The Roman Debt to Greece

[Lyceum]

I thought I was going mad when I couldn't find this thread where I originally placed it! How can you lose a thread I thought ... anyway here it is in the Ancient Civ (Civic?) Talk section!!! hock: :?

Thanks to all those that have responded.

Of course I recognise that Rome had its own aspects of culture that were entirely original and indigenous (or as indigenous as is possible) and that geographically it was going to be influenced from the north as well as the south. Many have commented upon the religious aspects. Well, it is true that there are dimensions of this that do not correspond (in both cultures) because the spiritual worlds were complicated and expansive with hosts of minor deities, cults and regional and local rites. However, there does seem to be some correspondence between the major 'Olympian' figures (Zeus=Jupiter/Poseidon=Neptune etc.) and of course the Romans embraced the Olympic Games and Delphic oracle and a whole host of other Hellenic and Hellenistic practices and occasions.

When the Roman Empire split you had of course the Latin-speaking Roman west and the Greek-speaking Byzantine east halves. Greek had been the Lingua Franca in much of the eastern Mediterranean for a long time anyway - and further afield due to Alexander and his successors. I think Greek culture was endemic throughout the ancient world. They were unmatched when it came to colonisation and they ended up pretty much everywhere! Constantinople itself was a Greek city (Byzantion/Byzantium).

Nobody has made much mention yet of either architecture (which seems a pretty closed case really) nor the early military formations and equipment.

Well again on the religion thing, it's not so close cut. Cultic reality varied greatly from the stuff people glean from literature. For starters in Greek cult we find no expression of 12 Olympians on mount Olympos, this is an Ugaritic borrowing and not at all reality. Instead we have various shrine/festivals etc to various locale deities who may or may not be equivalent to some broader Greek concepts.

Take Orthia (Worthia) from Sparta or Alea in Arkadia, both began as normal goddess figures but by the Hellenistic age were equated retroactively with Artemis and Athena. In the case of the later we can actually see the gradual shifts thanks to numismatic and votary evidence.

So a Zeus Ombrios was markedly different from a Zeus Basileus and so on. What a Thesallian thought of Demetra was much different from an Athenian of Demeter or a Spartan of Damatar...

Admittedly these distinctions blur with time and the poor handling of cultic material by the Macedonians (where we first tend to get gods without epikliseis/particular cult spheres but even then that's not so common) but still. In actual cult there would have been very little for the Romans to compare to, since there was no golden standard.

We can spot general equivalences, Iove Pater = Zeus and so on but, as I said, this is no more significant than the way in which the Greeks in turn equated foreign gods (i.e Phoenician Mel'qart or Persian Verethgan) with Herakles or the Romans (see Caesar) would call Celtic deities by their own familiar names.

So there's a difference between our literary constructs on both sides and the actual gods. Then you're forgetting the very, very, different festivals, rites of passage and all that. I would say that outside of literary depictions Greek influence on Roman religion is minimal, rather one should look towards the Etruscans.

I think in general the Etruscans are being under estimated here, think of them next time you consider the providence of the lictors with their fascae, someone on a curule chair and so on and forth. Now THAT would be a fascinating area of study...

I can't really comment about military matters, weren't the early Romans pseudo hoplites anyway? As for architecture, many of the buildings were heavily Hellenic, though if I remember correctly there were some really old crappy ones that were markedly "native-Italic" or something. Sorry guys I despised Roman archaeology and used to practically switch off in class.