In ancient Roman religion, Providentia is a divine personification of the ability to foresee and make provision. She was among the embodiments of virtues that were part of the Imperial cult of ancient Rome.[1] Providentia thus figures in art, cult, and literature, but has little or no mythology as such[citation needed].
Providentia was an important moral and philosophical abstraction in Roman discourse. Cicero says it is one of the three main components of prudentia, "the knowledge of things that are good or bad or neither,"[2] along with memoria, "memory," and intellegentia, "understanding."[3] The Latin word is the origin of the Christian concept of divine providence.
- ^ J. Rufus Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 886.
- ^ Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia.
- ^ Cicero, De Inventione 2.160; Elizabeth Henry, The Vigour of Prophecy: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), p. 68.