1 Earliest Rome

Deities and their epithets
Roman and Greek deities
Greek writers regularly referred to Roman deities under Greek names; and by
the late Republic, at least, it was assumed that each major Roman god or goddess
had a Greek 'equivalent' (Aphrodite for Venus; Ares for Mars, etc.). The most
common are listed here:
Roman Greek
Aesculapius Asclepius
Apollo (Phoebus) Apoll
Bacchus Dionysus
Ceres Demeter
Diana Artemis
Fortuna Tyche
Juno Hera
Jupiter Zeus
Magna Mater Cybele
Mars Ares
Mercurius Hermes
Minerva Athena
Neptunus Poseidon
Pluto Hades
Venus Aphrodite
Vesta Hestia
Vulcan Hephaestus
In our translations we have sometimes used the standard English equivalents of
Roman names (e.g. Mercury for Mercurius); and have sometimes retained Greek
spellings (e.g. Asklepios for Asclepius).
Divine epithets
Some of the best-known deities of Roman religion were given additional titles,
or epithets, that referred to a particular aspect of their power or to a particular
form of their cult. This list explains the most important, or puzzling, of those
that occur elsewhere in the book. It omits the epithets Mater and Pater ('Mother'
and 'Father'), which were applied to a wide variety of deities, sometimes in
combination with the epithets given below (e.g. Mars Pater Victor).
Diana: Tifatina - of the town of Tifata, near Capua (S. Italy)
369