Greek and Roman Gods

What were the similarities and differences between these two?

Again, it would take an entire book to answer this question completely.


However, in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans themselves, the difference was essentially non-existent – at least, the differences were on par with to-may-to/to-mah-to. Local religious differences, in the sensibility of the Greeks and Romans, were customarily reckoned to be the consequence of local historical precedents, or cultural bents. 

In terms of worship, Roman worship is typically more structured and mechanical. Greek worship is likewise, though often not to the extent of would would be considered typically 'Roman'. Every region, even within Greece itself, had, also, its own titles and epithets and certain local myths of various deities, in addition to certain very localized genii/daemones. 

The various Greek, Roman/Italic, and Etruscan forms of Olympianism should really not be considered different religions in the contemporary sense, not hardly. Such an idea would have been ludicrous to a Greek, Roman or Etrurian; the Gods are the Gods of all the world. Rather, they are more a kind of spectrum – a spectrum that extends from Etruria to Anatolia, tapering off additionally into the heavily Romanized and Hellenized religion of Gaul, North Africa and Hispania in the West, and Syria and Egypt in the East – although, arguably, all the way through Persia and touching on India, subsequent to the Alexandrian conquests. 

It's a generalization, but, overall, by the high Empire, people ranging from Gaul or even Britain in the West, all the way to what's now Afghanistan in the East, would have, generally speaking, largely considered themselves to have all been worshipping essentially the same deities. Interpretatio Romana/Graeca were omnipresent.

Sorry for these broad questions, I had an idea of what there differences and similarities were I just wanted to know if you guys had a similar idea. I think that they differed in respect to ritual and practice but that they all had something in common in that Hellas had a massive impact in the mediterranean area. But also think that Greece was also influenced by Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. So I just tend to say that it was "Mediterranean", which was later introduced and implanted more substantially in Gaul, Britain, Spain, etc.. Except maybe for those hardy Teutons (damn you Arminius lol).

I would say it is important not to overemphasize the differences. Certainly some points of difference existed, but they were not much greater than would have been seen between two very spatially separate Greek cities. Furthermore, as time progressed, even these differences became increasingly faint.

Certainly there was near-eastern input – also increasing with the Hellenistic era onward – though the initial Egyptian and Syro-Levantine contributions were first mostly in terms of philosophy and Mystery cults.

My thoughts exactly, by the way do you know how I could get a lararium, statues(miniature), etc? Although I think they are both variations of olympianism, I feel a little closer to the roman variation because I'm latin american.

Philhellene91 wrote:My thoughts exactly, by the way do you know how I could get a lararium, statues(miniature), etc? Although I think they are both variations of Olympianism, I feel a little closer to the roman variation because I'm latin american.

I'm not aware of any commercial makers of lararia – I would advise building one yourself if you're at all a craftsman. I've built several delubra/lararia-type shrines myself. I use balsa, pine, some wood stain, and occasionally some cloth and paper for the tympanum. It takes about a day of work. 

I'd be happy to talk more about procedures/instructions/recommendations for building. As I said, I've done this many times. 

Actually, although I've been often asked 'where I got X-item', probably 75% of the time I made it. On one hand, I'm reluctant to fund many sites with my purchases, and, on the other, I want things a certain way, and, usually, a certain size. So, my solution? I make what I need myself. 

About a two years ago, I was blessed to run across a complete set of antiqued bronze statuettes of the Gods on eBay, about 3 inches tall each, for about $90, coming from a seller in Athens itself, and including Vesta/Ἑστία, which is rare. They are all beautiful and totally uninfluenced by contemporary style, they aren't copies of museum pieces, and, my favorite quality, the male deities aren't given 'bodybuilder' bodies. I don't have the foggiest idea who made them, or where they were purchased. They have no makers' marks on them. I know virtually nothing about them – heck, they could be antiques for all I know. I can say that, unfortunately, I have never seen them for sale anywhere else. I believe the seller had another one or two sets for sale at the time, but that was at least two years ago, so I have no clue if they're still available, and I don't remember the seller's name either to even direct you the right way. I have to apologize. 

There are a variety of sellers on eBay, mostly in Greece, that sell individual statues and sets in white resin (and some in metal), that are larger, though still small, and seem to be from a line that is sold as souvenirs/tourist stuff in Greece. I am honestly not a fan, the quality is not very good. 

If you have the money, the website Ancient Sculpture Gallery sells actual cast bronze statuettes of several popular deities in a lararium size, based on the style and size of images from actual Greek and Roman home shrines. A single statue, however, runs about $200. When I have $600 to spare (if ever), I plan to purchase Iuppiter, and a pair of Lares. 

http://search.ancientsculpturegallery.com/search.php?search=statuette&x=0&y=0

However, as you may also be aware, a large number of Greek and Roman home shrines were actually devoid of physical statues, but had images painted on the back panel – as visible in many lararia from Pompeii. 

There are many images of the paintings from these lararia from the Pompeii and Herculaneum ruins that you could print for yourself.

I also have an enormous image file that has nice size black and white line drawings of all the major deities, and some less commonplace ones. It's a scan of an antique print of 'Gods and Divinities of Antiquity' that was for sale on eBay about a year ago. It was going for about $100, which I couldn't spare – but I made sure to steal screencap the image for my own use. I'd be happy to share it with you.

Now that I really think about it I really think it's absurd that I would choose the roman variation of olympianism just because I'm latin american, since really it's all just olympianism in the end, plus it would be rather odd to stick to the ritual and worship of a specific city state, which doesn't even exist any more(physically it does but spiritually I don't think so). Any way yes I would be pleased if you could help me out with this project

PS I apologize for not responding soon enough, I was just debating the whole roman and hellenic differences and similarities in my head; I had got the impression that the two "religions" were different from the mos maiorum, which made me think that religio romana was even more different. It seems to be rather particular and specific to a certain area(Rome), but in the end like you said the differences became less apparent by late antiquity.

Now that I really think about it I really think it's absurd that I would choose the roman variation of olympianism just because I'm latin american, since really it's all just olympianism in the end, plus it would be rather odd to stick to the ritual and worship of a specific city state, which doesn't even exist any more(physically it does but spiritually I don't think so). Any way yes I would be pleased if you could help me out with this project

Much agreed – feel free to let me know any questions you have project-wise. 

Mos maiorum simply means 'the law/manner/custom of the ancestors', which is almost identical in meaning to the Greek idea of the ἀρχαῖος νόμος meaning 'the original law/manner/custom'. Every area had its 'ancestral custom' that would apply to a variety of circumstances, not only the public and domestic religion. 


But yes – for one thing, as time passed, and the Classical world grew more and more cosmopolitan, former regional cultural, social, linguistic and religious differences became less and less distinct. Everyone was 'Roman', even the Greeks (who, incidentally, from later Antiquity, up until the Greek Wars of Independence in the 1800s, generally referred to themselves as Ρωμαίοι (Rhōmaíoi) meaning 'Romans', while until that same time, what we now know as Greece was called, by the Ottomans, 'Rumelia', or 'al-Rum' in Arabic. 


Furthermore, in the various Mystery religions, the local mos/νὀμος mattered virtually not at all, which makes sense given the drive of many such movements toward a kind of universality and cosmopolitan outreach. Then, it deserves mention that, in the years just prior to  the official adoption of Christianity, it would be a safe bet that virtually any 'religious' person was probably a devotee of one or more of the various Mystery religions. As society developed and the zeitgeist changed, the old public and quasi-public/domestic religion, with its mostly mundane focus, and all its particular routines and rituals (oftentimes, whose purpose had long since been forgotten), simply, as some have argued, no longer adequately fulfilled the spiritual needs of the people. Of course, the old temples still functioned (although those associated with popular deities of Mystery religions certainly enjoyed some considerable prominence), but the 'churchgoing crowd' so to speak would have largely been made up of a whole plethora of Mystery religion devotees – Isidianism was widely popular, Mithraism among soldiers mainly, Orphism and Hermetism among the more religious philosophers, the Phrygian mysteries among more socially 'fringey' groups, in addition to a few mystical Jewish movements, Manichaeism, a very large number and variety of Gnostic religions, Christianity, of course, which was fairly popular even before becoming the official religion (it's been estimated that maybe 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was already Christian when it became the official faith), and also the Hypsistarian movement, probably numerous other smaller movements whose names have been lost to history, and, according to some archaeological suggestions and scholars I've read, perhaps a Buddhist presence, at least in Alexandria.      

Well I guess I was right in perceiving a problem in what he told me and what you told me, not to mention that he called Lycurgus an Epicurean and Cicero a Neoplatonist. Often times it seems like roman olympianists, not all of them, focus too much on the Roman aspect and not enough on the Olympianist one.

So given that by late antiquity the public and the domestic religion was slowly fading away and giving way to the different mystery schools, would it be necessary to have a household shrine/lararium? Besides the immortality of the soul, what were/are the other differences between the pre Orphic and post Orphic olympianism?

not to mention that he called Lycurgus an Epicurean and Cicero a Neoplatonist.

Yikes   

Often times it seems like Roman Olympianists, not all of them, focus too much on the Roman aspect and not enough on the Olympianist one. 

I think this is a considerable issue across the board with those who are interested in studying Classical Olympian religion with whatever cultural bent. The temptation to slip into just an empty 're-enactment' is often strong, especially for those acculturated only to the public cult, and who have been quasi-erroneously taught that Classical religion was devoid of belief or theology (although there is an element of truth to this statement, insofar as one is only referring to the public religion and the traditional domestic religion). Private, personal religion, such as that of the many and various Mystery religions (which would have constituted much of real religious practice from about the Hellenistic era onward) tends to be ignored in many circles, scholastic and otherwise. 

would it be necessary to have a household shrine/lararium?

Yes, most definitely! It is simply that the focus of devotions among genuinely religious people (versus those who simply followed the traditional rites taught by their parents from time immemorial without much or any real investiture in them) would have been often different – that is, on focal deities and figures of particular religious movements, rather than just the archaic 'domestic deities'. In the lararium at his residence, the later Roman emperor Alexander Severus is said to have venerated Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana (a very popular 'christ-like' Orpheo-Pythagorean saint), the deified Alexander the Great, as well as Moses, Abraham and Jesus. 

Besides the immortality of the soul, what were/are the other differences between the pre Orphic and post Orphic olympianism? 

There are many, of varying magnitude. Generally speaking, I would say that it would be reasonable to consider the difference between Orphism and common Olympian religion to amount to something like the difference between Christianity and Judaism. There are some introductory resources available in the Beginners subforum, likewise. 


As far as key differences, Orphism is, like Christianity, a 'founded religion' while Judaism and common Hellenism/Olympianism are cultural religions. Many things we now simply associate with 'religion', due to Christian influence, first show up in Orphism (and for which Orphism, in its earliest days, seems to have been seen as a very bizarre religion by outsiders), like a focus on written, divinely-revealed scripture, a focus on a teacher/disciple relationship, a major focus on the afterlife, rather than on the present world, and, as with Christianity (and most other Mystery religions) a very central focus on a single, particular central myth – Christianity is centered mainly on the creation of the world and its relationship to the life, sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus; Orphism is centered mainly on the creation of the world and its relationship to the birth, sacrifice, and restoration of Zagreus-Bacchus (different from the Theban Bacchus).

Orphism also totally forbids all blood sacrifices, and encourages, though doesn't absolutely mandate, a modest, vegetarian diet. 

There is more, but that ought to give a general sense.

Ah now I get what your saying in regards to the public/domestic religion. So the picture that I'm getting is that in late antiquity or I guess since hellenistic times there was a move away from this civil/family cult, which didn't offer much, if you will, spiritually or philosophically. So philosophy in that pure and original sense begins with Orpheus and his followers(when can we say that Orphism begins by the way?) by trying to transcend the mundane I guess for lack of a better word. Later on philosophers like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, etc., will develop these ideas.

Would it be proper to make a distinction between philosophy and the mystery schools? Or is that distinction something the ancients would've thought as absurd(I sort of think that it is absurd and that it's really a recent thing because modern people don't really know what philosophy actually is, many think that it's just something that academics do in universities.). Also I get the impression that many mystery schools had a henotheistic bent to them, if that is the case can we still call them olympian religions? Or is this really just a false assumption I'm making and they really did believe in the twelve Gods and all the others but their main focus was on achieving deification of their own soul?

So the picture that I'm getting is that in late antiquity or I guess since hellenistic times there was a move away from this civil/family cult, which didn't offer much, if you will, spiritually or philosophically.

Yes, that's the general sense. The civil religion certainly continued to operate (in many cases, its observation was a sacred duty of the government), but life had changed. Rome or Athens in 300 CE/AD were radically different places from Rome or Athens in 500 BCE. Eight hundred years earlier, life had been more subsistence, localized, and survival oriented, but in the fourth century, they were large, urban metropoles, where people lived similarly to how we do today, with everything that comes with big-city living. There was a huge influx of immigration from all over the Mediterranean world and beyond and a transfusion of ideas, coupled with much greater opportunity for people to think about reality and questions of the next life, rather than this one, as well as people experiencing the negatives of urban life, and hoping for something better in the hereafter – which, you're right, the civil religion really could not offer.  

So philosophy in that pure and original sense begins with Orpheus and his followers (when can we say that Orphism begins by the way?) by trying to transcend the mundane I guess for lack of a better word. Later on philosophers like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, etc., will develop these ideas. 

That is the general Orphic belief, that Orpheus was the first to teach theology and the eternity of the soul to the people – which we believe he spoke as direct inspiration from the Gods. Hence, he is often called, in Orphic writing, simply, 'the Theologian'. Orpheus' direct successor was his son and disciple, Musaeus (whom some people in Antiquity believed was the same as Moses). According to the Orphic tradition as it is passed on, we say, based on traditional accounts and some astrological hints in the Hymns, that Orpheus lived and preached in Thrace around the 1800's BCE, before the Trojan War, although some give later dates, and some even much earlier dates. Teachings essentially identical with Orphism are attributed to Pherecydes of Syros, and his disciple Pythagoras, who both lived in the 500's BCE. Orphism was certainly already a fairly established religion by the time of Euripides (in the 400's BCE), who wrote a now almost entirely lost play called the Cretans that seems, from the fragments we have, to have been about Orphism. Euripides also mentions Orphism in the Hippolytus, although he does so in a somewhat derogatory way, mocking the followers of Orpheus for their devotion to holy books and their odd diets. Orphism also appears in some Platonic dialogues (later 400's BCE). Some say that Orphism may have been codified, though not founded, by Onomacritus, a compiler of holy texts who lived in the late 500's BCE. 

Would it be proper to make a distinction between philosophy and the mystery schools? Or is that distinction something the ancients would've thought as absurd(I sort of think that it is absurd and that it's really a recent thing because modern people don't really know what philosophy actually is, many think that it's just something that academics do in universities.). Also I get the impression that many mystery schools had a henotheistic bent to them, if that is the case can we still call them olympian religions? Or is this really just a false assumption I'm making and they really did believe in the twelve Gods and all the others but their main focus was on achieving deification of their own soul? 

In the earliest forms, no. Philosophy and the Mystery schools were essentially synonymous. What later became Pythagoreanism was probably essentially a more theory-focused branch of some kind of Orphic movement. Socrates and Plato are harder to say. Socrates is a very shadowy figure, historically, because we really can't know for certain who he is versus who Plato is. However, in the Meno, for instance, Socrates places a huge emphasis on the importance of the Mystery cults as a major source of truth. 

I have to agree with you on the point that modern philosophy is dead philosophy. It no longer knows what it is, or whence it comes. 

The type of theism of the different Mystery cults depends a bit on the time period. In the very earliest times, the theology was essentially polytheistic, although heavily focused on specific deities. From the Hellenistic era onward, the general spirit in religion evolves more toward a kind of henotheism or polymorphic-monotheism. However, at the time, the distinctions we make between loose monotheism, henotheism, kathenotheism and polytheism would have seemed completely absurd and laughably trivial. Strict monotheism, like that of the Jews and Christians, was the only thing that was considered 'different'. 

Some Mystery cults were more henotheistic than others. Isidianism seems to have venerated Isis as essentially the most powerful deity of all the universe, and, essentially, as the only one who really mattered, though not going to the Judeo-Christian conclusion of actually denying the existence of other deities. Mithraic religious sites and images quite often include other images of the Gods alongside their primary deity, Mithras, especially of Sol/Ἥλιος. Orphism is strongly rooted in Olympianism, and considers itself the esoteric heart of it, and certainly recognizes all the typical divinities of Olympian religion, plus a handful more unique to Orphism – it is simply their essence and ontology that differs in Orphism. The Phrygian Mysteries identified their central deity, Cybele, with Rhea, while Gnostic religions were quite literally all over the place theologically – some were very Hellenistic, some were much more Judaic, others were a meeting of Greek and Persian thought.

Traditional family worship certainly didn't decline in late Antiquity. Archeological finds show that the manufacture of idols for home shrines continued to be an active industry as long as it could. In the 5th century, an Emperor had to warn Christians about breaking into private houses to destroy shrines: pagan worship in private was still legal, he said, but house-breaking wasn't.

That's most certainly true. I'm not talking about literal home religiosity in general, not hardly. That, arguably, increased, especially with the greater ease and decreased cost of acquiring devotional images, which, as you mentioned, are beyond ubiquitous in the Imperial era and onward. There was quite literally a thriving business in mass-produced terracotta devotional figures. 

I was speaking rather of the gradual and long-term (and, of course, not cut-and-dry) transition toward precisely this kind of home devotional worship of popular, cosmopolitan deities in the private setting, which had been, originally, primarily of domestic and mundane-sphere divinities.

In other words, where, in 300 BCE one would have found Vesta and a domestic personality of Jove, in 300 CE, one would have more likely found Fortuna and Sol or perhaps Serapis (or even Heliosarapis, the conjunction of the two) – very likely with combined attributes of both sets of divinities and others, who, to the fourth-century resident, were, for all intents and purposes, essentially the same powers anyway.

Which religions/philosophies were Olympianist?

Nominally speaking, arguably, any of the various streams that arose in the Classical Graeco-Roman Mediterranean – the traditional state, temple, and domestic cults, Orphism/Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Stoicism (and other theistic philosophical schools) the religions of Eleusis and Samothrace, the Phrygian Mysteries, the several Asclepian cults, Hellenistic Isidianism, Hypsistarianism, Mithraism, cults of holy men and teachers, ancestral worship, veneration of local tutelaries, and other lesser known cults, and likely others that have been completely lost to history. 

I would say that covers most of the spectrum of what is, broadly, Olympianism.