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Classical Mythology: Difference between revisions
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While the Romans generally tried to identify their deities with the Greek ones, there were a few Roman/Italic ones for which no exact Greek equivalent could be found, e.g. '''Flora''' and '''Bellona'''. The former was a nymph-like goddess of flowers and spring (most similar to '''Chloris'''), and the latter was a goddess of war variously identified as Mars' wife or sister (most similar to '''Enyo''').
It should be noted that Greek and Roman religious ideas were not monolithic. In later years, people began worshiping all kinds of newfangled eastern gods. [[Plato]] wanted to outlaw [[Homer]]'s epics because [[Moral Guardians|he thought their gods were bad role-models]]. Considering their ''lack'' of [[Comes Great Responsibility]], he may have had a point. Philosophers exercised various degrees of skepticism towards the old myths, to the point that the Epicureans were accused of atheism (though some scholars say that atheism in those days meant a lack of worship for the gods and not a lack of belief). Some historians, notably Euhemerus, tried to reinterpret the gods as having originally been great kings. The Epicurean writer Lucian of Samosata was already [[Deconstruction|deconstructing]] popular religious stories in the second century AD. Belief in classical mythology gradually waned between the second and fifth centuries, largely due to the spread of the then-new religion [[
In addition to all this, the Greeks (and, later, the Romans) had a habit of identifying and referring to other people's gods by the names of their own deities. So a Germanic tribe might be said to said to worship Mercury if their principal god was similar enough to the guy; it helped that many of the peoples they came in contact with (the Celts and Germans in particular) were Indo-European and thus their mythologies [[wikipedia:Proto-Indo-European religion|shared a common origin]]. There was also strong regional variation in worship of individual gods, both in emphasizing individual gods and particular attributes of the various gods.
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* [[Alternate Company Equivalent|Alternate Mythology Equivalent ]]: [[Hindu Mythology|Indra]] and Zeus are very similar characters. Both are [[Jerkass God|Jerkass chief god]] of the pantheons, wielding [[Bolt of Divine Retribution]] and has pretty amusing sexual life. This is due to their [[wikipedia:Proto-Indo-European religion|common origin]] in the Indo-European warrior tribes that expanded out from the plains region north of the Black Sea.
** Also Apollo and [[Norse Mythology|Freyr]], Hades and [[Finnish Mythology|Tuoni]] and etc.
** The weekdays Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after the Norse/Germanic gods Tiw, Wodan, Thor, and Freya. In the Romance languages, their names are different: For example, in Italian, they're called Martedi (Mars), Mercoledi (Mercury), Giovedi (Jove/Jupiter), and Venerdi (Venus). The implication is that Mars is equivalent to Tiw, Mercury to Wodan, Jupiter to Thor, and Venus to Freya. (Incidentally, it also means that the names of the days of the week are named after [[
* [[And I Must Scream]]: Those [[Taken for Granite|unfortunate enough]] to gaze upon the face of Medusa.
** Which is where we get the word petrified
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