors and Fortuna with the Icelandic _buror_, from a verb having quite as wide and general a meaning as _fero_, and being its etymological equivalent. ‘There is a department of its meanings,’ he tells us, ‘through which runs the notion of an invisible, passive, sudden, involuntary, chance agency’; and another, in which _bera_ means to give birth, and produces a noun meaning birth, and so lucky birth, honour, &c. The two ideas come together in the Norse notion of the Norns who presided at the birth of each child, shaping at that hour the child’s fortune[686].