Roman Mythology Vs Greek Mythology

A “myth”, in Ancient times, was a story told to give a reason for life, death, natural origins, and beliefs. Such stories were passed down through growing generations and all the while were refined with added hyperbole. The Romans and Greeks also adopted this culture of storytelling. Their myths spiraled into embellished stories of heroic deeds that people of the time believed to be true. Many of those stories are still very popular to this day. The differences and similarities between Roman and Greek mythology are the views on the afterlife, origins, and the traits and appearances of the gods and goddesses.

The afterlife does not hold as much significance to the Greeks as that of the Romans. Provided that believers of Greek myths knew their imminent fates would result in a permanent sojourn in the underworld, living while alive became their primary concern. “The Greeks apparently concluded that

Mix with latin and Greek, the Romans took the concept of Gods and slightly twist the stories into their own satisfaction (Delgado). Roman mythology follows the book Aeneid written by Virgil. The Aeneid is a book which features 12 book long poems about a Trojan demigod who sailed to Rome (Adams). On the other hand, the origin of Greek Mythology is unknown. The oldest sources of Greek mythology is found in two books, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. While the Romans simply took the concept of Gods from the Greeks, the Greeks had their own creation story on how the Gods came to be. Hesiod’s, a greek poet, genesis explains Chaos, a darkness that covered the Earth. Among the Chaos, land and time began to form into five divinities. The divinities were Tartarus, Erebus, Gaia, Eros, and Night (Hesiod). Tartarus was the underworld, Erebus was the darkness that covered the underworld, Gaia was the mother of Earth, Night was the darkness that covered Earth, and lastly Eros was the god of love