Greek Goddess Demeter became Rome's Ceres

The Greek goddess Hera was the wife of Zeus. In addition to being the crowned queen of the gods, she was the goddess of cows and was seated on a living peacock throne. Persian emperors also sat on a throne incorporating peacocks and there was a great deal of Persian Greek interaction. Perhaps the similarity deserves study, but we're talking here about a Greek goddess turning into Roman one.  

About ONE, over in Italy's Tuscan region Hera may have evolved into the Etruscan goddess Uni, the Great One, source of the Spanish one, uno, which evolved from the Latin name for one, unum.  If you don't quite recall where you've seen "unum" before, take a look at the really small print on the back of your nearest penny. It says "E PLURIBUS UNUM," or in modern English, "FROM MANY ONE."

Uni also helped us get our words "united" and "Universe." Notice the similarity of Uni (la Uno) to her Roman goddess name Juno, who was the wife of Jupiter. Both Hera and Juno were thought of as the goddess of marriage. In fact, Juno is the goddess for whom the month of June is named. Its still a big wedding month. When Rome was a small city, they had a founding myth about a she-wolf who nursed twin boys. When Rome grew and took over the Etruscan region, they over goddess Uni also.

Imagine if you will, two children, a brother and a sister, playing in the back of a chariot. They grow up to become a great god and goddess.

The brother and sister are Zeus and the goddess Demeter. You will recall your modern mythology about Zeus, that he can throw lightning. So he's definitely a sky god. Demeter is very definitely a earth mother. One day the two of them come together, and from this uniting of goddess and  god comes a child, Persephone.

The sea god Poseidon also pursues Demeter, but she resists him. Because she is able to disguise herself as a female horse, a mare goddess, she hides among the horses. But Poseidon turns himself into stallion and finds her. She gives birth to their daughter. This daughter's name is spoken only during the Eleusinian Mysteries. Demeter also gives birth to a black stallion named Arion.

By all accounts, Demeter, who is seen to the left as the Roman Ceres, (as she is seen in a sculpture within the Vatican walls) is a peace-loving deity and the source of agriculture. She teaches us how to cultivate the earth, introducing wheat and wine to humankind.

Actually, Demeter gets a guy to help her out. She sends the guy out on what today we might call an introductory marketing trip. It isn't all work for him though. As he pulls off for his trip on a magical chariot, Demeter's daughter Persephone pours him a big libation bowl of wine. And we promised to tell you where the word "trip" came from. Well, the name of Demeter's wheat and wine marketeer is...Triptolem.

Athena the Greek became Minerva the Roman

The Goddess of Wisdom had quite a past. Long before Athena stood forty feet tall dressed in gold overlooking the city of Athens, she may have been depicted far more simply as an owl. Once the Greeks burned Troy, however, the owl image didn't quite fit the self-image of the victorious warriors.

The actual steps in the story of Athena's evolution from owl to gilded warrior goddess is unknown. After all, we only know about the story of Troy's burning and the eventful trip back home of the victorious Greek warriors because three hundred or more years after the events, a storyteller known as Homer finally wrote down epic tales that had only been spoken aloud for many generations.

Eventually the warrior aspect of the Greek culture endowed Athena with a javelin. Presumably she threw it straight and long to pierce the heart of any enemy, perhaps helped by Nike, her owlish consort, the goddess of victory. She wore a helmet and carried a shield. Like the

goddess Uni, Minerva was also originally a goddess of the Etruscans. More about them... Recall that the Etruscans were neighbors of the Romans. We now know their region as Tuscany. Before the Romans were big time empire builders, the Etruscans were enjoying a highly artistic, sophisticated and rich coastal trading culture heavily influenced by Greek interconnections that appear to have been ongoing for many centuries. Minerva was also a goddess of wisdom.

Both Athena and Minerva were goddesses of the olive trees and their groves. For the Roman's their Minerva was a virgin goddess of warriors, as well as the goddesses of commerce, crafts, poetry and the inventor of music. As 'Minerva Medica', she was the goddess of medicine and doctors.

This composite shows three images of the Roman goddess Minerva, the head in the lower left was found in Roman ruins at Baath in the United Kingdom, while the mosaic is from the mid 1800s. Notice the mosaic's feathers, a sign of the owl in her past.

Goddess Aphrodite Adopted
as Roman Venus

She was the goddess of erotic love. Perhaps that's why Aphrodite is still most commonly recalled in our word "aphrodisiac."

When the Romans adopted Aphrodite, she became Venus.

The mythological Roman character Cupid was Venus' son. He is none other than the Greek god Amor (or Eros), Aphrodite's son.

A quality of both goddesses is their great beauty, which they still are blessed with after all these hundreds of years.  Here's what the author of the book "Goddesses in Art" has to say about Venus:

"Her many cults probably started as typical fertility cults--devoted to the rebirth of plants, animals, and people," writes Professor Lanier Graham of Humboldt State University.

"Venus was conceived in a mystical union of the sky god and the watery earth goddess...

"Her naked body remains an embodiment of the boundless love for which humans never stop yearning."

It is most probably because she symbolized the union of the sky and "the watery earth" that her creature companions were the dove and the dolphin.

Freya, who was the Aphrodite/Venus of the Scandinavian folks of northern Europe had one of the day's of the week named after her, "Freya's Day."

You probably know her day better as "Friday."

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