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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Center-of-All" data-source="post: 4279892" data-attributes="member: 48974">Thing is, the Greek and Roman gods aren't just the same figures renamed. The Romans just associated their deitys with the Greek ones to lend themselves credibility. Mars has a very different personality than Ares, notably lacking the cowardice and bloodlust of the latter, being a model roman soldier. Jupiter didn't have Zeus' characteristic lecherousness, and Juno had none of Hera's jealousy or nagging qualities. As a whole, the Greek gods were more interesting, but they were definately different enough to not be the same pantheon, nor do the Roman gods fit the 'evil doppelganger' paradigm (Vesta, most notably, was not any more malicious than Hestia). And what about gods like Janus or Quirinus, who have no opposite counterpart?As for the divisions you mention, yes you can see them that way, but the same goes for the various european/near-eastern pantheons. Demeter is really just a variation on Isis, Aphrodite is Innana/Ishtar, Thor bears a striking resemblance to Heracles, etc. This sort of conflation is possible with almost any cultures that share a similar geographical area. It's just the relative obscurity of these religions that tends to give this sort of impression. People think of subsaharic Africa as a single monolithic culture, ignorant of the enormous differences between the ancient Ethiopians and Khoisan Bushmen, and completely unaware that the Haida aren't at all similar to the Iroquois Confederacy. This ignorance extends to their religions, but that's no reason to encourage that in your works.PS: Persia isn't part of the Middle East<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />. I'd personally put it closer to the Vedic pantheon. A suitable replacement might be something from pre-Islam Arabia, but that may be difficult to find information on.</blockquote>

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