Name ▲▼ | Origin ▲▼ | Description ▲▼ |
---|---|---|
God name "Dionysus" | Greek | The youthful, beautiful, but effeminate god of wine. He is also called both by Greeks and Romans Bacchus, that is, the noisy or riotous god, which was originally a mere epithet or surname of Dionysus, but does not occur till after the time of Herodotus. Greek |
"Erinnyes" | Greek | Erinnyes, Eumenides or Erinys (the Romans called them the Furies) were female personifications of vengeance. When a formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes "those who beneath the earth punish whoever has sworn a false oath" - "the Erinyes are simply an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath" Greek |
Goddess name "Faun" | Roman | Place-spirits (genii) of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Dionysus. However, fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures. Both have horns and both resemble goats below the waist, humans above; but originally satyrs had human feet, fauns goatlike hooves. The Romans also had a god named Faunus and a goddess Fauna, who, like the fauns, were goat-people. Roman |
Goddess name "Flora" | Roman | Goddess of gardens, plants, flowers, love, prostitution,spring and youth. Her festival was celebrated from the 28th of April till the first of May, with extravagant merriment and lasciviousness. The resemblance between the names Flora and Chloris led the later Romans to identify the two divinities. Roman |
God name "Harpocrates" | Greek | The Greek form of the Egyptian god Har-pi-kruti (Horus the Child), made by the Greeks and Romans the god of silence. This arose from a pure misapprehension. It is an Egyptian god, and was represented with its "finger on its mouth," to indicate youth, but the Greeks thought it was a symbol of silence. Greek |
God name "Hephaestus" | Greek | The god of fire, was, according to the Homeric account, the son of Zeus and Hera The Romans, when speaking of the Greek Hephaestus, call him Vulcan or Vulcåñuś, although Vulcåñuś was an original Italian divinity. Later traditions state that he had no father, and that Hera gave birth to him independent of Zeus, as she was jealous of Zeus having given birth to Athena independent of her. Greek |
"Intercidona" | Roman | One of the Deverra, three symbolic beings whose influence was sought by the Romans, at the birth of a child, as a protection for the mother against the vexations of Sylvåñuś. Roman |
God name "LENUS" | Celtic / Continental / European | God of healing. A god of healing worshiped by the Celtic tribe of Treveri but later adopted by the Romans. The Trier sanctuary was a place of pilgrimage where large numbers of offerings were deposited, and carvings suggest that child patients were often present. Lenus's sanctuaries were usually åśśociated with springs and some, if not all, had an abaton or room for recuperation.... |
Deities name "Lares" | Roman | Hearth deities. The lares are a peculiarly Roman innovation. Two children, born of a liaison between the god Mercury and a mute naiad, Lara, whose tongue had been cut out by Jupiter, became widely revered by Romans as house guardians. Iconographically they are depicted in the guise of monkeys covered with dog skins with a barking dog at their feet.See also LARUNDA, MERCURIUS.... |
Spirit name "Lemures" | Greek | Spectres or spirits of the dead, which were believed by the Romans to return to the upper world and injure the living. Some writers describe Lemures as the common name for all the spirits of the dead and divide all Lemures into two clåśśes; viz. the souls of those who have been good men are said to become Lares, while those of the wicked become Larvae. Greek |
Goddess name "Leucothea" | Greek | Leukothea. [White Goddess]. So Ino was called after she became a sea nymph. Her son Pal?mon, called by the Romans Portunus, or Portumnus, was the protecting genius of harbours. Greek |
"Libitina" | Italian | An ancient Italian divinity, who was identified by the later Romans sometimes with Persephone on account of her connection with the dead and their burial, and sometimes with Aphrodite. |
God name "Luna" | Greek | The moon. The Sun and the moon were worshipped both by Greeks and Romans, and among the latter the worship of Luna is said to have been introduced by the Sabine T. Tatius, in the time of Romulus. But, however this may be, it is certain, notwithstanding the åśśertion of Varro, that Sol and Luna were reckoned among the great gods, that their worship never occupied any prominent place in the religion of the Romans, for the two divinities had between them only a small chapel in the Via Sacra. Greek |
Deity name "Ma" | Comana | A warlike deity identified by the Greeks with Enyo and by the Romans with Bellona. Comana |
Goddess name "Maia" | Greco - Roman | Chthonic or earth goddess. Originally, in pre-Homeric times, a mountain spirit who subsequently became a minor consort of ZEUS. The Romans worshiped her as an obscure goddess of the plains who became briefly a consort of JUPITER, and they perceived her as the mother of the messenger god Mercury. Her cult was åśśociated with that of VulcanUS. Possibly the origin of the name of the month of May.See also MERCURIUS.... |
Spirit name "Manes" | Greek | I.e. "the good ones" [mana], is the general name by which the Romans designated the souls of the departed but as it is a natural tendency to consider the souls of departed friends as blessed spirits, the name of Lares is frequently used as synonymous with Manes, and hence also they are called dii Manes, and were worshipped with Divine honours. Greek |
God name "Mars" | Roman | An ancient Roman god, who was at an early period identified by the Romans with the Greek Ares, or the god delighting in bloody war, although there are a variety of indications that the Italian Mars was originally a divinity of a very different nature. Roman |
God name "Men" | Phrygian / Turkey | moon god. Ruler of both upper and lower worlds. Probably also a god of healing, he was subsequently adopted by the Greeks and Romans. The cult was popular during the imperial period, but its inscriptions were written in Greek.... |