Comparison Essay: Greek Mythology vs. Roman Mythology
The Greeks and the Romans have had their distinct differences for some time, although much of Roman culture originates from Greek. With different ideals, the two both tell their own versions of the myths that many of us have come to know today. Although the two cultures often clash, their mythology goes nearly hand in hand. Essentially, Greek and Roman Gods are one and the same. The Greek see their Gods as beings of utter perfection, as portrayed in their sculptures. The Greeks are the ones who came up with Contrapposto, defined as “the trick of sculpting a person with more weight on one leg than the other to show movement.” The Romans, on the other hand, sculpted their Gods as if they were ordinary people, standing mighty but with a constant representation of their flaws and natural beauty even though to the Romans, the Gods were to be seen as imagined by individuals, initially amorphous. The Romans renamed the Greek Gods as their own after objects, and often denoted the Greek culture by deeming many Greek Goddesses to be evil. Furthermore, the Greeks and Romans differed in their views…show more content… The major motion picture Hercules depicts the son of a God who grows up on Earth as a mortal after a failed poisoning and works to earn his place among the Gods once again. Although much of the story lies with Roman views, the Gods go by their Greek names. Hercules is actually the Roman counterpart to Herakles, the name in Greek. In the original myth of Hercules, Hera, or Juno, attempted to kill baby Hercules, the love child of Zeus, or Jupiter, and a mortal. Hercules legacy lives on, although in different ways. The Greeks see Herakles as dead, long in the afterlife whereas the Romans believed that Hercules continued to reside among the Gods after his ‘death’. Hence the quote “The hero is dead, long live the