Intro to Roman Mythology

Hey guys!  I hope you're doing well.  I'm currently on Spring break, so I am one happy camper.

I realized that although I added new links to side, I never mentioned them in a post, so now I shall!  If you're interested in either of my books, you can now buy them directly from me through my Etsy shop.  Hammerfall is available here, and Lovesick here.  (I currently only have shipping to the US, since I haven't had an order from outside of the country yet.  If you're one of my readers from outside the US and you'd like a copy, please feel free to shoot me a message!  We'll work things out.)

And with that out of the way, let's begin!

In this series of posts we'll be taking a look at some of the core stories and deities in Roman mythology.

I think one of the most common misconceptions about the Roman myths is that "They're just the Greek gods with different names."  Many of the books I've seen for Greek or Roman myths, and several of the mythology classes I've taken, have included cheat sheets showing the Roman name of Greek gods.

This irritates the heck out of me.

To be sure, there are a lot of similarities between the two.  The Romans did adopt a lot of the gods they liked from other religions.  However, this adoption was not limited to the Greek gods (worship of Isis, an Egyptian goddess, was quite prominent in Rome, amongst others).  There are characters in the Roman myths who are entirely unique to Rome (Romulus and Remus, for example, who we'll talk about next week).

Even for those gods who are very, very similar to those from Greek mythology, there tend to be differences that make the gods distinctive from what a lot of people consider to be their counterpart.  (Though this is not always true - Dionysus and Bacchus are almost exactly the same.)

Take, for instance, the goddess Minerva.  She is often equated to the Greek goddess Athena.  Now, Athena is a powerful, intelligent warrior goddess who rules over intellectual warfare.  She is cunning and clever, but also is the goddess of several more feminine aspects such as weaving and virginity.

Minerva, on the other hand, loses the attributes of war and is made almost entirely a domestic goddess.

Another example would be the comparison between the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter.  If you read my posts on Greek mythology, you may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Zeus.  He's a womanizing self-centered jerk who does whatever he wants in life no matter the consequences for anyone else.  He's fairly immature.  Jupiter, on the other hand, is a mature, level-headed god.

The maturity with which Jupiter regards his duties is actually one of the hallmarks of the Roman culture.  Their heroes embodied the ideals their culture held highest - loyalty and honor.  House Tully in Game of Thrones has for their saying "Family.  Duty.  Honor."  This exemplifies the ancient Roman mindset.  The duty of a man (actually, of any citizen, as we'll see when we get to my post about Lucretia) was first to Rome, then to his family, then to himself.  I find that quite beautiful and interesting.

In the coming weeks I plan to talk about several of the gods and goddesses I haven't mentioned here, as well as some of the demigods and heroes from Roman mythology.

One thing that I'll mention in this intro, though I won't do a post specifically about it: The Romans also sometimes worshipped their emperors.  There was a process through which an emperor could be deified.  Sometimes this was done during their life, and the people worshipped the emperor as a living god amongst them.  (Some early Christians actually got into a lot of trouble for refusing to worship a man over their God.)

At other times, this deification took place after an emperor had died.  The senate could vote on whether or not they thought the emperor was worthy of godhood.  If they decided that he was, the emperor was written into history as a living god who had ascended.

Imagine dying and having some of the people who knew you decide that you had actually been a god.  Kind of interesting, no?

I'll end this post there, and see you guys next week when I talk about Romulus and Remus, twin demigods and founders of Rome!  Take care.