Greek vs Roman Gods — Complete Comparison

Roman gods with no Greek twin

The neat one-to-one chart hides the fact that much of Roman religion had nothing to do with Greece. Several of its most important powers had no real Greek equivalent:

• Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings, invoked first in prayers. The doors of his shrine in the Forum were closed only when Rome was at peace, which happened very rarely.
• Quirinus, an early god of the Roman citizen body, later identified with the deified Romulus. With Jupiter and Mars he formed the oldest triad, whose priests were the three major flamines.
• Terminus, the god of boundary stones. Legend said he refused to move when the Capitol was cleared for Jupiter's temple, so his stone stayed inside it.
• The Lares and Penates, guardians of the household and storeroom, honoured with daily offerings at the family shrine.
• Vertumnus and Pomona, gods of changing seasons and fruit trees, whose courtship Ovid tells in Metamorphoses 14.

Others were matched to Greek gods only imperfectly. Faunus became Pan, Bellona was paired with Enyo, Liber with Dionysus, and Dis Pater, a native god of the underworld, was equated with Pluto, itself a Latin form of the Greek Plouton, "the wealthy one," a title of Hades.

How the merger actually happened

The Greek gods did not reach Rome all at once, and much came through intermediaries. The Etruscans had already adopted Greek myth by the sixth century BC: their Tinia, Uni and Menrva correspond to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, and Etruscan bronze mirrors are engraved with Greek scenes, the figures labelled with Etruscan forms of their names: Hercle for Heracles, Turan for Aphrodite, Elcsntre (Alexandros) for Paris. The Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, dedicated according to tradition in 509 BC, was built in Etruscan style.

Some Greek gods were imported deliberately, usually in a crisis. A temple to Apollo was vowed during a plague in 433 BC and dedicated in 431, and he kept his Greek name. In 293 BC another plague led the Romans to consult the Sibylline Books, and an embassy brought the healing god Asclepius from Epidaurus in the form of a sacred snake; his temple on the Tiber Island was dedicated in 291, and Ovid tells the story at the end of the Metamorphoses. In 217 BC, after the disaster at Lake Trasimene, Rome held a lectisternium, a banquet for the gods, at which twelve deities were displayed in six pairs, essentially the Greek Olympians in Roman form.

Not every import was welcome. In 186 BC the Senate harshly restricted the rites of Bacchus, whose secret night-time gatherings were seen as a conspiracy; Livy describes the scandal, and an inscribed bronze copy of the Senate's decree survives.

Cults that grew more important in Rome

Some deities were bigger in Rome than they had ever been in Greece. Vesta's sacred fire was tended by six Vestal Virgins, chosen as girls and bound to thirty years of service; letting the fire go out or breaking their vow of chastity was treated as a threat to the state, and an unchaste Vestal could be buried alive. Hestia had no comparable priesthood. Diana's ancient grove at Aricia was served by the rex Nemorensis, a runaway slave who won the post by killing his predecessor, a custom that later inspired James Frazer's The Golden Bough. Saturn's December festival, the Saturnalia, in which slaves were waited on by their masters and gifts were exchanged, has no clear Greek parallel beyond the Athenian Kronia.

Literature told the stories, religion did not

Most of the Roman myths readers know were borrowed by poets from Greek models. Virgil's Aeneid reworks Homer, and Ovid's Metamorphoses retells Greek legends under Latin names. That is why Roman mythology can seem like Greek mythology with new labels. Roman religious practice, with its priestly colleges, augury and calendar of festivals, was distinctive, but its own myth-telling was thin. Romans told legends about their early history, Romulus, the Sabine women and Horatius at the bridge, rather than about the gods.

Ancient sources

• Livy, History of Rome — the temple of Apollo (Book 4), the arrival of Aesculapius (Book 10), the lectisternium of 217 BC (Book 22) and the Bacchanalia affair (Book 39).
• Ovid, Fasti — a poem on the Roman calendar explaining festivals and native gods such as Janus and Terminus.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses 14–15 — Vertumnus and Pomona; the bringing of Aesculapius to Rome.
• Virgil, Aeneid — Venus as mother of Aeneas, Juno's hostility to the Trojans and the Roman reworking of Homeric gods.
• Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods — a philosophical dialogue discussing the names, origins and identifications of Greek and Roman gods.

Frequently asked questions

Are the Greek and Roman gods the same gods?

The Romans treated them as the same beings, but many Roman gods began as independent Italian deities with different functions, and they were matched to Greek counterparts over several centuries.

Why does Apollo have the same name in both?

Rome had no native equivalent, so it imported him directly from the Greek world, first as a healer, in the fifth century BC. Augustus later made him a personal patron and built him a temple on the Palatine.

Which English weekdays are named after Roman gods?

Only Saturday (Saturn) comes from a Roman god directly; Sunday and Monday come from the sun and moon. Tuesday to Friday are named after Germanic gods who replaced Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus, which is clearer in French mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi.

Did the Romans have their own myths?

Comparatively few about the gods. Their native stories focus on the founding and early history of Rome, while their poets borrowed most divine myths from the Greeks.