"God Of War IV" or "There 'Aint No Comin' Back!"

[tacticslion]

History for deiphiliacs! (Is that even a word? "Deiphiliacs"?)

Originally Posted by Loyal

Well, sort of; the Romans assimilated gods from pretty much everyone relevant they conquered and adapted them for their own preferences, the Greek pantheon merely being the most prolific. The Romans (up till the rise of Christianity) had a peculiar form of religious tolerance in that they were like, "Y'know, that's a pretty neat god you guys are worshipping. We'll do the same!"

Also, while they had equivalents to nearly all the Greek gods, the Roman versions weren't quite the massive assholes the Greek versions were. Jupiter, for instance, wasn't Rapist King Of The Universe like Zeus was.

Mostly this. They had their own gods (thus the difference in names), but basically worked really, really hard to find out how all gods were the same so, when they conquered somebody, they could just go, "hey, yo, your gods are cool and you can keep 'em - see we worship the same guy!" So Jupiter slowly took on the characteristics of Zeus until you really couldn't tell the two apart. Vulcan, on the other hand, had no Grecian equivalence, and even Mars was fairly far apart - originally - from Ares, considering he was originally god of cattle* (that bravely sent his loyal herdsmen to war to conquer the supposedly possibly maybe cattle-stealing neighbors, which was the initial reason for Rome's earlier conquests... the dudes were paranoid).

The reason the Roman loved them some Greek gods, however, was that they loved them some Greek culture, in general. Greek became the de-facto "common" world-language (it already was due to Alexander, they just kept it up, as it was easier) and Grecian culture (brought in by the slaves and tailored to Roman tastes - kind of like French/Anglo -> English language change after 1066) appealed to them. So the gods blended.

As far as the religious tolerance, it was a practical religious tolerance - so long as the religion, in general, didn't completely contradict the Roman divine rule (the divinity of the Emperors). They were pretty cool with most things, though. Certain divisive sects, especially monotheistic ones - including the Jews* (initially given leniency because of their submission, but ultimately destroyed due to repeated monotheistic-based rebellion against the polytheistic Roman Emperor's claim of divinity), then later Christians - but also polytheistic deities considered (rightly or not) divisive, dangerous, and/or seditious, like the mystery cults* (Christianity was considered one) of Bacchus* (one of two given equivalency with the Grecian deity Dionysus), or (for a short time) the Isis/Horus mystery cults. Generally these were persecuted because they met in secret, had some sort of 'blood rites', and were generally considered unsavory, and filled with seditious attempts to overthrow the state. Often persecuted, the many various 'mystery cults' and other intolerable religions were granted little to no mercy under some emperors and tolerated rather openly by others. Eventually Christianity grew in popularity until it was the most common religion (after Diocletian nearly wiped it out, Constantine made it permissible) and it wasn't until emperor Theodosius (sp?) that "Christianity" became the state religion and the Roman Empire began to persecute non-Christians (and dissenting claimants to the title "Christian").

Anyhoo, derailing history lesson aside, I'd say that the Norse pantheon is a prime target next. I've always found it interesting that the Norse and Grecian pantheons are so similar, yet divergent in significant ways. You have your dominating, lustful ruler (Zeus v. Odin), your super-strong son (Heracles v. Thor), your ancient, primordial, quasi-elemental super-sized terrors from which the world was made (Titans v. Giants) and your weird intrigues. There's a minor reflection of this in the Egyptian pantheon as well, although that one took a much larger diversion in character archetypes. The Norse pantheon gave the roles of the deities to very different creatures however. In Greek, the high-god was lightning, while in the Norse, the more popular super-strong and brash son was, just for example. It's kind of neat, really.
/nerdiness

EDIT: I thought of it at the time, though I forgot to mention, but the Egyptian pantheon would also be a very decent focus for the next series of stories as they are both close in geographical scale and supposed "deilithic" (I'm just making up the deity-themed words, here!) time line.