The Greek/Roman Connection

The city of Argos sponsored the Heraia, a festival and athletic contest in honor of its patron goddess, Hera. An inscription on this elegantly shaped water jar, with its female bust, shows it was made as a prize in the games of the Heraia
Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Greek Pantheon is the best known of most of the Pantheons. Though their Gods and Goddesses may once have been Babylonian or Assyrian or Egyptian or of origins long forgotten, most of us know and remember them for their Greek origins. The Greeks took the Gods and Goddesses, gave them a face, a persona, a story, which is told time and time again,  Because the Greeks had a written language, they wrote down the stories of their Gods and Goddesses.

Alexander the Great, in his conquest of the then known world, took these Greek writings to all parts of the world. Greek was the accepted written language of the worlds scholars from a little after the time of Alexander (circa 300 B.C.E.) to around the fall of the Roman Empire, when the fledgling language of Romans was adopted as the language of the Roman world (circa 400 C.E.) . Though in use for several centuries, it was still Greek that most scholars had preferred till this time. The Roman Catholic Church adopted the Roman (Latin) language and it was then taught in the monasteries. But even in the early part of the Church, it was Greek texts that were translated into Roman.

The Romans were fascinated with the Greek Pantheon and adopted many of the Gods and Goddesses as their own. During the 1800's and early 1900's, when all things Greek and Roman was in vogue, the names of the Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses became interchangeable. But the stories of these Gods and Goddess varied a little (in some cases, a lot) from the original Greek to their Roman Counterpart.

Below I offer a list, to help identify the Greek from the Roman Gods and Goddesses. If you ever get the time, you should read the stories of these Gods and Goddesses, in the original Greek form, and then as the Romans adapted them. You will be amazed at the difference.

For those who would like this additional information:

The Three Graces

Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth) and Thalia (Good Cheer).

Also The Nine Muses

(Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory))

Urania (astronomy), Melpomene (tragedy), Cleo (history), Thalia (comedy), Terpsichore (dance), Calliop (epic poetry), Erato (love-poetry), Polyhymnia (songs to the Gods), Euterpe (lyric poetry)