Buon giorno, mythology lovers!
For my first blog post here on Mythology Worlds for 2025 C.E., I have a very special announcement:
I'll be traveling to Italy!
(in July--"luglio" in Italian)
What an exciting way to start the new year!
Specifically, I'll be traveling to Florence (Firenzi) and Rome (Roma).
And so, in anticipation,...
I would like to present this overview of Roman mythology and what sets it apart from Greek mythology
Many people confuse Greek and Roman mythology (which the website TVTropes, a sort of Wikipedia for popular culture stereotypes, refers to as "Ancient Grome").
However, there is one key difference between the Roman and Greek gods I often bring up in meatspace:
The Greek gods are very human in appearance and character
The Roman gods are personifications of objects and concepts
For example,...
Poseidon is Poseidon
Neptune is the sea
The reason people often confuse Greek and Roman mythologies and deities is because the Romans imported a lot of their gods and myths from the Greeks.
They also imported deities from the other cultures they conquered...and keep in mind: the Romans conquered Southern and Western Europe, Britain south of the Scottish Highlands, Northern Africa, and Western Asia.
Other deities imported by the Romans include:
The Persian god Mithra
The Egyptian goddess Isis
The Celtic goddess Epona
The goddess Cybele from what is now Turkiye.
The Romans also had their own original deities.
A notable example is Janus, the god of doorways and new beginnings (and namesake of the month of January)
Other original Roman gods include Faunus, counterpart of the Greek god Pan; Pomona, goddess of trees and fruits; Terminus, god of boundaries; and Tiberinus, god of the Tiber River.
Several deities such as Jupiter, Venus, and Diana were actually Roman originals reinterpreted based on parallels with the Olympians of Greece.
Other deities such as Minerva were imported from the Etruscans...then reinterpreted based on similarities with Greek gods.
The legendary history of the Romans begins with...
Virgil's Aeneid (modeled on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey).
That's Homer the poet, not Homer the cartoon character.
Aeneas, a refugee from the Trojan War (and son of Venus, the goddess of love; and the Trojan prince Anchises); met Dido, Queen of Tyre who fled what is now Lebanon and founded Carthage in present-day Tunisia.
The two fell in love...but Aeneas was reminded of his destiny:
to found a new nation in Italy.
Aeneas left Dido, after which she burned herself.
Once he landed in Italy, Aeneas married the local princess Lavinia, and their children became the ancestors of two more significant figures:
Romulus and Remus
Their mother, the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia (one of a group of unmarried females whose job it was to keep the eternal flame burning in honor of the goddess Vesta) had a not-so-pleasant encounter with Mars, the god of war.
The twin boys were abandoned by the Tiber River, where they were nursed by a wolf and eventually adopted by a shepherd
Once they grew up, the twin lads (Romulus and Remus) decided to found a city on the spot where they were nursed by the wolf.
After a heated argument, Romulus unalived Remus.
That's why the city is called Rome...not Reme.
Rome's legendary year of founding is
753 Before the Christ Era.
That makes it roughly 2,778 years old at the time of this blog post.
Isn't it ironic that, after the Greeks defeated the Trojans, they themselves got conquered by people of Trojan descent?
In addition, the Romans venerated household spirits called Lares at house shrines.
The Lares were associated with the Penates, the spirits of storehouses.
There were also personal spirits called genii (singular "genius")
Many Roman emperors also became gods after they died.
This is called "apotheosis".
However, in 312 Christ Era, the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and it soon became the hot new religion in the Roman Empire.
In 360 Christ Era, Emperor Julian the Apostate attempted to bring back the good ol' days of praying to all those gods I mentioned in this blog post.
In the 390s Christ Era, Emperor Theodosius banned all non-Christian religious practices and festivals in the Empire (including the original Olympics), and effectively destroyed Greco-Roman culture.
In 476 Christ Era, Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor, was deposed by the Germanic ruler Odoacer.
Ironic that the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was named after the legendary founder of Rome and the first actual Roman emperor.
Despite all this, contrary to popular misconception, the Roman and Greek legacy was never forgotten in Europe's Middle Ages that followed.
After all, the Catholic Church ran the show in Latin!
At the tail end of the Middle Ages (in the 1400s Christ Era), Italy engendered a revival of Roman and Greek ideas and art known as...
The Renaissance
Even though Rome no longer controls Western Asia, Northern Africa, or Southern and Western Europe, the legacy of Roman myths and gods lives on into the present day.
The planets of our Solar System (besides Earth) are named after Roman gods.
The month of January (as mentioned earlier) is named after the god Janus.
The month of June is named after Juno.
The month of March is named after the god Mars.
Mars has also lent his name to the common Italian name "Mario", a name Nintendo gamers like myself are very familiar with.
In Italian as well as Spanish and French, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are literally called "Marsday", "Mercurysday", "Jupitersday", and "Venusday" respectively.
In addition, in this day and age, there are growing movements of people who actually worship the European, West Asian, and North African deities long thought to have been wiped out by Christianity and Islam.
These include the gods of Ancient Rome.
As an avid mythology fanatic (hence this website as well as my podcast The Unseen World and my social media cartoons--check out my Instagram and Facebook accounts), I wholeheartedly welcome the rise of these Modern Pagan religious movements, and wish their followers grand tidings and blessings.
May the gods of Rome bless us each and every one.
Grazie e Arrividerci!
And remember...
Rome wasn't built in a day
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