What Were the Similarities Between Greek & Roman Gods?
- Both Greeks and Romans practiced polytheistic or pagan religion, meaning they worshipped many gods instead of just one. Each of these deities presided over some aspect of people's everyday lives, such as home and hearth, the hunt, war, storms, childbirth, the oceans, wine and the underworld. In each culture, the gods comprised a splintered and complicated family whose members interacted with each other much as human families did. They enjoyed conflicts, jealousies, violence, love, sex and political intrigues.
- Like the Greek pantheon, the Roman gods were ruled by a patriarchal sky god who threw lightning bolts. He was known as Zeus by the Greeks and Jupiter by the Romans. The ruler god married his sister, a goddess known as Hera to the Greeks and Juno to the Romans. Together and with other lovers, they produced many children, who were also deities. As messenger of the gods, fleet-footed Hermes was the Greek version, renamed Mercury by the Romans. For love, the Greeks worshipped the goddess Aphrodite, whose Roman counterpart was Venus. Likewise for war, the Greeks recognized Ares, while the Romans offered homage to Mars. Gods of the sea were Neptune in Rome and Poseidon in Greece; in each tradition, the god of the sea was also brother to the patriarchal god. The two pantheons had in common dozens of gods and mythic heroes of similar nature but with different names, whose adventures and powers bore close resemblance to each other.
- Homer's Greek "Iliad" and "Odyssey" tracked the adventures of Odysseus, while Virgil's Roman "Aeneid" told the story of Aeneas. These two epics detail their heroes' adventures during and after the Trojan War. Although they fought on opposite sides in that war, both Odysseus and Aeneas wandered the seas, encountering monsters, having dangerous love affairs and enduring the whimsy of the gods. In both traditions, the gods played near-equal roles with the humans, using the humans as pawns to battle each other over disputes between deities.
- Both traditions involved animal sacrifice to honor, appease and thank the gods. People might offer such sacrifices at home, on the battlefield, as part of a public festival or ceremony honoring the deity or even in a temple exclusively devoted to the god or goddess. Any instances of good or bad fortune were attributed to the gods' pleasure or displeasure, and humans responded accordingly with sacrifices and rites of devotion.