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The Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts, integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin literature, Roman art, and religious life as it was experienced throughout the Roman Empire. Many of the Romans' own gods remain obscure ...
Orcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman mythology. As with Hades, the name of the god was also used for the underworld itself. Eventually, he was conflated with Dis Pater and Pluto. A temple to Orcus may once have existed on the Palatine Hill in Rome
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans, and is a form of Roman folklore. "Roman mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to the subject matter as represented in the literature and art of other cultures in any period.
The heartbroken Agdistis begged Zeus, the Father God, to preserve Attis so his body would never decay or decompose. [7] At the temple of Cybele in Pessinus, the mother of the gods was still called Agdistis, the geographer Strabo recounted. [8] As neighbouring Lydia came to control Phrygia, the cult of Attis was given a Lydian context too.
Festus gives the etymology of delubrum as fustem delibratum, "stripped stake," that is, a tree deprived of its bark (liber) by a lightning bolt, as such trees in archaic times were venerated as gods. The meaning of the term later extended to denote the shrine built to house the stake. [142] Compare aedes, fanum, and templum.
Altar decorated with a bas-relief depicting the god Sylvanus Capitoline Museums in Rome. Silvanus (/ s ɪ l ˈ v eɪ n ə s /; [1] meaning "of the woods" in Latin) was a Roman tutelary deity of woods and uncultivated lands. As protector of the forest (sylvestris deus), he especially presided over plantations and delighted in trees growing wild.
In the surviving text of their hymn, the Arval Brothers invoked Mars as ferus, "savage" or "feral" like a wild animal. [37] Mars's potential for savagery is expressed in his obscure connections to the wild woodlands, and he may even have originated as a god of the wild, beyond the boundaries set by humans, and thus a force to be propitiated. [38]
According to philologist Martin L. West, "the clearest cases are the cosmic and elemental deities: the Sky-god, his partner Earth, and his twin sons; the Sun, the Sun Maiden, and the Dawn; gods of storm, wind, water, fire; and terrestrial presences such as the Rivers, spring and forest nymphs, and a god of the wild who guards roads and herds".