The Roman Gods

Native gods and Greek forms

The Romans worshipped their own ancient gods — many of them powers of farm, household, and state more than vivid personalities. But as Rome absorbed Greek culture, it systematically identified its deities with the Olympians: Jupiter with Zeus, Juno with Hera, Neptune with Poseidon, Minerva with Athena, Mars with Ares, Venus with Aphrodite, Mercury with Hermes, Ceres with Demeter, and so on. This matching of foreign gods to one's own, the interpretatio romana, let Rome take over the rich mythology of Greece while keeping its native names and rites.

A religion of practice

Roman religion was above all a matter of correct practice — of ritual, augury, vow, and sacrifice rightly performed to keep the pax deorum, the peace with the gods on which the state depended. It was strikingly hospitable, ready to welcome new gods from across the empire, from the Great Mother to Isis and Mithras.

The gods and the philosophers

Educated Romans increasingly approached the gods through Greek philosophy — Stoic, Epicurean, and Platonist. The same allegorizing impulse that read the Greek myths as veils over eternal truths shaped Roman theology too, until in late antiquity figures like the emperor Julian sought to gather all the old gods into a single Neoplatonic vision of the divine orders, in a last defense of the ancestral religion against the rising Christian faith.