this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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I wonder what they'd do when encountering a god that has no equivalent in the Roman pantheon. Do they then invent a new equivalent god?
While the Romans were not averse to inventing new gods, more often they just really stretched the interpretation of foreign gods to fit - like interpreting the Germanic Wodan (Odin), the one-eyed god of wisdom and war, as their equivalent of Mercury, the god of trade and travel (they're both wandering gods, it MUST be so!).
Other times, they'd just adopt the new god wholesale and assign it a suitably Roman name, like Magna Mater for Cybele, an Anatolian goddess.