Possibly the nerdiest, only-made-me-laugh, visual gag ever – do I get an award or something?

This will at least go on the list on possible future merch when our little podcast becomes wildly successful.

Our cover art features the goddess Tyche, who came to represent the idea of chance or fortune in the ancient Mediterranean. Hence my new catchphrase “What has Tyche been smoking?” suggests that the goddess of fortune may have been acting a little bizarrely lately, well more bizarrely than usual, and perhaps she has taken too many hits from the bong.

This copper alloy statue is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (baby!), where she is prosaically labelled as “Statuette of the Personification of a City. Byzantine, said to have been found in Rome , 300-500.” The label goes on to explain that Tyche was often connected with the fortune of a city, and although it is no longer known which particular city this particular small scale statuette of Tyche was intended to promote, Constantinople has been suggested. Images of Tyche can be found on a variety of “stuff” or as the Met label says, “in a variety of media” – coins, stone relief, glass bottles, and stone and copper alloy sculptures.

Tyche is here seated on a throne, holding a cornucopia (a horn of plenty filled with good food) and is missing the attribute in her left hand, this possibly was a staff (an attribute is an object that is typically associated with her that aids in identification). The Met label helpfully tells us that she wears a “mural crown, chiton and peplos,” which I shall try to translate for us mere mortals. The chiton is a tunic that is fastened at the shoulders with small pins or brooches, sewing or buttons. It is worn by both men and women, and the version Tyche here wears features what is called an apoptygma, an overfold, which was more common on women. Eventually, most Greek women, except the Spartans, began to wear the chiton rather than their former garment of choice the peplos which was less secure, as it was just a long rectangle of cloth folded about them with one end folded over to the waist and secured by large bronze pins. The peplos of Spartan women was shorter, with slits in the sides, which caused other Greeks to call them phainomērides or “thigh-showers.” Herodotus (5.87) tells us that there was a legend that Athenian women began to wear the chiton rather than the peplos after a group of women used the large bronze pins that fastened the peplos to stab to death a messenger! Talk about dressed to kill.

It is Tyche’s “mural crown,” however, that really identifies her. A mural crown is simply a crown that is in the shape of city walls, towers or fortress. Nowadays we use the word mural to mean a large painting on a wall, which is derived from the same Latin root, murus meaning wall. In classical antiquity, a mural crown, or crown of city walls, was worn by what is known as a tutelary deity, the god or goddess that watched over a city. Tutelary, derived from the Latin tutelarius, from tutela “keeping” suggests the guardianship role of the deity. Lots of things could have a tutelary deity in the ancient world, from the large scale, to the small. Athena, for example was the patron goddess of Athens, but Greeks also thought that individual also had their own tutelary spirits or daimon, that of a man was called his Genius, and that of a woman, her Juno. This idea is not, of course, limited to Ancient Greece and Rome, many cultures around the world share this idea of a protective guardian. In Slavic pagan mythology the tutelary deity of the forest is called The Leshy; in Hinduism istha-devata are personal tutelary deities and there are also family tutelary deities, village tutelary dieties and city goddesses such as Mumbadevi for the city of Mumbai; Chinese folk religion also has a plethora of tutelary deities such as Tudigong an earth deity that protects a individual localities and city gods called Chenghuangshen; and Christianity has its patron saints and guardian angels. Gamblers also might talk of Lady Luck, who is perhaps a modern incarnation of Tyche.

The Greek goddess of chance, Tyche, came to be later identified with the Roman goddess Fortuna. As well as the attributes of the mural city-wall crown, the cornucopia and a staff, she is sometimes shown as winged, sometimes blindfolded, and sometimes with other devices that signify risk, uncertainty, and the capriciousness of good and bad luck. At her temple at Argos the legendary prince, Palamedes, is supposed to have dedicated the first pair of dice, that he had just invented, to the goddess Tyche.

So while embodying the whims of fate, Tyche came to represent the fortunes of individuals and of communities. While the Greek poet Pindar claimed that Tyche could hand a victory to a lesser athlete, the historian Polybius believed that when no cause can be found for natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and even politics then Tyche may be the cause. In the Roman world Tyche was often depicted in military costume and the Romans believed that tutelary deities like Tyche could be tempted onto their side. Thus, if the Romans were besieging a city, they would perform a ritual called an evocatio, in order to try to divert the attention of the tutelary deity out of the city and come and join them, no doubt with the promise of a bigger, better cult at Rome. Roman psychological warfare at its finest.

Here is hoping Tyche stays on your side today!