what were the differences between the original roman gods and those adopted from greek culture?

Answer 1

Ancient Roman religion always remained different from the Greek ones. Although they adopted the Greek myths, they still worshipped their old gods as their ancestors did.

E.g. Venus had the spring-time Veneralia festival, which was nothing like festivals of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and so on.

The Roman also worshipped gods which do not appear in the Greek pantheon, like Flora, Vertumnus, Pomona, Silvanus, Fauna, Nerio, the Camenae, etc. They also had some of their own old myths, e.g. about the old goddess hag who seduced Mars by disguising herself as his wife Nerio.

Answer 2

The Romans adopted their gods from the Greeks and the Greeks from the Egyptians.

Answer 3

The Etruscans had a few gods that were later combined with Greek counterparts to make the Roman deities we now know and love. This is why they have completely different names from the Greek versions. Uni, later Juno, was matched to Hera; Paxa, later Bacchus, became matched to Dionysus; and so on.

The pre-Roman gods seemed to have their own characteristics, sometimes a bit different from the official Greek counterparts. For example, Juno was evidently a goddess of birth, then later turned to a marriage goddess to better match with the Greek Hera.

Researching each of the gods individually will help you to yeild more detailed explanations for each of them and their early origins compared to their later incarnations.

Answer 4

Most of them were really from Greek mythology, and the ones who weren't there were the ones who didnt get enough attention from the poets.

Answer 5

only the names and a few little tweaks here and there