Temple of Fortuna Primigenia



The temple of Fortuna Primigenia was an ancient Roman temple within the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, a religious complex in Praeneste (now Palestrina, 35 km east of Rome). It was founded in 204 BC by Publius Sempronius Tuditanus and dedicated to the goddess Fortuna Primigenia, the exact meaning of whose name is unclear. Parents brought their newly-born first child to the temple in order to improve its likelihood of surviving infancy and perpetuating the gens.

Sanctuary
The remains of the sanctuary still standing today date to the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, around 80 BC. Sulla commissioned the monumentalisation of the sanctuary to give thanks to Fortuna and commemorate his victory over Gaius Marius, the famous Roman general and 7-time consul. The inspiration for this feat of integrated urbanistic design lay not in republican Rome but in the Hellenistic monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean, such as the sanctuaries of Delos and Kos. Praeneste foreshadowed the grandiose Imperial style of the following generation.



The sanctuary of Fortune occupies a series of five vast terraces, which, resting on gigantic masonry substructures and connected with each other by grand staircases, rise one above the other on the hill, crowned on the highest terrace by the round temple of Fortune, today incorporated into the Palazzo Colonna Barberini. This immense edifice, probably by far the largest sanctuary in Italy, must have presented a most imposing aspect, visible as it was from a great part of Latium, from Rome, and even from the sea.

Cult
The goddess Fortuna here went by the epithet of Primigenia (perhaps meaning "Original"), and was represented suckling two babes, as in the Christian representation of Charity, said to be Jupiter and Juno, and she was especially worshipped by matrons. The cult featured an oracle, consulted by the picking of lots The oracle continued to be consulted down to Christian times, until Constantine the Great, and again later Theodosius I, forbade the practice and closed the temple.

Influence
Features of the sanctuary influenced Roman garden design on steeply sloped sites through Antiquity and once again in Italian villa gardens from the 15th century. The monument to Victor Emmanuel II in Rome owes much to the site.