evocatio: From evoco, evocare, “to summon.” The ritual “calling out” of an enemy city’s patron deities, inviting them to join the Roman pantheon and give favor to the Roman army. Usually made with promises of a more beautiful temple or a more devout cult.
This household god once stood with other small bronze statuettes in a Roman household shrine, a lararium. Size: Overall: 14.5 cm (5 11/16 in.) Medium: bronze with copper inlays
Detail of relief with Marcus Aurelius offering a sacrifice to Jupiter Capitoline. Relief panel comes from the decoration of a triumphal arch erected in 176 AD. in the Roman Forum at the foot of the Capitoline Hill to celebrate Marcus Aurelius’s victories over the Germanics and Sarmatians. Relief was created during Marcus Aurelius’s reign in the years from 177 to 180 AD. Musei Capitolini, Rome.
Listen, this is a very specific topic to be iffy about, but for your knowledge, the Roman gods are notthe Greek gods.
The Romans were big on syncretism (the combination of different forms of belief or intellectual thought) and the adoption of foreign gods. The Greek deities were known since very early periods via the Etruscan culture, which was heavily influenced by Greece since the middle of the 8th century BC because of trade routes as well as the Greek cultural potential and would come to be completely engulfed around the third century BC with the Roman-Etruscan wars, but just like you’d see the Romans claiming the Germanic tribes worshipped their own gods under different names (the Germania by Roman historian Tacitus, written around 98 AD), the same happened here, and the fusion wasn’t 100% accurate.
While in the case of Zeus and Jupiter, for example, it worked well, Venus is far more motherly and political than Aphrodite (as Mars is the Father of Rome via the myth of Romulus and Remus, Venus is Venus Genetrix, Venus the Mother, and the only time you’ll see Aphrodite being motherly is in… the Aeneid, a distinctively Roman piece), Mars is an agricultural god as well as the god of war and has way more political connotations than Ares (he was a member of the archaic Capitoline Triad), Mercury is far more linked with commerce than the more pastoral Hermes, and the list goes on. Apollo was imported directly and very early (a temple for him, the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, was erected in the city of Rome as early as 431 BC), thus keeping the name but undergoing a very distinct Romanization of his attributes and worship. Janus, Quirinus and Terminus were very important Roman gods which had no Greek equivalent.
Isis, for example, was worshipped as herself, equated with a number of deities in both the Greek and the Roman worlds and some of her methods of worship and symbolism were associated with the Virgin Mary. It’s a far more complicated scenario, babes, especially when you consider Alexander’s conquests and the expansion of Hellenistic culture as well as its contact with many other cultures.
Syncretism is way more complicated than “the Romans just stole the Greek gods and gave them different names, the uncreative fucks”. The traditional date for Rome’s foundation is 753 BC and the WesternRoman Empire would last until 436 AD. That’s over a thousand years of conquest, trade and growing and shrinking territories, and none of these factors are likely to leave a religion unaltered.
Besides, the practice of religious syncretism is way older and more common than you’d expect. The Akkadians did it to Summerian deities a few thousand years before this especially after the conquest of Sargon of Akkad in 2340 BC (“Mesopotamia: the Sumerians”. Washington State University). The Greeks were doing much the same with the Roman pantheon itself (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Plutarch use Greek names for Roman cult), with the Egyptian pantheon and with the Scythian pantheon (Herodotus in both cases, though the associations would outlive him, such as the case of Zeus/Amon).
So,nothe Roman gods aren’t the plagiarized versions of the Greek gods, and I could defend this in front of a jury.
This altar (AD 2nd c.) stands in front of the Capitolium in the forum of the Mauretanian city of Cuicul (Djemila) The relief on the front of the altar depicts the sacrifice known as the suovetaurilia, which entailed the sacrifice of a pig (sus, but replaced by a cock in this relief), a ram (ovis) and a bull (taurus). The suovetaurilia was a purification ritual (lustratio) celebrated on important occasions.
Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee that thou be gracious and merciful to me, my house, and my household; […] that thou keep away, ward off, and remove sickness, seen and unseen, barrenness and destruction, ruin and unseasonable influence; and that thou permit my harvests, my grain, my vineyards, and my plantations to flourish and to come to good issue, preserve in health my shepherds and my flocks, and give good health and strength to me, my house, and my household […]
Mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius mihi domo familiaeque nostrae, […] uti tu morbos visos invisosque, viduertatem vastitudinemque, calamitates intemperiasque prohibessis defendas averruncesque; utique tu fruges, frumenta, vineta virgultaque grandire beneque evenire siris, pastores pecuaque salva servassis duisque bonam salutem valetudinemque mihi domo familiaeque nostrae […]
Cato The Elder, De Agricultura (On Agriculture) 141
