Concept

Roman mythology

Overview

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. Roman mythology draws from the mythology of the Italic peoples and shares mythemes with Proto-Indo-European mythology.

The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements. The stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individual's personal integrity relates to their responsibility to the community or Roman state. Heroism is an important theme. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are more concerned with ritual, augury, and institutions than with theology or cosmogony.

Roman mythology also draws on Greek mythology, primarily during the Hellenistic period of Greek influence and through the Roman conquest of Greece, via the artistic imitation of Greek literary models by Roman authors. The Romans identified their own gods with those of the ancient Greeks and reinterpreted myths about Greek deities under the names of their Roman counterparts. The influence of Greek mythology likely began as early as Rome's protohistory.

Classical mythology is the amalgamated tradition of Greek and Roman mythologies, as disseminated especially by Latin literature in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance, and up to present-day uses of myths in fiction and movies. The interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater influence on narrative and pictorial representations of myths than Greek sources. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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And therefore the ancient Kings in their palaces or habitations set up magnificent works in gold and in marble and works of art, in order that those who should see them should become astonished, and therefore reverent inquirers into the honourable conditions of the King. Therefore Statius, the sweet Poet, in the first part of the Theban History, says that, when Adrastus, King of the Argives, saw Polynices covered…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Roman mythology is; the author is tied to Roman mythology in the knowledge graph.
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A safer boast would in many cases have been that their ancestors had come to Italy in the train of Otho and other conquering Emperors. Though settled in the city, in some cases for generations, the patrician families were not altogether of it, being distinguished from the other citizens, if not always by the possession of ancestral landward estates, at least by their delight in war and contempt for honest industry…
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
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I touched on this in the preceding book, and mentioned that dramatic entertainments were first inaugurated at Rome on occasion of a pestilence, and by authority of the pontiff. And what man is there who is not more likely to adopt, for the regulation of his own life, the examples that are represented in plays which have a divine sanction, rather than the precepts written and promulgated with…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
States what Roman mythology is.
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Philosophers who discussed Roman mythology

C. S. Lewis

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

History painting

Place in the tradition

Part of Feminist theology.

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