49
Common Ancestry
Both the Ancient Greeks and Romans were descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans. While the two groups had diverged, they continued to share remnants of a common language and other features including mythology.
The most obvious sign of this is the chief deities of their respective pantheons: Zeus and Jupiter: both derive from the Proto-Indo-...
25
The Romans also thought them to live on Mount Olympos. For instance, Lucius Annaeus Seneca writes in his play Hercules Furens that, appealing to Jupiter for mercy, Amphitryon prayed:
[205] O magne Olympi rector et mundi arbiter,
Jam statue tandem gravibus aerumnis modum
O mighty ruler of Olympus, judge of all the world,
set now at length a limit ...
20
They couldn't be much more different, really.
Ares was part of a dichotomy of war gods, comprised of himself and Athena. While Athena represented wisdom, strategy and generalship in war, Ares represented base aggression and the brutal side of war.
As such, he wasn't particularly well regarded by the greek populace, and instances of his worship are ...
19
Depends on what you mean, but probably not.
Most scholars would not consider them to be real. Their tale is too far-fetched to be literally true, and in this sense they weren't real. On the other hand, legends could be based on real events, so there might have been real historical figures who inspired the stories. You might, with a great deal of stretching, ...
18
As with other Greco-Roman myths, the connection is often through children, descendants or other family members. While Europa herself does not seem to have made it to the continental mainland, her brother Kadmos [Cadmus] did, and there, in memory of their hometown, he founded a Greek version of the hundred-gated Egyptian city of Thebes, although his rendition ...
17
I have asked this question on the English Wikipedia Reference Desk a few months ago. This answer contains a copy of the answers volunteered there.
Livius Andronicus (c. 284 – c. 204 BC) was possibly the first who translated the Odyssey into Latin, but his translation has not survived. There have been many Latin translations of Homer over the centuries, but ...
17
Hephaestus and Medusa had a son named Cacus. How was Hephaestus shielded from being turned to stone?
I don't really consider that a particularly good source. Virgil says that Cacus was Half Human, in the Aeneid, Book VIII:
There was a cave here, receding to vast depths,
untouched by the sun’s rays, inhabited by the fell shape
of Cacus, the half-human, and the ground was always warm
with fresh blood, and the heads of men, insolently
nailed to the doors, ...
16
This is the myth of Baucis and Philemon.
Here is the Wikipedia page: Baucis and Philemon, and here is one website with the full text (I think): Tales Beyond Belief: Baucis and Philemon.
By the way, the two gods were Zeus and Hermes, and the two trees were oak and linden.
16
The key point here is Roman Syncretism. The romans believed the world was full of different gods, and they didn't presume to know about all of them, or to know everything about the ones they already recognized. Thus, when confronted with a new god, they would tend either to adopt it into their religion, or equate it with another they already knew.
This ...
15
He Meant Thor
The report by Tacitus was indeed a case of interpretatio graeca at work. As the Austrian historian Herwig Wolfram writes:
Thor must have been swinging his hammer as the god Donar ("the Thunderer") of the West Germanic peoples already during the imperial period, since Tacitus equated him with Hercules.
- Wolfram, Herwig. The Roman ...
14
That story appears in one of the most beautifully written stories that can exist. In Herodotus Histories, chapter 1.
The Athenian lawgiver Solon is visiting the richest man in the world
the Lydian Croesus and Croesus want to impress Solon and show him how
rich and wealthy he is and after asks him who is the happiest
man:
My Athenian guest, [...] I ...
12
For Egyptian, you'd have several choices. Going from the largest (at least in the Heliopolitian cosmology):
Nuun (Nun) is the cosmic ocean that our universe is a bubble in:
https://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/nun/
Atum includes the concept of "Completeness". In a sense He/She would be related to the universe we know, and precipitated himself/...
11
Dionysus was a mortal that was raised to divinity. While he is most well known for wine and revelry, his portfolio also grew to include:
festivals
fertility
the wilds
crops
sanity
These are centrally important to the daily lives of average citizens for the time. Sure Zeus is the king, and sure Poseidon is incredibly powerful, but I need my crops to grow, ...
11
Nereus was a fish-tailed deity.
Anything needed to be said about Nereus is nicely expressed in this link, but I'll sum up some things.
That Nereus is a sea-god of some antiquity is noted by the familiarity in which he appears in Hesiod, though that particular name might be later. In Homer, he is named instead something like "The Old Man of the Sea."
He ...
11
I believe it may be the Tritons, but there are probably other part-fish, part-humans. Plus, there was a fish-headed god in antiquity (not greco-roman).
A side note is that there were some mistranslations and some of the "sirens" in Greek tales were half-birds and not half-fish (i.e., harpies and not mermaids).
"In Greek mythology, the Sirens ...
11
The Romans believed the same thing, actually.
In the Roman version, Ceres is the goddess of agriculture and mother to Proserpina, an obvious copy of the Greek Persephone. Like her Greek version, Proserpina was abducted by Pluto, and Ceres caused the earth to stop growing food until her daughter was returned at the behest of Jupiter, but not before eating ...
11
The name of the deity represented by the planet in question, strictly speaking, is Lucifer, or Luciferus, that is, as far as Roman mythology is concerned. His Greek equivalent has a few different names, the commonest of which are Eosphoros and Phosphoros. The majority of Roman mythology is older Greek stories copy+pasted into new files with the Greek names ...
11
A pretty thorough list can be found here (relevant sections in the following list are mostly copied from the linked articles):
Greek:
Aion - associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. Associated with eternity/afterlife. The "time" represented by Aion is unbounded.
Ananke - is a personification of inevitability, ...
11
The beautiful mind (soul) only finds pleasure (happiness) in unconditional love (heart).
The heart (unconditional love) likewise only finds happiness (pleasure) in the soul (beautiful mind).
Diligence is required to join the two together as one. The mind does most of the work, while the heart mainly just waits patiently.
Love being divine, quite naturally ...
10
Livy, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Polybius seem to agree that Horatius Cocles was on foot, when he defended the bridge.
Livy
He therefore warned and commanded them to break down the bridge with steel, with fire, with any instrument at their disposal; and promised that he would himself receive the onset of the enemy, so far as it could be ...
10
In Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach, Michael Lipka offers the following explanation:
Under the Empire, the focal force of the traditional foci of the traditional Republican cults disappeared. One indication of this disappearance is the well-known scarcity of references to the traditional flamines in imperial sources. Even if we grant that these flamines, ...
10
To complete @Semaphore answer, historian Angelo Brelich in his 1960 article "Quirinus: una divinita romana alla luce della comparazione storica" and later in 2001, Rebecca Allen in her article 'Romulus and Quirinus: an etruscan deity in Ancient Rome' both expressed the idea that the character of Romulus may actually derive from the Sabine god of war ...
10
This is a more fascinating question than many might think at first glance.
Kronos is the Greek god and probably comes from Proto-Indo-European * gern- which meant germ or seed and yields the modern English words germ, grain, corn and kernel. This is likely because Kronos 'begat' the Olympian generation, and therefore was the 'seed'.
Saying the Greeks ...
10
Ouranos (Roman Uranus) is the Greek (night) sky god. You will find him at the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony. Wikipedia has an extensive list of sky gods, among whom you will find the Egyptian goddess Nut.
10
This depends entirely on your stance of if you're asking for a sky god or if you'd prefer only "outer space", so to speak. Given that these are ancient cultures / mythologies we're discussing, it stands to point that perhaps they would have seen the two as synonymous, which was why historically the sky gods were said to be most powerful. For instance, some ...
10
There have actually been many names from almost as many sources. In the Aeneid, Virgil described the priestess as "Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus":
ni iam praemissus Achtes
Adforet, atque una Phoebi Triviaeque sacerdos,
Deiphobe Glauci, fatur quae talia regi:
'Non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit;
'Nunc grege de intacto septem mactare ...
10
The 11th century Christian missionary Adam of Bremen wrote,
"Thor, they say, presides over the air, he governs the thunder and lightning. the winds and rains."
The Norse believed that during a thunderstorm, Thor rode through the heavens on his chariot pulled forward by the goats Tanngrisnir ("gap-tooth") and Tanngnjóstr ("tooth ...
9
Romans had little mythology of their own before meeting with other civilizations. One of the many aspects they were lacking, cultural wise, that they borrowed from Greece (and other civilizations). Thus they inherited many (or the lot) of ancient greek mythology which led to their existing Gods getting many of the characteristics of the Ancient greek ones.
...
9
There is probably something also to be said about the Lares and the Penates.
The Lares, as guardian deities (of Etruscan origin), were protecting homes, fields, cities, crossroads, etc. (One Lar protecting one home or one field, etc.) while Penates were specifically protecting household and both were thought to inhabit the place they were protecting.
Some ...
9
According with Michael Grant & John Hazel (1):
[Acca Larentia] Wife of Faustulus, the shepherd who found the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus and brought them up. Since the babies had been suckled by a she-wolf, Acca was named lupa, witch has a double meaning in Latin: "whore" as well as "she-wolf". Acca was also sometimes called Faula or Fabula, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
