The Roman Religion

Most of the Roman gods were adopted from Greek’s religion. Rome was very influenced by the Greek’s religion, you could say they sort of adopted it. Apollo was call by that name in Rome and Greece. But most of the others were called different names that what they were called in Greece. Here is a list of some of them with the Greek name:

Bacchus (Dionysus), Ceres (Demeter), Diana (Artemis), Juno (Hera), Jupiter (Zeus), Mars (Ares), Mercury (Hermes), Minerva (Athena), Neptune (Poseidon), Venus (Aphrodite), Vulcan (Hepatitis).   

Roman life was full of religious events. “Each stage of life was also marked by religious observances. At the birth of a child, men would strike the threshold of the house with agricultural implements to ward off the wilder spirits of the fields. At puberty, a boy set aside the bulla, or protective amulet of childhood, and exchanged his boyhood toga for the toga of manhood. The modern tradition of the bridal veil goes back to the Roman practice of veiling a young woman who was leaving the protection of her father’s home for that of her new husband, and who was therefore in a temporary state of religious vulnerability. Similarly, she would be carried over the threshold of her new home to avoid the bad omen that would result if the newest member of the household were to stumble upon her first entry into the house. When someone died in a house, the corpse was removed feet-first to discourage the ghost from returning. At the festival of the Parentalia, in February, the living family members would make offerings of flowers, corn meal, and wine on the graves of their family’s dead.” courtesy of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000. The Lupercalia was a ceremony held at Palatine Hill. 2 groups of young men would sacrifice goats and a dog. They would cut the goat skin into strips, and wearing only these strips, the young men ran a race tapping women viewers with the strips that they wore.

In Rome, there were gods for each part of a house. The Greeks, however, didn’t. They had quite a few less gods. The Romans had many gods. There were gods for almost everything. The Romans worshiped most of them every day!

                                                            Courtesy of Jeffrey Chen