Welcome back dear readers - apologies for my recent absence, I have been very sick and just couldn’t muster up the energy. But I’m back and in business with a real doozy!
A while back I wrote a piece on a number of ‘lies’ that some of the memes I share play on or perpetuate. Of course, some of these are exaggerations or misconceptions, though some are straight up fabrications that have survived in popular culture. Make sure you have a read of it if you missed it. Today I’m back with possibly the biggest candidate for this category, hence why it gets its own category.
We’re talking about the well known bit ‘Roman Mythology is just Greek Mythology with the names changed’. I can and probably will share half a dozen common examples of this, which is ultimately somewhere between an exaggeration and an outright lie. But it certainly gets the engagement and remains steadfastly prevalent, so let’s dig down into it today by looking at a few points.
The Greek & Roman Pantheons
The most obvious source for the commonly held belief is the ‘pairs’ of Greek and Roman names for their main gods. Certainly, it is a very normal in which students first interact with these deities, learning the Greek and Roman counterparts of Zeus/Jupiter, Ares/Mars, Athena/Minerva etc etc. This perpetuates the idea that they are straight copies or transferals, and only the name has changed. It is heightened even more by the jokes around Apollo being the same in both - ‘they got lazy and gave up’!
While it is true that the Romans considered their major divinities to be linked to the these Greek counterparts, allowing them to access the rich mythological and literary traditions of Greece, they were not just carbon copies. In fact, many of their Roman names hint at different origins from other cultures - a quick glance at the Etruscan gods (the Etruscans being another early inhabitant of the Italian peninsula, assimilated in Rome’s expansion) shows that there is much more at play: names such as Apulu, Menrva and Persipnei. From here, then, we must dig into how Ancient cultures dealt with and viewed the religions of other culutres.
Syncretism and Interpretatio graeca
In the mainly polytheistic ancient Mediterranean, it was not unusual for different cultures to interact who had vast, complex religions with many separate figures each representing different aspects of life. When these cultures came together, be it through trade, war or conquest, their interaction was not one of refutation and denial - a conflict more often seen where monotheistic and polytheistic cultures clashed - instead there was usually an attempt to find common ground.
The Greeks and Romans particularly documented this process, so much so that it gained the name interpretatio graeca - and Plutarch among many others propounded this philosophy, that while different cultures would have gods of different names, they were the essentially the same being. For example, a god of the sun, moon, trade, death etc would be recognised and associated with the relevant god in their culture. The King of the Gods is also a common thread - consider when Alexander the Great declared himself to be the son not just of Zeus, but Zeus-Ammon, to recognise their similarity within both Egyptian and Greek culture.
This is, of course, a much deeper and complex topic that you could spend many hours delving into, with extremely interesting results. No two gods were exactly alike and their interpretations changed over time, but the idea was the basis of many culturally exchanges. As the Roman Empire expanded it particularly paid attention to how best to assimilate rather than conquer other cultures, which often led to them taking foreign gods wholesale and chucking them into their own pantheon - famous examples include the worship of Egyptian goddess Isis and the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele. This process, often referred to as religious syncretism, was quite normal to the Romans, being unbothered about the ‘origins’ of their divinities.
Greek to Roman?
So did Rome just copy the Greek gods and change the names? Well no, as we know they were pretty comfortable with retaining them in original form. The more relevant scenario is that early Romans saw similarities between the Etruscan gods in the north, their own archaic divinites, and the Greek pantheon - which was already firmly entrenched in Greek colonies in southern Italy, which we know as Magna Graecia. Over time the names and characters of these divinities converged, and the Romans were happy to merge the mythologies of each together. As we know, they developed a particular fondness for Greek literature and art, so it is only natural that the particularly Greek characteristics and stories of these gods became their predominant features. Bu they still retain many of their own elements, their own Roman flavour, and remain unique. Of course, things became more complicated when more modern writers began to use the Roman names of gods even when translating the original Greek stories - but that’s for another day.
Distinctly Roman Gods?
Sadly, very little is still known about the early Roman and Etruscan gods, as records from these periods remain sparse. However, there are still Gods unique to Rome that do not have a Greek origin that very much prove the lie in this meme. The most common one that people bring up is Janus, who has no Greek counterpart. While I commend everyone who does mention him, he is one of hundreds of uniquely Roman divinities - so overusing the same one example actually does the point little justice!
Here are some great Roman gods: Quirinus, God of the Roman State (sometimes associated with Janus); the Lares, household guardians that protected your home; Dis Pater and Orcus, gods of the underworld who were eventually conflated into Pluto, which was actually a Greek name; Liber, god of freedom, male fertility and also somehow wine, who too was eventually conflated with Dionysus and called Bacchus (another Greek name!); Bellona, a female war goddess, one of many of Sabine origin; Lupercus, god of shepherds and packs of wild animals, who they celebrated during the Lupercalia; and the great Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun - because why not!
Seriously, the list of Roman gods is as extensive and diverse as any you will see - and their forms, origins, associations and more are an incredibly intricate puzzle. All of which is to say, don’t believe the lies the memes tell you - the Romans had plenty of stuff going for themselves.
Thanks for reading, please drop a comment if you like! See you next week.