ROME’S STOLEN MYTHOLOGY
How much of Roman mythology was influenced by the Greeks?
Many of the Roman gods were the same as the Greek, for example Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love became Venus to the Romans. This pattern is replicated across the pantheon of gods but it is too simple to say that the Romans just took the Greek gods, changed their names, and made them their own. Ancient cultures from across the world had their own names for gods of the sun, the sky, the growth of crops, dawn, night, birth, death, etc. They had gods for a whole host of other things as a way of explaining everything from emotions to why there was dew on the ground in the mornings.
