>>When
>> the Romans came, they tended to lump all the Gods & Goddesses
into a plie and
>> say "Well, this one seems a lot like our Juno, so it's got to
be the same
>> diety" and there  you have some very odd
"marriages". Sulis, the Goddess of
>> Bath (the hot springs)and Cernunnos are two ready to hand examples of
>> Romanization of Celti!
>> c dieties. 
>
>In defense of the Romans... they had a different system of naming and
>understanding the deities than did the Celts and Teutons.  They weren't
>pantheists, nor did they assume that the gods worshipped in Britain were just
>new names for their own familiar powers.  But they did tack on epithets - their
>way of calling on specific powers of the gods.  Obviously (in their mind) the
>Juno of Rome was not the *same* Juno as the one in the forests of Gaul.  And by
>adding a familiar epithet to the local gods, they figured they were
>incorporating a new deity into their worship in a familiar way.  They never
>wanted to leave *out* a god, lest they cause offense, but they wanted to be
>sure the Romans moving in could find something familiar.
>
>darkelf, Romanophile
>
Me too. Had Roman ancestors, like all Italian-Americans. And, if I didn't, I
should have.  I recall reading in a Learned Tome at Harvard, The American
Temple of Knowledge, that the idea of equating one diety with another came from
the era of Alexanderian Empire, and was part of a philosophy akin to the
sophists. Don't  recall the text.  Lezlie

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