Chapter CIV: Section V: Old Italian Deities

Februus was the old Italian god both of the dead and of fertility, to whom February was sacred. The word is thought to mean purification, but after the Etruscan deities were forgotten, Juno, who had also a share in the month, absorbed it all, and was called Juno Februata. Thence, probably, arose the name of Febronia, a nun of Sibapolis on the borders of Assyria, who suffered horrid torments under her persecutors, and was at last beheaded. She is venerated by the Greek Church on the 25th of June, and suggested to Russia the names Fevronia, or Khevronia.

Though not divine, the name of Lavinia should be mentioned here as that of a mythical personage imitated by the moderns, though not by the Romans themselves. In Livy and in Virgil, she is the daughter of King Latinus, and the last wife of Æneas, in whose right he obtained a footing in Italy. Niebuhr and his followers deny her existence, and make her a mere personification of the Latin territory, and whether this be the case or not, hers is certainly a feminine form of Latinus, the _t_ changed to _v_, as happened in other instances. The classical Italians of the Cinque-cento revived Lavinia for their daughters; and by way of recommending the story of the Book of Ruth to the taste of the eighteenth century, Thomson had the audacity to translate the Moabitess into “the lovely young Lavinia,” whence it has happened that this has become rather a favourite with those classes in England who have a taste for many syllables ending in _ia_.

Picus was another old Italian deity who used to be represented with a woodpecker on his head. Whether he or the woodpecker first had the name of Picus does not appear; but in English that term passed to the pyot or magpie, and some recurrence to old tradition caused Pico to be revived in Italy in the person of the famous Pico de Mirandola and his namesakes.

From _fors_ (chance) came Fortuna, the goddess of prosperity and success. She was said on entering Rome to have thrown away her globe, and shed her wings like a queen-ant, to denote that here she took up her permanent abode. She was adored at Rome as early as the reign of Ancus Martius, and to her was ascribed the success of the women’s entreaty in turning away the wrath of Coriolanus.

Her name does not appear to have been used in the heathen times, but in 212 SS. Felix and Fortunatus were martyred at Valence in Dauphiné, and it was probably from the latter that Fortunio became a name among the early Asturian and Navarrese sovereigns.

What shall we think of the augury of names when we find in the parish register of St. John’s, Newcastle, on the 20th of June, 1599, the marriage of Umphraye Hairope, husbandman, to Fortune Shafto, gentlewoman?

A pair of twins, girls, of the Wycliffe family, born in 1710, were christened Favour and Fortune; and Fortune is a surname in Scotland.[73]

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Footnote 72:

Butler; Keightley; Smith.

Footnote 73:

Niebuhr; Arnold; Surius; Keightley; Sir O. Sharpe, _Extracts from
Parish Registers_.