Roman Mythology

Rome had a religion just like all the other ancient kingdoms before Christianity, and then atheism, took over. Rome is well known for copying things from other cultures the conquered or traded with and then adding their own little flair, like architecture, military formations, and religion. Like architecture, the Romans copy-and-pasted their religion from Greece into Rome, but not before changing it up a bit. The most famous thing they changed is the names of the gods, like Zeus into Jupiter, Poseidon into Neptune, Hermes into Mercury, and so on. The picture shows all 12 Olympians, plus Hades/Pluto Hestia/Vesta and Eros/Cupid. But a less well known change in the mythology is in the gods personalty and the emphasis on their godly domain. For example, Ares in Greek mythology was one of the worst gods and was disliked by everyone because nobody in Greece liked war, or more accurately, dying in war. But one of the most famous aspects of Rome was how much conquering they did and how brutal of fighters Romans were, so when Ares became Mars for the Romans they worshiped him and made him the second most important god in their pantheon. A change they made to all the gods, however, was that they were much more formal and interacted with the Romans in the stories with much more of a “higher class looking down upon a lower class” vibe. As such, they no longer had children with mortals, and so the Romans came up with different versions of all the hero’s parentage. Hera in Greek stories was much more antagonistic to the heroes of Greece and to the other gods, but in Rome she was a protector of families and always did her best to protect soldiers out at war and to get them home safely to their families. Notice that doesn’t mean that she helped them win, however, since that was Mars and Minerva’s duty. Minerva’s Greek form was Athena, goddess of wisdom and architecture. She was then shifted to Minerva, goddess of battle strategy and wisdom. The ruler of the gods, Zeus in Greece, was a pleasure-seeking old guy that threw lightning at people that displeased him, but in Rome Jupiter was a sharp ruler that made sure the people in Rome were treated right and protected the rulers with his lightning. Among all the Greek gods, however, only one remained unchanged by the Romans, and that was Apollo. There are a great many other changes and gods that the Romans made, and if this post about the Roman mythology have interested you, I hope you will research the rest of them on your own.