What is most interesting is how many of the various gods which were absorbed into Roman culture from the various corners of the empire were gradually translated and “interfaced” with existing deities. So that “Baal” for example might be recognised as a foreign reinterpretation of “Saturn”. This sort of tidying up job was generally undertaken by the Decemviri order which also guarded the Sybilline prophecies.
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Heliogabalus
A heroic, possibly mad, effort at a complete tidy up into one divinity called “Sol Invictu” (the unconquered sun) was made by Emperor Heliogabalus’ in the third century AD. He instituted a specific order of priests and built a temple on the Palatine to fit the job. He then transferred Cibele, Vesta, the Palladium (image of Minerva) and various other bits and bobs into it. He detested violence and war and in rejection of ancient customs proceeded to marry a Vestal Virgin. Big no no Helio!
Not surprisingly he didn’t quite get the effect he sought. The result for him and his mother who had influenced him during his reign, was in a word, tragic. He was murdered in a toilet and his dead body was then subjected to multiple humiliations by the crowds for several days before being thrown into the sewers and then into the Tiber.
Perhaps the following Roman saying is appropriate: “Quem di diligunt adulescens moritur” (He who is loved by the gods dies young).