It is rather to the ideas of peoples like the early Teutons and Celts that we must look for mental conditions resembling those of the early Italians, than to the highly developed poetical mythology of the Vedas; and it is in the direction which Mr. Vigfusson pointed out that I think we should search for the oldest Italian ideas of Fortuna and for the causes which led to her popularity and development. In a valuable paper, to which I shall have occasion to refer again, Prof. Nettleship[687] suggested that Carmenta (or Carmentes) may be explained with S. Augustine[688] as the goddess or prophetess who tells the fortunes of the children, and that this was the reason why she was especially worshipped by matrons, like Mater Matuta, Fortuna and others. The Carmentes were in fact the Norns of Italy. Such a practical need as the desire to know your child’s fortunes would be quite in harmony with what we know of the old Italian character; and I think it far from impossible that Fortuna, as an oracular deity in Italy, may have been originally a conception of the same kind, perhaps not only a prophetess as regards the children, but also of the good luck of the mother in childbirth. Perhaps the most striking fact in her multifarious cults is the predominance in them of women as worshippers. Of the very Fortuna Primogenia of whom we have been speaking Cicero tells us that her ancient home at Praeneste was the object of the special devotion of mothers[689]. The same was the case with Fortuna Virilis, Muliebris, Mammosa, and others.