Talk:Roman mythology

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Roman mythology article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 30 days

Rome Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Rome, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the city of Rome and ancient Roman history on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.RomeWikipedia:WikiProject RomeTemplate:WikiProject RomeRome articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Mythology Top‑importance

	Mythology portal This article is supported by WikiProject Mythology. This project provides a central approach to Mythology-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.MythologyWikipedia:WikiProject MythologyTemplate:WikiProject MythologyMythology articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Classical Greece and Rome Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, a group of contributors interested in Wikipedia's articles on classics. If you would like to join the WikiProject or learn how to contribute, please see our project page. If you need assistance from a classicist, please see our talk page.Classical Greece and RomeWikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and RomeTemplate:WikiProject Classical Greece and RomeClassical Greece and Rome articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Unsorted text

To edit the "Topics in Roman Mythology" table, see Template:Roman myth. That table can also be added to related pages if you want by inserting {{Roman myth}} Bacchiad 22:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

, partially directed on town's personality.

No one said gods can't also be allegories. Besides, Augustus was a full-out god after his death, not just a sort of demi-god. Bacchiad 07:05, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

when it died

I really wanted to know when the religion completely died out because there must have been some small out of the way places that kept their beliefs.

Romance mythology

That Slavs - a language group - a group of languages. Romance languages - a group of languages. Is there a "Romance mythology"?

Wiki Education assignment: ARH 371_The TransAtlantic_Cross-Cultural Representations

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 2 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ndballar (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Ndballar (talk) 23:16, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Religion and myth"

Since this is the subject of a school project, I'd like to issue a caution.

Notice that the "Religion and myth" section is actually about religion and the pantheon. It runs counter to the sentence "Narratives of divine activity played a more important role in the system of Greek religious belief than among the Romans, for whom ritual and cult were primary" by going on to dwell on the pantheon, so while this may be necessary, I'm not sure it shouldn't be reduced. It runs the risk of conflating religion with mythology – the key point being that myth is narrative, stories, whether presented visually or verbally. The priestly books and the beliefs pertaining to functionalities of deities are theology, not mythology.

What needs to be elaborated in the article are the kinds of distinctly Roman narratives listed as founding and other myths. How were these used in Roman culture? And then a concluding section on interpretatio graeca and how Ovid et al. transformed Greek myths. But once you get into that, you are moving away from Roman myths ("national" narratives and iconography) into the tradition of what we think of as Classical (or "Greco-Roman") mythology. The paragraph in the lede that most directly addressed distinguishing characteristics of Roman myth (exemplified by the Aeneid as the "national" mythological epic) had been deleted!

If you come to the article from a background of Greek mythology and impose those preconceptions, you can start to lose sight of the Roman myths, which are more what we might call legends—that is, Roman myth is more Iliadic and tends more toward the character of Arthurian legend, and not so much like the treatment of myth in Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. For example, the Regal period beginning with Romulus is ripe with mythology, even though fairly precise historical dates are assigned to the reigns of the kings. The figure of Servius Tullius is a mix of mythological elements like a mysterious birth, and the founding of historical institutions. So I hope that student researchers focus on the Roman stories (especially interesting is how the Romans use the myth of Trojan origins, which serves imperialist purposes) in their own cultural context. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]