Roman god

Religion and myth

Although traditional Roman religion was conservative in ritual rather than dogmatic in doctrine, the meaning of the rituals they perpetuated could be adapted, expanded, and reinterpreted by accretions of myths, etiologies, commentary, and the influences of other cultures in response to social change. The earliest pantheon included Janus, Vesta, and the so-called Archaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, whose three patrician flamens were of the highest order. According to tradition, Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome, founded Roman religion; Numa was believed to have had as his consort and adviser a Roman goddess or nymph of fountains and of prophecy, Egeria. The Etruscan-influenced Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion, replacing the Archaic Triad – an unusual example within Indo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male. The cult of Diana became established on the Aventine Hill, but the most famous Roman manifestation of this goddess may be Diana Nemorensis, owing to the attention paid to her cult by J.G. Frazer in the mythographic classic The Golden Bough. What modern scholars call the Aventine Triad – Ceres, Liber, and Libera – developed in association with the rise of plebeians to positions of wealth and influence.