Abstract
WH HOEVER first conceived the idea of the wheel-whether in Babylonia, where solid wheels were known as early as 3000 B.C. and wheels with axles as early as 1600 B.C., or in Egypt, where actual wooden wheels with bronze rims have been found as early as the fifteenth century B.C. and from the fourteenth century in Tutenkhamon's tomb-made a wonderful invention. It assisted the progress of civilization and the means of transportation. But, even if the wheel was known before the Greeks, the metaphor of the Wheel of Fortune, I believe, began with the Greeks. Many scholars have said that it first occurs in medieval literature, but that has been shown to be an erroneous hypothesis. Gildersleeve and Headlam realized that the idea was Greek, but Kirby Flower Smith' in the conmmentary on Tibullus i. 5. 70 says that the earliest reference to the Wheel of is Cicero In Pisonem 22: The house of your colleague rang with song and cymbals while he himself danced naked at a feast, wherein, even while he executed his whirling gyrations, he felt no fear of the Wheel of Fortune (cum conlegae tui domus cantu et cymbalis personaret cumque ipse nudus in convivio saltaret, in quo cum illum saltatorium versaret orbem, ne tum quidem fortunae rotam pertimescebat). Galpin also, in an article, Fortune's Wheel in the Roman de la Rose (a work
Published Version
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