The most ancient beliefs of people came down to endowing the soul with natural phenomena and to the cult of ancestors. Over time and the development of civilizations from a huge number of obscure mythical deities, more vivid images are defined: Mars - the god of war, Janus - the god of the beginning and the end, Jupiter - the god of the light of day, Thunderstorm, which sends terrible rains to the earth, and others. The culture and beliefs of ancient people have always been greatly influenced by the culture of their closest neighbors. Thus, the goddess of art Minerva was borrowed from the Etruscans by the Romans. Also, the cultural life of Rome, in turn, had a significant impact on the more ancient culture of Greece. Today it is undeniable that Roman mythology, whose gods were borrowed from the Greeks for the most part, had a significant influence on the development of ancient Roman society as a whole.
The mythology of ancient states today is of great interest to researchers of the history of civilizations that have sunk into the past, collecting artifacts of their culture bit by bit for many hundreds of years. Thanks to their efforts, modern man has an idea of what people lived long before the appearance of his ancestors, what they believed in and what was the meaning of their life.
Ancient Roman mythology was built on the belief in the existence of life after death. The Romans of those times worshiped the souls of their ancestors. At the heart of this worship was the fear of the supernatural powers that, according to the Romans, these souls possessed. The first Roman gods were identified with nature, could command it, cause rain or send unprecedented drought to the settlements. In order not to be left without crops, the inhabitants of Ancient Rome tried in every possible way to appease these gods. They were worshiped and sacrificed.
Greek and Roman gods: differences
According to some sources, Ancient Rome for centuries did not have its own mythology. At the same time, in neighboring Greece, the cultural and religious life of people flourished. Many modern scholars, fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire, tend to believe that most of the myths were borrowed by it earlier from the more culturally developed Greeks, and the Roman gods are gods endowed with the same powers and traits as the Greek. Their only difference is in the names. So, the goddess of love in Roman mythology - Venus - is an exact copy of Greek Aphrodite. The patron of the ancient Roman arts, Phoebus, is like no other like the Greek Apollo, etc.
Initially, the Roman gods did not have a genealogy or even their place of residence - Olympus, and were depicted in the form of certain symbols: Jupiter had the form of a stone, Mars - the form of a spear, Vesta - the form of tongues of flame. According to legend, the first gods of Rome did not leave offspring after themselves and after completing all the work that had begun, they did not die, but went nowhere. The Greek gods were very prolific and immortal.
The merging of the culture and mythology of Rome and Greece takes place around the turn of the fourth or third centuries BC. The main religious views of the Greeks and part of their mythology reigned in Rome after a collection of sayings of the Greek oracle was delivered to the capital of the empire, which subsequently predicted an epidemic of the plague of 293 BC.
Roman gods are more moral. According to the ideas of the ancient Romans, taking care of human life, they were the defenders of justice on Earth, property rights and many other rights that a free person should have. The moral influence of religion is especially great during the period of prosperity of the Roman civil society (2–4 centuries AD). The inhabitants of ancient Rome were very devout. We can still praise this piety in the pages of the works of Roman and Greek writers of those times. The outward piety of the Romans proves their respect for customs, on which the main virtue of the Roman people, patriotism, was based.