Wheel of Fortune

Also called Rota Fortunae, Fortune’s wheel

Roman rhetoric by the 2nd century BC; Boethius about 523; the four-figure wheel from the 11th century

Wheel of Fortune meaning

Fortune’s wheel turns, and whoever sits crowned at the top will be at the bottom soon enough. Romans used it as a rhetorical commonplace. Boethius, awaiting execution, made Fortune say it herself.

Unicode

There is no character for Fortune’s wheel. ☸ U+2638 is the dharma wheel, a different mark, and the only wheel in this lexicon with a character. 🎡 U+1F3A1 is a Ferris wheel.

A wheel that puts the crowned on the bottom. The Stoics told you not to care. The picture stayed anyway.

The name. Latin rota, a wheel, and Fortuna, the goddess who turns it.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

Cicero cites the wheel in In Pisonem. Pacuvius, in the second century BC, had Fortune blind and unstable, standing on a rolling sphere. Tacitus complained that the Rota Fortunae was overused in declamation. A Roman statuette of Fortuna from Castlecary holds a rudder, a wheel, and a cornucopia. Early Greek and Roman pictures put her on a sphere. The flat wheel is a later simplification.

Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in prison in 523, under Theodoric, awaiting trial for treason. Lady Philosophy makes Fortune speak in Book II. In H. R. James’s translation she says: I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend. Mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it. The Consolation was translated by King Alfred, Jean de Meun, Chaucer, Notker, and Elizabeth I, and it runs through Dante and Chaucer.

The four-stage wheel appears from the eleventh century. Regnabo, I shall reign, rises on the left. Regno, I reign, is crowned at the top. Regnavi, I have reigned, falls on the right. Sum sine regno, I am without a kingdom, is crushed below. It was carved on cathedrals and set in rose windows, Trento among them. The best-known drawing is bound as the first page of the Codex Buranus, about 1230, the manuscript behind Carmina Burana.

No Stoic author is on record as the inventor of the wheel, and this page does not invent one. The wheel is a picture of what the Stoics said not to care about. Boethius, consoled by Philosophy rather than by faith, is the bridge. The Pompeii memento mori mosaic already sets a wheel under the skull as an allusion to fortune.

Stoic

The picture of what not to mind

A Stoic can describe the wheel accurately and still refuse the lesson Fortune offers, which is to ride it. The thing to refuse is the ride, not the fact that thrones change hands. That is why the mark sits in this cabinet as an argument, not as a crest.

In popular culture

music · 1936

Carmina Burana

Carl Orff’s cantata opens and closes with O Fortuna, taken from the Codex Buranus, the manuscript whose first page is the wheel.

The chorus is now one of the most recognisable pieces in public life. The wheel is older than the orchestra.

Source

card · 15th century

Wheel of Fortune, the trump

The tarot’s Wheel of Fortune has followed the Rota Fortunae since the fifteenth century. Waite’s 1909 card spells TARO and ROTA around the rim.

Waite’s card is a modern occult packing of a medieval diagram.

Source

tv · 1975

Wheel of Fortune

Merv Griffin’s game show has aired since 6 January 1975, built from Hangman and a carnival wheel. The Latin tags are gone.

The crowned and the crushed remain, as a prize and a bankrupt spin.

Source

poetry · 14th century

Chaucer and Dante

Chaucer’s Troilus, the Knight’s Tale, and the Monk’s Tale turn on Fortune. Dante places Boethius among the blessed.

Both poets are reading the Consolation. They are not founding the wheel.

Source

Worth knowing

Early Greek and Roman pictures put Fortune on a rolling sphere. The flat wheel is a later simplification. Source
Vettius Valens, in the second century, described a ninth wheel of fortunes carrying the zodiac, which is why some readers tie the wheel to astrology. Source
Griffin’s inspiration for the television show was the children’s game Hangman. Source

Questions

Where does the Wheel of Fortune come from?

Roman rhetoric already had it by the second century BC. Boethius gave Fortune the speech in 523. The four figures and the four Latin tags are medieval, from the eleventh century on.

What do regnabo, regno, regnavi and sum sine regno mean?

I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, and I am without a kingdom. They label the rising side, the crown, the fall, and the bottom.

Is the Wheel of Fortune a Stoic symbol?

No Stoic author is on record as its maker. It is a picture of rank and luck, which Stoic ethics tells you not to treat as goods. It sits here as that argument.

Near this

Sources

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

Your margin

Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.

symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.