no.29 - The Roman Gods

Since a filmstrip first beeped me through a survey of mythology, I have harbored some measure of resentment for the Roman pantheon of plagiarized Gods.

The Romans not only copied the Greek Mythology, but they took the art too. They copied statues and urns and then destroyed the originals in a rapacious attempt to make everything their own. Imagine if the Monkees had tried to pull this crap with the Beatles.

But perhaps what galls me most is the utter lack of logic to it all. How could the Romans possibly believe the laws of Earth and man were governed by a set of Gods that they stole? Did they think the Greeks almost got it right? Did they pass it all off as a coincidence? Weren't they afraid that, no matter how many times they called him Jupiter, Zeus was going to clobber them?

Probably not. Religious faith and conviction, then as now, tend to ignore the obvious when the obvious contradicts what we want to believe.

My heritage is half Greek, and I suppose this is why I take particular umbrage at the theft of the ancient Greek Gods. But this is a ridiculous form of nationalism - one for a nation I don't belong to, and to which I have no ties. Anyone who takes a step back will see that the antecedent to Zeus and Jupiter, by a thousand years or so, is the Egyptian Sun-God Ra — and he didn't exist either.