Roman mythology: Encyclopedia II - Roman mythology - Nature of early Roman myth

Roman mythology - Nature of early Roman myth

One might almost say that the archaic Romans did not have myths. That is to say: until their poets began to borrow from Greek models in the later part of the Republic, the Romans had no sequential narratives about their gods comparable to the Titanomachy or the seduction of Zeus by Hera.

What the Romans did have, however, were:

• a highly developed system of rituals, priestly colleges, and "clusters" of related gods.
• a rich set of historical myths about the foundation and rise of their city involving human actors, with occasional divine interventions.

Roman mythology - Early mythology about the gods

The Roman model involved a very different way of defining and thinking about the gods than we are familiar with from Greece. For example, if one were to ask a Greek about Demeter, he might reply with the well-known story of her grief at the rape of Persephone by Hades.

An archaic Roman, 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.

The original religion of the early Romans was modified by the addition of numerous and conflicting beliefs in later times, and by the assimilation of a vast amount of Greek mythology. We know what little we do about early Roman religion not through contemporary accounts, but from later writers who sought to salvage old traditions from the desuetude into which they were falling, such as the 1st century BC scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. Other classical writers, such as the poet Ovid in his Fasti (Calendar), were strongly influenced by Hellenistic models, and in their works they frequently employed Greek beliefs to fill gaps in the Roman tradition.

Roman mythology - Early mythology about Roman history

In contrast to the dearth of narrative material about the gods, the Romans had a rich panoply of quasi-historical legends about the foundation and early growth of their own city. Primitive kings like Romulus and Numa were almost wholly mythical in nature, and legendary material may extend up as far as accounts of the early Republic. In addition to these largely home-grown traditions, material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date, rendering Aeneas, for example, an ancestor of Romulus and Remus.

The Aeneid and the first few books of Livy are the best extant sources for this human mythology.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Nature of early Roman myth", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki