| @ari18: Actually, I've been thinking about this issue, and I've determined that I need to concede part of my previous statement, but not all of it. Both of us are diametrically opposed to one another on this issue of the providence of the name Jupiter, and I agree that I might be wrong. While I am willing to admit that, I am not willing to agree that "Jupiter is NOT based on Greek." In reality, as much as we know, we must remember that a small group of farmers first established the foundations of Rome sometime in the mid 8th century BCE and developed their religion that way. Did the Etruscans from the north have any influence on their early religion? Probably. Did the Greeks from the west and south of Italy have any influence? Also, probably. Did the Greeks and Etruscans influence one another? Indeed, probably. My point is that no one knows what happened in those earliest formative days of Roman religion, not you, or I, or thousands of classicists and ancient historians, or even Wikipedia. Therefore, while I retract my statement that Jupiter is based on the Greek, I will reword it to say "Jupiter might have been based on the Greek." As an aside, while we will probably never know, it would be really funny if someone found an inscription from a cave or something that clearly showed an Etruscan providence of the name Jupiter. Why so funny? Etruscan isn't Indo-European. |
Norse Gods 
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'A' in History
