THE religion Roman had as its main feature the polytheism, the belief in several gods. These gods had the forms and characters of men and women.
These characteristics were similar to the religions of other ancient peoples. This made it possible for the Romans, over time, to adopt the worship of gods of the people they made contact with, assimilating these gods to Roman religion.
The Greek gods were the main deities assimilated by the Romans. The difference was that the Romans gave these gods Latin names. For example, the father of almost all gods was Zeus to the Greeks, but to the Romans it was Jupiter.
Below are other correspondences between the Greek and Roman gods.
| Greece | Pomegranate | main attributes |
| Ivy | Juno | Queen of the Gods, Protector of Women, Marriage and Childbirth |
| aphrodite | Venus | goddess of love |
| Ares | Mars | God of War |
| Hades | Pluto | god of the dead |
| Poseidon | Neptune | god of the seas |
| Eros | Cupid | God of love and passion |
| Apollo | Phoebus | God of poetry, music, male beauty |
| Artemis | Diana | Goddess of hunting, chastity, wild animals |
| Demeter | Ceres | Goddess of the harvest, of agriculture |
| Dionysus | Spleen | God of parties, of wine |
| Hermes | Mercury | Messenger of the gods, protector of commerce |
| hephaestus | Vulcan | God of metals, metallurgy, fire |
| chrono | Saturn | god of time |
| hestia | Vesta | eternal fire god |
The Roman gods were also deities linked to the nature forces (weather, fire, crop protectors), feelings (love, beauty, etc.) and human actions (hunting, war, etc.).
There was still the division between family worship and public worship. O family worship, held at home, was conducted by the paterfamilias and celebrated by family members with fire at the center. The gods were known as homes, protectors of the family, and at the celebration food was offered as well as animals were sacrificed.
O public worship it was organized by the State through civil servants, the greatest of whom was the Supreme Pontiff. The State controlled these cults with the aim of pleasing the gods and achieving success from them in military campaigns and in harvests, for example.
Priests and priestesses also assisted in the celebration of public services. The vestal priestesses stood out, virgin women from patrician families who worshiped the goddess Vesta, the protector of Rome.
Superstition was also a feature of Roman society, with good days (far) and bad (bad), and days of good and bad luck. For example, the days of the month of February and the odd days were days of ill omen.
With the expansion of Rome and contact with other civilizations, several other gods were adopted by the Romans. Persian and Egyptian gods began to be worshiped in Rome. However, one of the main religious assimilations carried out were freedom of worship and later adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, in the final centuries of civilization Roman.
Take the opportunity to check out our video lesson related to the subject: