Was this deliberate or is it more than we decided upon the correspondence and the Romans did not see them necessarily as the exact same god?
If deliberate, did the Romans want to separate their religion from the Greeks?
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You mean between the Olympians? Because there are some other deities that also did not change name like Prometheus or Charon.– Marduk TrimegistusCommented Oct 15, 2022 at 10:03
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I guess I mean Olympians -- "main" gods.– releseabeCommented Oct 15, 2022 at 10:44
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Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.– Community BotCommented Oct 15, 2022 at 18:07
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The Olympians are not the only "main" gods. They are just the "chief" ones, but there are other important gods, such as Pan and Hades, and even Dionysus isn't always considered an Olympian.– cmw ♦Commented Oct 18, 2022 at 1:20
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@cmw: chief vs main, very subtle distinction.– releseabeCommented Oct 18, 2022 at 1:21
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1 Answer
Before the Romans conquered the Greeks, they already had their own pantheon of gods. As they assimilated the Greek religion into their own, they found similarities between their gods and the Greek gods and ended up associating the greek gods with their own already-established names. Apollo was considered a pretty popular god overall, having been the god of many things (music, arts, plague, the sun, etc), and being that he was adopted pretty late, there weren't any equivalents to him in the previous Roman religion.
Additional sources: https://ancient-history-blog.mq.edu.au/cityOfRome/ApolloBlog
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Relatively late. Isis was adopted later, late enough that despite great popularity she never shook off being an Egyptian deity.– MaryCommented Oct 18, 2022 at 0:12