![]() Any Roman worth his salt knew which god ruled what, therefore who to invoke and offer tributes to. Others were benevolent and beneficial, reflecting the gentler side of Roman life. They served their purpose as role-models for Roman society, whose orgies are infamous. Some of the god characters were debauched and their depravity, including incest and rape, knew no limits. ![]() This is still the case in at least four of the languages descended from Latin: Italian, Spanish, French and Romanian. In Latin, the days of the week were named after gods. Six of the eight planets of our Solar System are named after Roman gods (the odd-ones-out are Earth and Uranus 1). Several of the Roman gods' names are legendary, and provided the roots for words we use today, while the rest have faded into obscurity. The correspondences between the Greek and Roman pantheons would have been much less before the conquest of the Greek territories in Italy and of Greece itself. Vesta, for example, seems to have been a Roman goddess since the earliest times, while the cults of Mithras and Sol Invictus developed under the Empire. Roman religion evolved and changed as Rome grew from a little settlement to a great empire. This Entry features the Roman gods and goddesses. In other cultures, similar gods had different names although their representation was practically the same, eg the Roman god Neptune was the equivalent of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea who lived on the ocean floor. Generally, each culture had their own god or set of gods, for example the Greek gods. The stories about them were meant to be parables, a way of instilling wisdom upon the inexperienced. Some gods had specific features and represented certain traits. ![]() Gods and goddesses have featured in stories dreamed up and retold since ancient times. The archetypes of monotheistic religions, polytheistic religions, myths, legends, creation tales, morality stories, bard's tales, beasties, monsters and things that go bump in the night are often, if distilled down, remarkably similar with only cultural differences creating the varieties.
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