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Fama
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Gold sculpture of Fama, a winged female figure holding a trumpet and laurel wreath, stands atop a golden sphere on the roof of the Dresden University of Visual Arts in Dresden, Germany.
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Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, Greece.
From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology
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Greek:
Pheme
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Fama
Fama Fama, sculpture on the roof of the Dresden University of Visual Arts, Dresden, Ger.

Fama

classical mythology
Also known as: Pheme
Written and fact-checked by
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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History

Fama, in Greco-Roman mythology, the personification of popular rumour. Pheme was more a poetic personification than a deified abstraction, although there was an altar in her honour at Athens. The Greek poet Hesiod portrayed her as an evildoer, easily stirred up but impossible to quell. The Athenian orator Aeschines distinguished Popular Rumour (Pheme) from Slander (Sykophantia) and Malice (Diabole). In Roman literature she was imaginatively conceived: Virgil described her (Aeneid, Book IV) as a swift, birdlike monster with as many eyes, lips, tongues, and ears as feathers, traveling on the ground but with her head in the clouds. According to Ovid in the Metamorphoses, she inhabited a reverberating mountaintop palace of brass.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.