Info Thursday
Orcus and Vanth

A few weeks ago I posited on the question of Roman mythology before it was blended with the Greeks. In my readings I've been led to believe that the Romans were not particularly religious before. But this still baffles me as to why they would adopt a foreign religion.

In any event, I did find a God separate from the Greek pantheon, Orcus, an Italic god of the underworld thought to have originated with the Etruscans. While he was later equated to Hades and Pluto, it is notable that Orcus was initially a separate god and even later more related to the punishing side of Pluto.

Worship of Orcus even survived into the Middle Ages.

There was also a goddess of death by the name of Vanth who has no overlap in the Greek and later Roman pantheon.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanth

Info Thursday
Can You Take the Greek Out of the Roman?

So far I've only done some light Wikipedia research just to see if I can find a time BEFORE the Romans worshiped Greek gods. But I can't seem to. Even in the founding myth of Rome, Romulus and Remus are said to be related to Aeneas, who was the son of Venus (a.k.a the Greek goddess Aphrodite). My sister pointed out that this means the Romans think of their greatest hero as a really hot dude. Julius Caesar also claimed to be descendant from Venus, so I guess, even more than their warrior status, it was important to the Romans that people know how pretty they were.

Legend has the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus as April 21st 753 BC. Pretty specific for a legend. This time period also coincides with a vast immigration of Greek peoples to the Italian peninsula which did lead to an influx of Hellenic culture (or Greek stuff). But while I know a few gods specific only to the Romans, I still cannot find any mention of their religion before the Greek's arrival. I know they were there, because in actuality, Rome developed from a federation of villages which were there long before the city and before the arrival of the Greeks. But on Wikipedia, at least, I am unable to find any mention of the religion of the original Latin tribe.

Info Thursday
Greek Vs. Egyptian

I recently had an argument with my sister about the pervasiveness of Greek Mythology in modern times versus Egyptian Mythology. I argued that more people knew the stories and gods of the Greeks, whereas the archaeology, history, and culture of the Egyptians was more common knowledge than their mythology. My sister insisted I have actual data. Though I still think that the overwhelming presence of media for Greek myths, such as Hercules and Xena the TV shows, Hercules the Disney film, the Percy Jackson series, O Brother Where Art Thou, Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and a myriad of other things, not to mention the the many stories indirectly inspired by Greek hero myths. And, yes, all of these things have inaccuracies to the actual myths but the point is that we know Greek monsters and creatures like Medusa and centaurs much more readily than we could recognize Egyptian counterparts. I can't even give any because I don't know any off the top of my head. Yes, Stargate and the Mummy movies have taught us the names of the Egyptian gods--Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Horus, Ra....crazy crocodile dude who weighs your heart to see if it's light as a feather. But can we recite any of the stories other than maybe the one where Isis brings Osiris back from the dead? Do we know any of their heroes or mythical creatures other than their gods? Did they even have any? I don't know.

The reason I don't know is the reason I believe the majority of people don't know--they didn't teach it in school. They taught us the Greek Mythology and Egyptian Archaeology. Not the other way around. I don't know why, but I have my theories. For the purposes of my argument, however, I just needed numbers so I started with research but was unable to find any relevant studies (in my opinion because it's obvious!). Then I suggested a Facebook poll but I knew that it wouldn't be a significant data set so I asked my sister if that would count. She said yes.

It seems she changed her mind. Thank you to all my friends who voted, though.

Okay, I'll be fair on my sister, mostly she just decided she found a better way to check this theory with a much larger data-set. I'm just annoyed I didn't think of it first.

So she googled Greek Mythology and got over 3,000,000,000 hits. Then she googled Egyptian Mythology and only got over 700,000 hits. Even with the Google margin of error (i.e. llamas labeled "Greek mythology") this is certainly enough significant data for my sister and enough for me (possibly even if it hadn't proved me right).