Personifications of Eudaimonia, Felicitas and Fortuna in Greek and Roman Art

Abstract

When Eudaimonia appears as a personification in Classical Greek vase painting, she is closely connected to Aphrodite and Eros. The Latin beatitudo has no personification in the arts, but the iconographic qualities of Eudaimonia are cited in variants of the Roman Felicitas and her alter ego, Fortuna, who were believed to govern a more pragmatic kind of love in which fertility was regarded as one road to happiness, but there were also other paths, such as health and safe homecoming from the sea. This paper addresses Eudaimonia, Felicitas and Fortuna in a diachronic perspective on Greek and Roman art and directs the attention to the use of these personifications/goddesses as visual expressions of the significance of love and reproduction in a good life. The individual, sexual love where pleasure creates a sensation of ‘bliss’ is compared to the religious/spiritual beliefs in a happy afterlife as well as to public expressions of a shared and lasting love where the goal – fertility and reproduction – embodied welfare and happiness.