Victoria- Roman GodDeity"Victoria Augusta"

The Temple on the Palatine

Victoria had no birth story the Romans cared to tell. The Greeks called her Nike and gave her parents (the titan Pallas and the river goddess Styx, as Hesiod recorded in the Theogony), but Romans cared less about her family than about what she did. She descended. She chose between combatants. She crowned the winner with laurel. That was enough. Roman artists carved her over and over: a winged woman alighting, one foot touching the ground, wings still spread, the wreath extended.

In 294 BCE, Lucius Postumius Megellus vowed a temple to Victoria on the Palatine Hill and built it from the spoils of his Samnite campaigns. It was among the hill's oldest sacred buildings, overlooking the path the Lupercalia runners took each February.

A century later, during the Second Punic War, her temple took on unexpected weight. Hannibal was still in Italy, and the Sibylline Books prescribed a desperate remedy: bring the sacred black stone of Cybele from Pessinus in Asia Minor. The stone arrived at Ostia in 204 BCE. The Senate chose Scipio Nasica, judged the most virtuous man in Rome, to receive it. Livy describes the scene: Nasica carried the stone from the dock while the matrons of Rome passed it hand to hand, incense burning in every doorway. The stone rested in Victoria's temple until the Great Mother received her own sanctuary nearby. Victory sheltered the foreign goddess Rome had summoned to save itself.

In 193 BCE, the elder Cato added a companion shrine on the Palatine, dedicated to Victoria Virgo and paid for with spoils from his Spanish campaigns. On the Palatine, victory was always bought with plunder.

The Triumph

The triumph made Victoria visible in the streets. When a victorious general entered Rome, he rode a four-horse chariot with his face painted red like Jupiter's cult statue. A slave stood behind him, holding a laurel wreath above his head and whispering: "Remember, you are mortal." The wreath was Victoria's gift. Small golden figures of her decorated the chariot, wings spread, frozen in the act of crowning.

After the procession, the general climbed the Capitoline to lay his laurel in Jupiter's lap. But the monuments built to commemorate the triumph belonged to Victoria. On the Arch of Titus, carved after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE, she crowns the emperor in his chariot. On the Column of Trajan, she stands between the two Dacian campaigns, inscribing a shield with the emperor's victories. The goddess herself keeps the tally.

Victoria crowned more than generals. Victors in chariot races and gladiatorial combat received her palm, and mosaics in amphitheaters depicted her above the arena with branch extended. The silver victoriatus, minted from the late third century BCE, carried her on its reverse: Victoria crowning a trophy. She circulated through Roman commerce like a promise. Soldiers wore her on belt buckles and brooches, and generals vowed altars before campaign. Dedications have been found from Britain to Syria, wherever the legions camped.

The Altar of Victory

In 29 BCE, Augustus placed a golden statue of Victoria in the Senate House. He had taken it from the Greek city of Tarentum after his victory at Actium, as Cassius Dio records. Before each meeting, senators burned incense at her altar. The smoke rose past her golden wings. This continued for four centuries.

As emperors rose and fell, Victoria appeared on their coins. Victoria Germanica after the Rhine campaigns, Victoria Parthica after the eastern wars: each issue named a conquered people and credited the goddess. A successful emperor was one Victoria had chosen. An emperor who lost battles had, evidently, lost her.

Then Christianity came for the altar. In 357 CE, Constantius II ordered it removed from the Senate House. Julian the Apostate restored it. Gratian removed it again in 382. This time, the pagan aristocracy decided to fight.

Symmachus, prefect of Rome and leader of the old senatorial families, appealed to the young emperor Valentinian II in 384. "We ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, the gods of our native land," he wrote in his Relatio. "Whatever each person worships, it is reasonable to consider them all as one." Rome had conquered the world under its old gods. To abandon them now was to abandon what had made Rome itself.

Ambrose, bishop of Milan, answered in two letters that matched Symmachus point for point. The old gods had never truly protected Rome. Christian senators should not have to pass a pagan altar on their way to their seats. Rome's future belonged to Christ, not to statues. Valentinian sided with Ambrose. The altar was not restored.

In 392, the usurper Eugenius restored it one last time. He needed pagan support for his claim. Theodosius defeated him at the Frigidus two years later, and the restoration died with him. The golden Victoria remained in the Senate House a while longer, stripped of her altar and her incense. Eventually she too was removed. No ancient source records exactly when.