The Roman Gods

We learned earlier that the Etruscan tribes of Italy went to Greece to buy and sell. In Greece, they learned about the Greek gods, and heard Greek myths. And when they came back to Italy, they passed these stories along to the Romans.

The Romans took the Greek gods as their own. They worshipped the gods of Greece. But they called these Greek gods by their own, Roman names.

Do you remember Zeus, the king of the Greek gods? He made the golden apple so that he could start the Trojan War on earth. In Rome, Zeus was called Jupiter. He controlled the sky, the moon, and the weather: wind, rain, and thunder. Today, we call one of the planets in our solar system Jupiter, after the Roman name of the king of the gods. The planet Mars is also named after a Roman god—the god of war. And do you remember the god of the sea, Poseidon, who tried to keep Odysseus from getting home? The Romans called this sea god Neptune. Our solar system also has a planet named Neptune.

The Romans told stories of their gods to explain the natural world. One story, about Ceres and her daughter Proserpine, tries to show why winter and summer come every year.

ne day Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, and her daughter Proserpine were roaming through the woods. Wherever Ceres stepped, ripe grain sprang up; whenever she touched a tree, fruit blossomed beneath her hands. Her daughter followed along behind her, as beautiful as springtime, with long golden hair.

Ceres stopped for a moment to drink from a cool stream. While she drank, Proserpine wandered away to a beautiful clump of lilies nearby. As she bent down to pick them, the ground suddenly opened beneath her and she disappeared! When Ceres looked up, Proserpine was gone. “Proserpine!” Ceres called. “Proserpine! Where are you?” But there was no answer.

For fourteen days, Ceres wandered the earth, looking for her lost daughter. Finally, Ceres met a nymph who whispered, “I have just come from the Underworld, land of the dead. I saw your daughter there! She was stolen by Pluto, the king of the underworld, to be his wife! When he saw her, he fell in love with her, and the ground opened up beneath her so that she could walk through it into the land underground.”

When Ceres heard this, she was furious. “I have helped the ground to bear crops!” she shouted. “And this is how it rewards me! I will curse it until it is dry and empty of all life!” Instantly the trees around her began to turn brown, and the leaves fell from them. The grass died, and the flowers withered. In great rage, Ceres turned and climbed up into the heavens, all the way to the palace of Jupiter, king of the gods.

“Jupiter!” she said. “Force Pluto to return my daughter to me! If you don’t, I will never again let spring come to the earth. There will never be fruit, or grain, or grass again. The earth will always be as dead and hard as my heart without my daughter!”

Jupiter thought about this.

“Very well,” he said at last. “I will tell Pluto to let your daughter go—on one condition. She can leave the underworld as long as she hasn’t eaten or drunk anything in the palace of Pluto. But if she ate or drank with him there, she will have to stay.”

Suddenly the earth cracked open. There stood Proserpine, beside a tall dark man in a black cloak—Pluto, lord of the underworld.

“My daughter!” Ceres exclaimed.

“Wait,” Jupiter said. “Proserpine, have you eaten or drunk anything in the underworld?”

“Hardly anything,” the girl said. “I only ate six seeds from a pomegranate, just a few minutes ago.”

“Then you must stay with Pluto,” Jupiter said.

But Ceres refused to give in. “If I don’t get my daughter back,” she warned, “spring will never come again.”

Jupiter considered the case carefully. At last he said, “She only ate six seeds. So for six months—half of the year—she must stay in the underworld with Pluto. But for the other six months, she can come and live with her mother in the world above.”

And so Proserpine spends six months of every year in the underworld. When she is in the palace of Pluto, her mother Ceres mourns and weeps. The leaves fall from the trees, the grass turns brown, and the flowers die. But when Proserpine comes back to her mother each spring, Ceres rejoices. The leaves of the trees begin to grow; the grass turns green again, and flowers begin to bud and bloom.