#i don't mean that last paragraph meanly i promise

[kingwren]

okay this is going to get really rambly but i promise i understand this topic.

the romans had a massive empire that stretched, at its height, completely around the mediterranean sea. they had a LOT of different populations under their rule, all with a bunch of different religious practices. as the romans knew well, difference of religion is a primary source of conflict, so they needed a religiously hegemonic empire. but at the same time, they knew that forcing people to worship something they didn't originally was ALSO a major cause for conflict.

so how do you solve that? well, luckily the romans were already polytheistic. their major gods had their basis in etruscan religion, as well as other local populations that had all sort of ended up agreeing about who the major gods were, which were all eventually melded into the "roman people". and it's much easier to accept new gods if you already have a few, so, the romans went to their conquered populations and told them "yo, cool god you have there! sure, you can be allowed to keep worshipping them! we're just gonna give them a roman name, and add them to our pantheon as a minor deity! that way we're all one group, you see?" and because these people's religions were essentially left alone except for a purely formal renaming, they largely didn't mind or care. the romans (likely) didn't end up worshipping most, if any, of these gods, they were just added to the pantheon to promote religious hegemony and to keep religious conflict at bay.

so what about the greeks? well, the greeks had a very well-documented pantheon that they all mostly agreed upon across the hellenic peninsula, and islands outside of it. partially, because greeks were good at writing down what they knew, and partially because greeks just had a habit of getting on a boat and plopping down somewhere new. (this is subject for an entirely different post, though.) so you can't very well tell them that "your gods are our gods now and you can be allowed to worship them as minor gods," like that just isn't gonna fly.

so what the romans did, especially in later centuries, was overlay their major gods with the greek ones, and create essentially a "shared" pantheon. this was to promote the idea to the greeks that they had a shared cultural ancestry, but also, to promote the idea to their own people that they were *definitely* as good as the elevated philosophers and scientists of greece, which many romans at the time had become infatuated with.

so they romanised a lot of the greek gods. some of them were equated to gods they already had (such as Zeus-Jupiter, Hera-Juno, and Demeter-Ceres,) while for others a new name and quintessentially roman designation would be created. (think for example Hestia, a relatively minor goddess in the sense that not many greeks believed her to be part of the main twelve even though she was worshipped in every household, becoming Vesta, the goddess believed to be the protector of the roman people, also the goddess with the longest surviving cult following after christianity became the religion of the roman empire, because of how important she was to the beliefs of the romans.)

the adoption of the greek pantheon, it has to be said, was more for the sake of the roman people than the hellenic peoples. the greeks didn't give a shit. it was the romans who wanted to be like the greeks.

also, the idea that someone can be "stealing" a god to worship is preposterous to me. if you want to worship something or someone, adopting those religious practices that are available for you to adopt is not evil, and attaching a word with a negative connotation such as "stealing" to that is just wrong. yes, the romans co-opted a lot of pagan objects of worship in the name of religious hegemony. no, they didn't "steal" gods or religious practices.

i hope that made sense!

please correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't the romans "steal" their gods/mythology from like... everyone? i was under the impression that it was sort of like "oh hey y'all have a god for this specific thing? that's awesome i do this specific thing i'll make some offerings to your guy, too. he's (buggs bunny meme) our guy now."

religious syncretism is a little more complicated than that in a way that im sure one of my followers could give more time and energy to explaining than i can. imperialism is a part of it but calling it "stealing" is an extreme simplification