Roman Olympus

[kurtedwr]

The Greeks believed that Zeus and Hera live in Mt. Olympus. But what about the Romans? Did they believe that Jupiter and Juno live in the same mountain... or perhaps in an Italian-based mountain such as Vesuvius or the Alps?

[Ursus]

The Roman literati certainly followed the Greek tradition.

[kurtedwr]

The Roman literati certainly followed the Greek tradition.

 

True. Some claim that the Greek gods originated from Egyptian or Berber ones.

[Centurion-Macro]

I actually have no idea. I know that the Romans followed Greek traditions and copied their Gods etc, so they probably did have a mountain as their home, although probably under a different name.

[Northern Neil]

I understand that the Roman gods - initially - were quite different entities to the Greek ones. Aside from Apollo and Heracles, who are adopted greek gods, the other Roman gods do not even have remotely similar names to their greek equivalents. The fact that the Greeks and Romans had gods which fulfilled similar roles is no surprise. The same could be said about Norse and Hindu gods. I believe that the Romans considered it a political expedient to say that, for example, Venus and Aphrodite, Jupiter and Zeus and so - on were the same entities.

 

In Britain a similar attempt at political and religious unity was made when Minerva (already equated with Athena) was considered the same goddess as the Celtic water-spirit Sull.

[caldrail]

It is noticeable that Roman deities are imported - even Minerva was Etruscan in origin. It's as these divine beings have been imposed upon or adopted by the Romans as symbols more relevant to their mode of thinking, even to the extent that by the late republic powerful individuals were claiming divine ancestory.

 

Our modern neo-paganism movements do suggest a similar phenomenon in ancient times, a sort of competition between established and traditional beliefs compared with newer, more fashionable cults (or even those that had previously died out and were restored as part of a select social group in later times - the current neo-paganism is nothing new in human culture), and even in the days of the Imperial Cult there were Romans who adopted foreign beliefs such as those emerging from Syria, a hotbed of religious invention at the time.

 

An interesting question then is what came before the adopted pantheons? I do note that the Romans tended to adopt deities after their worshippers had been conquered and hauled away in chains. Was an animist faith, using natural characters and phenomena? It's hard to believe that the first Romans were entirely basing their religious beliefs on theor own legend and myth.

 

What I'm getting at is that Roman religious beliefs readily adopted foreign divinities because they hadn't developed their own. Although a superstitious peoples (or indeed because of that quality) they undoubtedly had simple spiritual concepts and the tribal element of the earliest Romans suggests something much more typical of primitive warrior societies. Is this why they deified their own legendary forebears in later times? And why the Imperial cult emerged? Certainly the power of the emperors was evident to observers, yet it never prevented the Romans from removing these living gods from power if it suited disaffected or ambitious individuals. There is in later times then the superstition implicit in Roman culture combined with an overriding urge to compete for control over it.

 

Since even in opur modern day religions exist more for control over their worshippers (and their cash more often than not) than their spiritual welfare, it isn't hard to imagine the same motives existed in Roman times, and tey do note that early christian bishops were not above becoming very wealthy. Was the adoption of foreign gods merely an acceptance of 'superior' or more focused and sophisticated belief systems by a superstitious people without any such cultural foundation of their own, or was it the influence of important (or self-important) individuals who sought to add to their own status and wealth by inviting others to worship something new and fresh?