Victoria first appears during the
first Punic War, as a translation or renaming of
Nike, the Greek goddess of victory in peace or war. Nike would have become familiar to the Roman military as a goddess of Rome's Greek allies in the Punic Wars. She was worshipped in Magna Graecia and mainland Greece, and was a subject of Greek myth. Around this time, various Roman war-deities begin to receive the epithet
victor (conqueror) or
invictus (unconquered). By the late republican and early imperial eras, Victoria had become a popular civilian and military goddess, both in association with other deities and in her own right. In 294 BC she was given a
temple on the
Palatine Hill. It was used to store war-booty, and it hosted the
Magna Mater's statue while her own temple was under construction. Victoria had several other shrines throughout Rome. In Imperial-era
Timgad,
victoria victrix (conquering victory) was given credit for Imperial successes. Victoria's coin images and cult images are probably based on an original
cult image used in her temple. Her cult images show her in the attitude of a winged woman who steps forwards, supported on a globe, and holds aloft (or offers) a wreath or a palm-branch, not symbols of war but of triumph, and a peace that was consequent to victory. Other images show her as human-sized, driving a
triumphal war-chariot, or in free-standing statuary, standing on the right-hand palm of a much larger figure, typically Rome's supreme god,
Jupiter, or war-god
Mars, or
Roma, divine personification of the Roman state. The goddess
Vica Pota is sometimes identified with Victoria, but is almost certainly too ancient for her iconography to have been influenced by Greek Nike, so is treated as a separate deity. Victoria is one of many Roman deities associated with the Sabine goddess
Vacuna. , with a pair of winged victories in the
spandrels With the ascendancy of Christianity, Rome's religious affairs and institutions remained under the authority of the ruling emperor as
pontifex maximus, whether he was Christian or pagan. On the whole, Senates still respected, or at least allowed the performance of pagan sacrificial rites deemed essential to Rome's well-being, including the sacrifice to Victoria at her Senate-house altar before every meeting. This had been an essential procedure ever since the altar had been given by
Octavian, in 29 BC. In 379 the Christian emperor
Gratian refused the post of
pontifex maximus, and abolished state support of Rome's traditional deities and rites. In 382 he had Victoria's altar removed from her temple at the
Curia Julia. They had been removed before, by
Constantius II, and had been returned after protest. This time, despite widespread anger and anxiety, shared by officials at the highest level, they were not restored.
Winged victories Winged figures, very often in pairs, representing victory and referred to as
winged victories, are common in Roman official iconography, typically hovering high in a composition, and often filling spaces in
spandrels or other gaps in architecture. These represent the "spirit of victory" rather than a full-blown deity. Pairs of winged victories continued to appear after the
Christianization of the Roman Empire and gradually evolved into depictions of Christian
angels. A pair, facing inwards, fitted very conveniently into the
spandrels of arches, and have been very common in
Triumphal arches and similar designs where a circular element is framed by a rectangle. ==Gallery==