Victoria (mythology)

[1] 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.

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.

[3][4] 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.

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.

[5] In 379 the Christian emperor Gratian refused the post of pontifex maximus, and abolished state support of Rome's traditional deities and rites.