Why do people insist that the Romans "stole" Greek religion?

Question

The Etruscans, the people who founded Rome, and whose civilization was in Northern Italy, already had a culture very similar to Greece. Their religion was almost identical.

don't you think they took their religion along with them to Rome?

Has anyone ever studied the Etruscan civilization?

Answer 1

Actually the Romans weren't the Etruscans. The Etruscans ruled over the Romans before the Romans became dominant in the region (the Sabines being their first conquest). The Romans had a habit of adopting into their pantheon all gods of areas they conquered. The building they built called the Pantheon had niches therein to include images of each god they added. (I've always wondered how they thus included Jehovah, the god of the Jews, when the use of graven images was forbidden in Judaism, thus there had existed no such image for the Romans to copy.) The Romans already had gods that were basically the equivalents of the Greek gods. They may have ascribed either the Greek or the Roman names to the same god, but you are right, the Romans didn't steal them.

Answer 2

When the Romans expended their empire into Greece, they were impressed by the Greek civilization and culture and they adapted some parts of them into their own civilization.

Answer 3

Nah, they stole it from the Greeks.

They stole stuff from the Egyptians too, in fact, they combined gods from both cultures like Hermanubis.

Answer 4

Who stole from whom--that's the question.