Roman mythology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Romans had no sequential narratives about their gods comparable to the Titanomachy or the seduction of Zeus by Hera until their poets began to adopt Greek models in the later part of the Roman Republic. What the Romans did have, however, were:
* a highly developed system of rituals, priestly colleges, and pantheons of related gods.
* a rich set of historical myths about the foundation and rise of their city involving human actors, with occasional divine interventions.
The Roman model involved a very different way of defining and thinking about gods than that of Greek gods. For example, if one were to ask a Greek about Demeter, he might reply with the well-known story of her grief at the abduction of Persephone by Hades. An archaic Italian, by contrast, would tell you that Ceres had an official priest called a flamen, who was junior to the flamens of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, but senior to the flamens of Flora and Pomona. He might tell you that she was grouped in a triad with two other agricultural gods, Liber and Libera. And he might even be able to rattle off all of the minor gods with specialized functions who attended her: Sarritor (weeding), Messor (harvesting), Convector (carting), Conditor (storing), Insitor (sowing), and dozens more. Thus the archaic Roman "mythology", at least concerning the gods, was made up not of narratives, but rather of interlocking and complex interrelations between and among gods and humans.
