Thursday, March 5, 2009

Roman and Greek Pantheon

in progress

Greek mythology is full of gods and goddessses. These divine creatures were constantly intervening the lives of the humans they governed. They were all unique and had different aspects of life that they governed. Some controlled the air, the sun and the ocean, while others were in control of things like love, fertility, marriage and harvest.
The Roman gods/goddesses were no different. They had some of the same exact gods just different names. Here are a few examples;

Greek name: Zeus. Roman name: Jove. He was the king of all gods and ruler of the sky and human destiny.
Greek name: Hera. Roman name: Juno. Queen of the gods, goddess of marriage.
Greek name: Ares. Roman name: Mars. One of the most famous gods, god of war and son of Zeus (Jove).
Last one. Greek name: Artemis. Roman name: Diana.

These are just a few of the gods and goddesses that are shared by both Greek and Roman religions. Despit their many similarities, there are alot of differences. In Greek mythology, things such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, the epic poems written by Homer. Greek gods were much more aggressive and intervended in different ways than the Roman gods. Take the Odyssey for example, Athena is constantly with Oddysseus on his journey home, in a human form. Also, the gods of Greece constantly picked favorites to bless and motal enemies to curse.
The Roman gods were much different. They did less intervening and play the Favorites Game a little less. They did things such as send thunderstorms or floods upon the humans. Signs like these would show the mortals that they were doing something wrong or impeech/gove more power to a ruler.
The differences and similarities are not so vast between the two. It seems as if they adopted their prinicples off of eachother. Both religions are polytheistic and both seems kind of seem like nothing but mythology.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Compare/Contrast Roman and Greek gods.