First off, I wrote a book! Illustrated it, too. It’s called Gods and Heroes, and it’s an illustrated encyclopedia of mythology. And it’s out now! You can find it in most American bookstores, but here are some links:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books a Million
Indiebound
Second, Roman God Family Tree posters are finally available!
Third, you can check out the other god family trees I’ve done (Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Hindu). And now, what I’ve learned about Roman Gods:
ROMAN GODS
If you’ve seen the Greek God Family Tree I did, some of these gods might look familiar, but I swear there’s a reason for that. See, when Greeks and Romans met folks with other gods, they’d usually assume one of two things:
– These weird foreign gods are just Roman gods with weird foreign names (see Julius Caesar’s accounts of the Celts worshipping Minerva)
– These weird foreign gods aren’t Roman gods, but they probably slept with some (see Jupiter/Zeus’s countless “affairs”)
As Rome absorbed Greek culture, Greek gods sort of merged with Roman, Etruscan, and Italian gods so completely that it can be hard to distinguish them. So while there are some important differences between, say, Athena (Greek) and Minerva (Roman), most websites and books will just refer to them as the same goddess.
I’ll try to focus on the Roman parts of these, but I hope you’ll forgive me if the distinction gets blurry.
TERRA
Primeval Goddess of Earth
(Greek: Gaia)
Also called Tellus. She’s a primeval goddess of Earth, and in roman times often celebrated together with Ceres, goddess of farming and fertility. At least one ritual to her involved sacrificing a pregnant cow, but I gather that felt less gruesome to Romans than it does to someone used to steak coming in shrinkwrapped plastic.
She birthed Caelus, and then slept with him to make a bunch of monsters (not pictured), including fifty-headed, hundred-armed giants, and cyclopses. Caelus hated them, so he buried them in the Earth, but since Terra was the earth, they were actually buried in her, which hurt, so she conspired with their next kids, the Titans, to kill Caelus by chopping off his penis.
Oh! Also, a whole lot of Roman gods gave their names to planets and spaceships, so I’ll mention them as I go. Terra is the Latin name for the Earth, as well as at least one satellite that looks at the Earth.
CAELUS
Primeval God of the Sky
(Greek: Uranus or Ouranos)
Also sometimes called Caelum. There’s some argument over whether Caelus is originally Roman or a renamed Greek import, but there’s no doubt that he inherited myths from Ouranos, the sky god who married his mom and got castrated by his kids. Other versions say he was born of the primordial gods of air and day.
Caelus didn’t get a planet, but his Greek counterpart did. The guy who discovered the seventh planet from the sun, William Herschel, originally wanted to name it George (well, Georgium Sidus) after King George III, but that didn’t go over as well outside of England, so a german named Johann Bode suggested “Uranus.” Growing up, my teachers always insisted it was pronounced “YOR-eh-nuss” but we still giggled the whole time.
THEMIS
Titan Goddess of Divine Justice
(Greek: Themis)
Themis’s sense of justice is probably different from yours. I mean, not totally unrecognizable, but we’re talking about an abstract, philosophical part of a culture that’s two thousand years removed from our current experience. Think about how out of touch your grandparents can be — they’re two generations removed from you. The folks that worshipped Themis are at least forty times further removed. In some tellings, Themis is the mother of the fates.
In 1905, an astronomer claimed to have found a tenth moon orbiting Saturn, and named it Themis, but it turned out it didn’t exist, so they gave the name to an unrelated group of asteroids instead, the biggest of which is also named Themis.
MONETA
Titan Goddess of Memory
(Greek: Mnemosyne)
The Moneta on this chart is the same as the Greek Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the Muses. But Moneta was also a title given to Juno, another Roman goddess. Juno Moneta was a goddess of money, which is why money was minted in her temples, and how “moneta” became the root of so many modern words for “money” or “coin”, including Italian “moneta,” Spanish “moneda,” and Russian “монета,” and English “money.”
HYPERION
Titan God of Light
(Greek: Hyperion)
Hyperion’s main claim to fame is fathering the sun. He also joined the rest of the Titans in a war against Jupiter and his siblings, and then joined them in being banished to Tartarus, the maximum security section of the underworld.
Hyperion is also the name of a little pockmarked moon of Saturn, as well as several different superheroes (or alternate versions of the same superhero?) owned by Marvel. I read a comic in high school where Hyperion is basically Superman, except instead of being raised by good ol’ farmers he gets raised in a Truman Show neighborhood by the US Government. It’s a little dark.
THEIA
Titan Goddess of Heavenly Light
(Greek: Theia)
In this case “Goddess of Heavenly Light” means goddess of the bright, blue sky, as opposed to overcast or nighttime skies.
Theia is also the name of a hypothetical planet that some astronomers think might have crashed into Earth 4.5 billion years ago, knocking off a bunch of rocks and dust that eventually became our Moon. If that’s right, then pieces of Theia itself are merged into both – you might be standing on it right now!
CRIUS
Titan God of the Constellations
(Greek: Krios)
There’s honestly not much written about this guy, in Greece or Rome, outside of the fact that he was a Titan.
SOL
God of the Sun
(Greek: Helios)
Depending who you ask, Sol might have been the same as a couple other gods, including Janus and Apollo, and/or might have actually been two separate gods from hundreds of years apart named Sol Indiges and Sol Invictus, but he’s usually identified today with the Greek Sun god Helios.
He lives in a golden palace at the end of the earth, and each day he puts on a blowing crown and rides a chariot across the sky. When he finally landed on the other side of the world, he’d sail back home over the water in a golden cup. One time he loaned the cup to Hercules.
His name is also the Latin name of – you guessed it – the sun.
AURORA
Goddess of the Dawn
(Greek: Eos)
Aurora’s job is to burst into the sky each morning to announce that Sol is coming, but she’s most famous in mythology for her – ahem – “unquenchable desire for handsome young men.” At some point she fell in love with a handsome young Trojan prince named Tithonus, and asked Jupiter to make him immortal. Unfortunately, she forgot to ask for eternal youth, so he just got older and tinier and wrinklier until he’d turned into a bug.
Aurora also the name of one of the biggest asteroids in the asteroid belt.
LUNA
Goddess of the Moon
(Greek: Selene)
Luna’s usually depicted as a pretty woman with a moon on her head, riding a chariot across the sky. Luna is also, appropriately enough, the official latin name of our moon.
As with Aurora, Jupiter granted Luna’s lover immortality. Unlike with Aurora, he also granted him eternal youth, and eternal slumber in a cave on Mount Latmus where Luna would visit him every night.
This got me curious, so I did a little reading, and the Romans seem to have had a different idea of legal consent than we do. Given that a) Luna’s female, b) the prince was a dude, c) Luna’s a goddess, and d) the whole thing seems to be ok with Jupiter, I *think* Luna’s in the clear as far as Roman law is concerned.
OCEANUS
Titan God of the Sea
(Greek: Okeanos)
Oceanus was originally the god of the giant river that the Greeks believed surrounded the world. Over time, as exploration revealed no such river, he wound up in charge of the Atlantic Ocean (with Poseidon ruling the more-important Mediterranean Sea).
TETHYS
Titan Goddess of Fresh Water
(Greek: Tethys)
Tethys and Oceanus are the parents of tons and tons of water-related gods and beings, only one of whom is listed here, but neither has much in the way of stories. Tethys is also a moon of Saturn that’s mostly made of ice.
JAPETUS
Titan God of Mortality
(Greek: Iapetos)
Japetus (or Iapetus – I’ve seen both) is mostly important because he’s the father of Prometheus.
Iapetus is also a really cool looking half-black, half-white moon of Saturn.
PLEIONE
Water Nymph
(Greek: Pleione)
One of the thousands of children of Oceanus and Tethys, only listed here because her grandkid is a god.
ATLAS
Bearer of the Heavens
(Greek: Atlas)
You’ve probably seen the statue of Atlas holding up the world, or at least some image that was inspired by that. In fact, the statues are wrong – he held up the sky, not the world. Atlas is also the name of a tiny little moon of Saturn.
PROMETHEUS
God of Forethought
(Greek: Prometheus)
Prometheus created humanity, and then spent the rest of his days trying to help us out, most famously by sneaking us some fire that Jupiter had hidden. As punishment, Jupiter tied him to a mountain and got an eagle to eat his liver, every day, forever – or at least until the hero Hercules released him.
People have been naming things after him for a long, long time, including a bunch of books, movies, and videogames, one of Saturn’s moons, a volcano on a different one of Saturn’s moons, and a short-lived NASA project to make a nuclear powered spacecraft that I can only assume would have visited Saturn (Never mind, looked it up, turns out they were planning on Jupiter).
EPIMETHEUS
God of Afterthought and Excuses
(Greek: Epimetheus)
Epimetheus was a total nincompoop, and we’re all suffering for it. See, the gods gave Prometheus and Epimetheus the job of making people and animals, but Epimetheus gave all the weapons to the animals, leaving us nothing – which is why Prometheus went to steal us some fire, which is why Prometheus wound up punished. Then Jupiter created the first woman, Pandora, and sent her down, and even though Prometheus tried to warn him that the whole thing seemed fishy, Epimetheus married her, and Jupiter gave her a box of horrors as a wedding present, and she opened it, and horrible awful things have been plaguing humanity ever since. Thanks, Epimetheus.
Epimetheus is also the name of a tiny moon orbiting Saturn.
SATURN
Titan God of Time
(Greek: Kronos)
If you’ve been reading these in order, you might remember that Caelus’s kid cut his penis off. Saturn was that kid, and once Caelus was out of the picture, Saturn took over as the new king of the gods, at least until his kid, Jupiter, overthrew him.
Saturn worship seems to go way, way back – he appears in some of the earliest Roman references. His yearly festival, the Saturnalia, was one of the raunchier parties on the Roman calendar. For a whole week around the winter solstice, business stopped, anti-gambling laws were suspended, everyone ate and drank and gave each other gag gifts, and at least one Roman source claims masters served their slaves.
Saturn is also the name of that one planet with the giant rings, a failed video game system, a now-defunct car company, and the class of rocket that NASA used for moon missions (but not Saturn missions) in the 60’s and 70’s.
OPIS
Titan Goddess of Fertility and Wealth
(Greek: Rhea)
At some point Saturn heard a prophecy that one of his kids would defeat him, so every time Opis had a child, Saturn ate it. This continued until Terra, for her own reasons, helped Opis switch her latest baby, Jupiter, with a rock she’d dressed like a baby. Saturn ate the rock, Jupiter was raised in secret, and once he was grown, he cut Saturn open, retrieved his undigested siblings, and fought a war to overthrow the Titans.
POLUS
Titan God of Intellect
(Greek: Koios, or Coeus)
Polus doesn’t have much in the way of myths – just another Titan who wound up imprisoned in the underworld.
PHOEBE
Titan Goddess of Intellect
(Greek: Phoebe)
Phoebe’s biggest claim to fame is being the grandmother of Apollo and Diana. Oh, and sharing a name with my favorite character from Friends (LINK: picture of phoebe). I know I already mentioned that in the write-up for the Greek God Family Tree, but isn’t she great?
JUNO
Queen of the Gods
(Greek: Hera)
Juno is patron goddess of Rome, standing with her husband, Jupiter, and his daughter, Minerva, in the Capitoline Triad. Both Juno and the Greek Hera are devoted to women, marriage, and childbirth (and her myths are mostly about revenge on the women her husband sleeps with), but Juno combines that with a range of other roles in war and government.
There’s also a story where Juno tries to prevent the founding of Rome because she heard a prophecy that it would destroy Carthage, a north African city state she liked more. Rome got founded anyway (see Romulus and Remus) and Carthage ended up totally destroyed several centuries later. Juno is also an asteroid.
JUPITER
King of the Gods
(Greek: Zeus)
Jupiter was the top god in Rome, from its earliest days as a small kingdom, through its centuries as a republic and most of its time as an empire, until traditional Roman religion itself was replaced by Christianity. Romans believed that all their expansion and success came because Jupiter had their backs, and they did their best to keep it that way. Jupiter got big temples, big sacrifices, and constant praise – his most important title, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, literally translates as “Jupiter Best and Greatest.”
If you’re wondering why Jupiter has had kids with like, half the gods on this list, it’s not just because he (and/or his counterpart Zeus) is an insatiable horndog. Believe it or not, it’s also international diplomacy. See, in the ancient world, if you met someone from a different culture, one of the things you’d want to know is how your gods related to each other. Sometimes this meant saying that they were the same gods, going by different names. But sometimes, it meant claiming their gods had talked together, fought together, or slept together. The Greeks were especially into that last one, and especially especially into doing it with Zeus. Or at least, that’s one thing I’ve read. It’s also possible that Jupiter/Zeus stories doubled as ancient porn.
Jupiter is also the name of the biggest planet in the solar system.
MAIA
Mother of Mercury
(Greek: Maia)
Maia, daughter of Atlas, hung out in a cave and did her best to avoid the gods, but Jupiter snuck in and wouldn’t you know it, she had a baby: Mercury.
SEMELE
Mother of Bacchus
(Greek: Semele)
Semele was a priestess who Jupiter started dating in secret. When his wife Juno found out, she disguised herself as an old lady, befriended Semele, and tricked her into asking Jupiter to grant a wish. Jupiter swore an oath to give her anything she asked for, so when Semele asked to see Jupiter in all his glory Jupiter had no choice but to comply. I picture what happened next like that scene from that bad adaptation of Watchmen. In any case, Semele died, but Jupiter saved baby Bacchus by sewing him into his thigh until he was ready to be born.
Semele is also an asteroid.
LATONA
Mother of Diana and Apollo
(Greek: Leto)
Jupiter got Latona pregnant, too, and then Juno punished her by preventing her from giving birth anywhere on the mainland, or an island, or anywhere under the sun. Eventually she found a cave on a floating island and, with the locals’ permission, gave birth to Diana and Apollo.
Latona is also tiny little planet, and Leto is a large-ish asteroid.
CERES
Goddess of Agriculture
(Greek: Demeter)
Ceres is another old goddess, with Roman worship dating from at least the 700’s BCE, and at least one book I found connected her with the word “cereal.” Her most famous story is one she picked up from the Greek Demeter, but I’ll put that under Proserpina below.
Ceres is also, apparently, the only asteroid that is also a dwarf planet. I don’t know how that works.
MINERVA
Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy
(Greek: Athena)
It seems like most Roman gods are more warlike than their Greek counterparts, but not Minerva. While she and Athena are both brilliant strategists, Minerva worship tended to focus on her intelligence, craftsmanship, and healing abilities.
But you’re probably wondering about the whole “burst fully armed from forehead” thing. Jupiter had gotten Metis pregnant, but worried the kid might overthrow him, just like he’d overthrown Saturn and Saturn had overthrown Caelus. So, he ate Metis. Some time later, Jupiter came down with a headache. He tried to ignore it at first, but eventaully got so bad that he ordered the smith-god Vulcan to smash his head open, just to stop the pain. Vulcan did, and out burst Minerva, fully armed and armored.
Like most of the others on this list, Minerva is also an asteroid. I think she deserves better.
MERCURY
Messenger of the Gods
(Greek: Hermes)
Mercury is a god of travel, trade, diplomacy, and thievery, famous for his winged hat and shoes, and the most incorrigible prankster in the whole Roman pantheon. He hadn’t been alive for a whole day before he stole Apollo’s cattle. He even put little booties on them so they wouldn’t leave tracks. Apollo tracked him down anyway (it’s hard to fool the god of prophecy) and ultimately traded the cows for a cool new instrument Mercury had invented: the world’s first lyre, which is basically a little harp.
Mercury is also the little planet orbiting closest to the sun, and the name of America’s first human spaceflight program in the late ’50’s.
PENELOPE
Nymph
(Greek: Penelopeia)
Penelope is such a minor character that I don’t think she even got an asteroid. Does anyone else wish “Penelope” rhymed with “antelope?
BACCHUS
God of Wine and Parties
(Greek: Dionysus)
Think of Bacchus as the Roman god of parties. I don’t mean like, middle aged folks in togas sipping wine or whatever – I mean the closest thing Rome had to Burning Man. Music, dancing, drinking, sex, drugs, rock and roll (or at least some rockin’ lyre music). His yearly festival, the Bacchanalia, would get so out of hand that the Roman senate passed laws to contain it, on pain of death. A couple sources I found on it claim that the whole thing was exaggerated and that the anti-Bacchanalia laws might have been less about Roman raves and more about religious control in uncertain times, but still.
In addition to merging with the Greek Dionysis, Bacchus seems to have incorporated parts of another Roman wine/party god named Liber Pater, whose name translates as “Free Father.” Bacchus is also an asteroid whose Wikipedia article includes the sentence, “Due to its eccentric orbit, it is also a Venus-crosser.”
APOLLO
God of Prophecy
(Greek: Apollo)
Apollo is a god of prophecy, which means he knows things. He’s the guy whispering in every oracle’s ear. He’s a complex one, associated with healing but blamed for sickness, known for destruction and redemption and purification. Mythologically, he’s probably most famous for spending his younger years banished to earth, working as a shepherd for a local king. He liked the king so much that he helped him get married, and gave him immortality as a wedding present. Well, immortality with a catch – other people had to willingly give him their lifespans, and it ended up being his wife who died to save him. Irony, right? But Proserpina was so moved by the sacrifice that she brought her back to life, so it was all ok in the end.
Apollo is also the name of an asteroid, an asteroid group that includes said asteroid, a crater on the moon, and the NASA program that sent people to the moon (although I don’t think they ever went to the Apollo crater).
DIANA
Goddess of the Hunt
(Greek: Artemis)
Diana’s first experience in life was helping her mom give birth to her twin brother, Apollo. It took a week, and by the end of it Diana had sworn to never, ever, ever get pregnant. Now she roams the forests with a retinue of nymphs who are also required to be virgins.
She’s actually a combination of several separate goddesses from around the ancient world, including moon goddesses, woodland goddesses, and at least one goddess who (allegedly) required human sacrifice. She had worshippers in Rome as long as there was a Rome, although they seem to have considered her a foreign import.
Oh, and as usual, Diana is an asteroid.
VULCAN
God of Fire and Metalworking
(Greek: Hephaistos)
Vulcan was born crippled, and was thrown off Olympus by his own mother, but he had his revenge. He made her a chair that was rigged to trap her when she sat in it, and then refused to unstick her until Bacchus got him so drunk that he’d have said yes to anything.
At his yearly festival, the Vulcanalia, Romans would celebrate him by throwing animals into bonfires.
Vulcan is also the name of a planet that people thought might exist between Mercury and the Sun, because Mercury wasn’t orbiting the way they thought it should. Turned out the orbit was right and the math was wrong – Vulcan didn’t exist, and Mercury’s orbit made total sense once Einstein came up with general relativity.
MARS
God of War
(Greek: Ares)
The Greek Ares is kind of a dumb lug, big and beefy and good at fighting but not much between the ears. Mars may be identified with Ares, but he’s something else entirely, strong and clever, as useful in peace as in war, sort of a Superman vs. Ares’ Hulk. He’s such a manly man that his symbol, the Spear of Mars, has since become the symbol of the male gender. He was one of the most important Roman gods, second only to Jupiter, and considered the father of the founders of Rome. Given all that, it’s sort of surprising that there are so few myths about him – most of what we do have seems to have been imported from Ares.
Mars is also the fourth planet from the sun, and the only one aside from our own that we’re pretty sure had life at some point.
VENUS
Goddess of Love
(Greek: Aphrodite)
Venus’s name, in latin, means something like “sexual desire,” and that’s more or less what she’s about: love, sex, beauty, and seduction. She’s also an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, but there are enough generations between her and them that I didn’t bother connecting them in the chart.
The “sea foam” bit comes from my favorite one of Venus’s birth stories. After Caelus’s penis got cut off, it landed in the ocean and produced a bunch of “sea foam,” from which Venus emerged. Next time you see that famous painting of the Birth of Venus, remember what’s probably floating just out of frame.
The second planet from the sun is also named Venus. I think I forgot to mention, but people have known about the first five planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter) since thousands and thousands of years ago. Astronomers give things latin names now because it’s tradition, but Venus is named Venus because that’s what the Romans actually called it.
FAUNUS
Horned God of the Forest
(Greek: Pan)
Faunus might be the oldest god on this list, with some theories placing his origins thousands of years before Rome. He was a god of wild places – forests, plains, and fields. Unlike some other Roman gods, however, he didn’t completely merge with his Greek counterpart, though he did wind up with Pan’s horns.
PROSERPINA
Goddess of the Underworld
(Greek: Persephone)
Proserpina is most famous for her marriage to Pluto. Well, less marriage than violent kidnapping. See, Jupiter told Pluto he could marry Proserpina, but instead of asking her, Pluto burst from the ground, grabbed her, and dragged her back down to the underworld with him. Proserpina’s mother Ceres searched all over the world for her, and when she finally learned what had happened (Sol had seen it from the sky) she was so distraught that she quit being a goddess altogether and wandered the world as an old crone.
But Ceres was the goddess of agriculture, and without her, plants wouldn’t grow, and without plants, people couldn’t eat, and without people, there’d be no one to sacrifice to the gods. So, Jupiter intervened to make Pluto give Proserpina back. Before she could leave, though, Pluto fed her some pomegranate seeds, which bound her to the underworld for part of every year. When she comes to earth each spring, the plants all bloom. But when she goes back down each winter, they all wither.
Proserpina’s also an asteroid.
PLUTO
God of the Underworld
(Greek: Hades)
Pluto presides over the Roman underworld and the spirits of the dead who live there (well, not live, but you know what I mean). While he shares myths with his Greek counterpart, Hades, Pluto is usually depicted as less sinister. I’m not sure, but I think that might coincide with a more general change in the Greek/Roman view of the afterlife that I know happened at some point. Early Greeks pictured it as a sort of eternal depressing blandness where the dead would float around and not do much of anything, but over time that was changed and expanded to include punishments and rewards. They even got a sort of heaven, the Elysian Fields, although that was reserved for the most heroic heroes.
Pluto is also the name of a rocky sphere out past Neptune that used to be a planet until some astronomers decided it wasn’t.
PAVOR and FORMIDO
Gods of Pain and Terror
(Greek: Phobos and Deimos)
You might know these guys better as the little imp minions of Hades in that Disney movie, although they’re Mars’s servants in the actual mythology. They’d ride into battle alongside Mars, along with two even lesser mentioned goddesses named Bellona (Greek: Enyo) and Discordia (Greek: Eris), who represented war and strife, respectively.
I couldn’t find any astrological objects named Pavor or Formido, but their Greek names, Phobos and Deimos, are the names for the two moons of Mars.
CUPID
God of Love
(Greek: Eros)
While some myths describe Cupid as the son of Mars and Venus, and that’s how I’ve depicted him here, others describe him as an ancient primordial god who predates nearly all other gods. He doesn’t feature in too many myths himself, and usually only appears in Roman art accompanying Venus.
Cupid is also the name of a tiny, recently-discovered moon orbiting Uranus, and Eros is the name of an asteroid that a NASA probe photographed in 1998, which has a crater that they named Cupid.
HIMERUS
God of Desire
(Greek: Himeros)
In some myths, Cupid has a brother named Himerus who represents unrequited love. I couldn’t find any space-rocks named after him, but there is apparently a crater on Eros named Himeros. Eros’s craters are all named after famous lovers – here’s Wikipedia’s list.
RHEA SILVIA
Mother of the Founders of Rome
(No Greek Equivalent)
Rhea Silvia was a daughter of a king named Numitor, which I imagine was great, until Numitor’s brother, Amulius, stole his throne, killed his son, and forced Rhea Silvia to become a celibate priestess of the goddess Vesta. I don’t think he cared what god she worshipped, just that she didn’t have any kids who might challenge him for the throne.
But Rhea Silvia got pregnant anyway, with twins no less, and declared that the god Mars was their father. I should mention that even Roman sources seem unclear on whether she actually believed this.
Amulius threw Rhea Silvia in prison and told a servant to kill the twins, but instead the servant floated them off down the Tiber river, where they were rescued nursed by a she-wolf (wolves were sacred to Mars), and raised by a shepherd family. Rhea Silvia, meanwhile, was rescued by the god of the Tiber, Tiberinus, who took her as his wife.
Sylvia is also the name of an asteroid which has two littler asteroids orbiting it named Romulus and Remus. Oh, and the she-wolf part of the story is has been immortalized in the form of this sorta-goofy statue.
JANUS
God of Transitions
(No Greek Equivalent)
Janus is the only actual god on this list with no Greek equivalent, and I think he’s totally fascinating. He’s a god of beginnings, ends, doorways, and gates. Every one of his shrines in Rome overlooked a waterway and contained at least one gate that they’d open whenever Rome was at war. They also shut them when Rome was at peace, although that didn’t happen very often.
In some tellings Janus has no parents, in some they’re primodial deities, and in some it’s Caelus and Trivia, a goddess who, despite her name, has nothing to do with weird facts and everything to do with spooky things like crossroads and witchcraft.
Janus is also the name of a tiny moon of Saturn, as well as an unrelated crater on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.
ROMULUS and REMUS
Founders of Rome
(No Greek Equivalent)
After the whole wolf-suckling thing, Romulus and Remus grew up and led uneventful lives as shepherds until one day, while herding sheep, they got into a fight with some shepherds who worked for King Amulius. Remus wound up captured, but Romulus organized a shepherd army to rescue him, killing the king in the process.
After that, they decided to set up their own city, but they couldn’t agree which hill to found it on, so they agreed to resolve it via augury (read: predicting the future via competitive bird-watching). But then they disagreed about who saw the most birds, and Romulus started building walls on his hill, and Remus made fun of the walls, and Romulus killed him. Romulus’s city, Rome, was officially founded the same day, April 21st 753 BCE.
NEPTUNE
God of the Sea
(Greek: Poseidon)
By modern standards, Neptune/Poseidon is a huge jerk. He’s a wild, uncontrolled god, with a short temper and a bad habit of raping women. I mean, Jupiter raped women, too, but at least his disguises and tricks make it a little more cartoonish in the retelling. Neptune just attacked them. I just wrote a book about gods and heroes, and the article on Poseidon had to go through tons of edits to try to make it PG – and even then, barely made it through.
Anyway. Neptune and Poseidon merged so long ago that we don’t have tons of info on what Neptune was like before that, but we can say that unlike Poseidon, Neptune didn’t have any association with horses.
Oh, and Neptune is also a planet.
VESTA
Goddess of the Hearth
(Greek: Hestia)
Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family, and she was depicted as a fire more often than as a human. Her priests were called vestal virgins, and took oaths saying they’d stay celibate. I’m embarrassed to admit that I once thought Vestal Virgins had something to do with vests, but I don’t think I was totally wrong.
Vesta is also the name of one of the biggest asteroids in the solar system. It’s a little smaller than Poland.
Phew, done!
If you stuck with this this far, you’ll probably get a kick out of the other god family trees I did: Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Hindu. And if you’re in the market for bigger pictures and even more detailed entries on mythological figures, check out my book, Gods and Heroes!
~Korwin
