Interpretatio Romana

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As interpretatio romana (lat about. "Roman translation") refers to the Roman custom, foreign deities through identification with Roman deities of their own religion incorporate.

The term goes back to Tacitus , who in his Germania equates two Germanic deities with Castor and Pollux . The method is often used in dedicatory inscriptions , often with the Roman and the native name of the deity next to each other. Most of the time, the Romans used certain properties of the foreign gods to equate them with a god they knew. Often relatively few Roman gods were used, who assimilated a large number of other gods. Celtic deities, for example, were usually equated with Apollo , Mars and Mercurius . These transmissions often make it difficult to reconstruct the original properties of non-Roman gods.

meaning

The interpretatio Romana appears as a globalized continuation of the tendency already observed in the Greek religion to identify local deities with supraregional ones, whereby many god names became mere surnames and a uniform all-Greek religion emerged in the first place. Accordingly, from the various v. a. Etruscan, Greek as well as local sources conveyed ideas of the gods of the Romans, precisely by aligning with Greek ideas, a unified Roman mythology .

The analogous, temporally preceding process of identifying non-Greek deities with Greek gods is called Interpretatio Graeca .

The interpretatio Romana , as a method of appropriating integration, contributed to the far- reaching religious peace in the Roman Empire ; it is in any case a particularly significant expression of the pragmatic approach of the Roman conquerors to cultural and religious questions in the subjugated cultures. Where, of course, an interpretatio Romana was completely impossible because a conception of God and cult differed fundamentally from the Roman conception, distrust and prejudice appeared on the Roman side, especially towards the Jewish religion with its conception of a single almighty God who could not even be represented and did not share his power. However, Roman governors tried largely to ignore religious disputes or to leave them to the priesthood concerned as long as the taxes were paid.

An after-effect of the interpretatio Romana is the practice common up to the 19th century (still with Goethe), traces of which still have an effect today (as well as persisting in the Romance-speaking area), about ancient, v. a. to speak Greek deities with Latin names (s forms) - e.g. B. Cupid instead of Eros , Apollo instead of Apollo etc.

Greek deities

Firstly, Roman deities were equated with the Greek gods that already partially corresponded to them and both were mutually more closely adapted to one another according to attributes, responsibilities, etc.; z. B .:

Greek deity Roman deity
Zeus Jupiter
Hera Juno
Poseidon Neptune
Ares Mars
Aphrodite Venus
Athena Minerva
Demeter Ceres
Persephone Proserpine
Hades Pluto
Hephaestus Vulcanus
Asclepius Aesculapius
Dionysus Bacchus
Heracles Hercules
Pan Faunus
... ...

Naturally, it was even easier to adapt or create new personifications, in which Nike became Victoria , Eirene became Pax , etc.

Other deities

In addition, completely foreign, such as Celtic , Germanic , Egyptian or other oriental gods were equated with Roman gods on the basis of attributes, responsibilities or special characteristics, as Herodotus (Book IV of the Histories ) had already done with his "explanation" of Egypt by Greek deities . So z. B .:

Foreign deity Greek deity Roman deity
Ra , Egyptian sun god Apollo Apollo
Ištar , Babylonian goddess Aphrodite Venus
Esus , Celtic god Hermes Mercury
Teutates , Celtic god of war Ares Mars
Taranis , Celtic god of thunderstorms Zeus Jupiter
Thor , Germanic thunderstorm god Zeus Jupiter
Odin , Germanic father of gods and god of trade Hermes Mercury
Tyr , Germanic god of war Ares Mars
... ... ...

literature

See also

Remarks

  1. ^ Tacitus, Germania 43.
  2. ↑ See Art. Interpretatio Romana. In: Bernhard Maier : Lexicon of Celtic Religion and Culture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 466). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-46601-5 , p. 179 f.

Web links

Wiktionary: Interpretatio Romana  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations