Mythology by Edith Hamilton Flashcards
The Gods
The Greeks believed that the universe created the gods, not the other way around. Heaven and earth were the first parents, and the Titans were their children, while the gods were their grandchildren.
The Titans and the Twelve Great Olympians
The Titans, also known as the Elder Gods, were supreme in the universe for untold ages. They were of enormous size and incredible strength. Cronus (Saturn in Latin) was the most important Titan, ruling until his son Zeus (Jupiter) dethroned him. When Jupiter ascended the throne, Saturn fled to Italy and brought in the Golden Age, a time of peace and happiness.
Other notable Titans included:
Ocean: The river encircling the earth.
Tethys: Ocean's wife.
Hyperion: The father of the sun, moon, and dawn.
Mnemosyne: Memory.
Themis: Justice.
Iapetus: Important because of his sons, Atlas, who bore the world on his shoulders, and Prometheus, the savior of mankind.
These Titans took a lower place after Zeus's rise to power.
The twelve great Olympians succeeded the Titans and resided on Olympus. Initially, Olympus was considered a mountain top, Mt. Olympus in Thessaly, Greece. However, the concept evolved into a mysterious region far above the earth. In Homer's Iliad, Zeus is described as talking from "the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus," but also having the power to hang earth and sea from a pinnacle of Olympus.
The entrance to Olympus was a great gate of clouds kept by the Seasons. Inside were the gods' dwellings, where they lived, slept, feasted on ambrosia and nectar, and listened to Apollo's lyre. It was an abode of perfect blessedness, untouched by wind, rain, or snow, with a cloudless firmament and sunshine.
The twelve Olympians formed a divine family:
Zeus (Jupiter): The chief god.
Poseidon (Neptune): Brother of Zeus, ruler of the sea.
Hades (Pluto): Brother of Zeus, ruler of the underworld.
Hestia (Vesta): Sister of Zeus.
Hera (Juno): Zeus's wife.
Ares (Mars): Son of Zeus and Hera.
Athena (Minerva): Daughter of Zeus.
Apollo: Son of Zeus.
Aphrodite (Venus): Daughter of Zeus.
Hermes (Mercury): Son of Zeus.
Artemis (Diana): Daughter of Zeus.
Hephaestus (Vulcan): Son of Hera (sometimes said to be the son of Zeus too).
Zeus (Jupiter)
Zeus became the supreme ruler after he and his brothers drew lots for their share of the universe. Poseidon received the sea, and Hades the underworld. Zeus was Lord of the Sky, the Rain-god, and the Cloud-gatherer, wielding the thunderbolt. He was more powerful than all the other divinities combined. He tells his family, "I am mightiest of all…You could not drag down Zeus. But if I wished to drag you down, then I would."
Despite his power, Zeus was not omnipotent or omniscient and could be opposed and deceived. Fate was sometimes considered stronger than him. Zeus is often portrayed as falling in love with many women and using tricks to hide his infidelity from Hera. Scholars explain this by suggesting the Zeus of myth combined characteristics of many gods. This resulted in the later Greeks disliking the endless love affairs.
Zeus was majestic, demanding sacrifices and right action. The Greek Army at Troy was told, "Father Zeus never helps liars or those who break their oaths." His breastplate was the aegis, his bird the eagle, and his tree the oak. His oracle was at Dodona, where priests interpreted the rustling of oak leaves to reveal his will.
Hera (Juno)
Hera was Zeus's wife and sister, raised by the Titans Ocean and Tethys. She was the protector of marriage and married women. However, she is often portrayed as punishing the women Zeus fell in love with, regardless of their reluctance or innocence. She never forgot an injury and her hatred led to the Trojan War not ending in honorable peace. Hera was the gracious protector of heroes in the Quest of the Golden Fleece. Ilithyia (or Eileithyia), who helped women in childbirth, was her daughter.
The cow and the peacock were sacred to her, and Argos was her favorite city.
Poseidon (Neptune)
Poseidon was the ruler of the sea, Zeus's brother, and second only to him in eminence. He was all-important to the Greeks. His wife was Amphitrite, a granddaughter of the Titan, Ocean. Poseidon had a splendid palace beneath the sea but was often found on Olympus.
Poseidon gave the first horse to man and was honored for that as well. He controlled storms and calm seas. When he drove his golden car over the waters, the waves became still.
He was called "Earth-shaker" and carried a trident, a three-pronged spear, with which he would shake and shatter whatever he pleased. He also had some connection with bulls.
Hades (Pluto)
Hades, also called Pluto, was the third brother among the Olympians, ruling the underworld and the dead. He was also the God of Wealth, of the precious metals hidden in the earth. He had a cap or helmet that made whoever wore it invisible. It was rare for him to leave his dark realm. He was unpitying, inexorable, but just; a terrible, not an evil god.
His wife was Persephone (Proserpine), whom he carried away from the earth and made Queen of the Lower World. He was King of the Dead, not Death himself, whom the Greeks called Thanatos and the Romans, Orcus.
Pallas Athena (Minerva)
Athena was the daughter of Zeus alone, born full-grown and in full armor from his head. She was a fierce and ruthless battle-goddess in the Iliad, but elsewhere she was warlike only to defend the State and the home from outside enemies. She was the Goddess of the City, the protector of civilized life, of handicrafts and agriculture; the inventor of the bridle, who first tamed horses for men to use.
She was Zeus's favorite child and carried the awful aegis and his devastating weapon, the thunderbolt.
She was often described as "gray-eyed." Of the three virgin goddesses she was the chief and was called the Maiden, Parthenos, and her temple the Parthenon. In later poetry she is the embodiment of wisdom, reason, purity.
Athens was her special city; the olive created by her was her tree; the owl her bird.
Phoebus Apollo
Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto (Latona), born in Delos, was considered "the most Greek of all the gods." He was the master musician, the lord of the silver bow, the Archer-god, far-shooting, and the Healer, who first taught men the healing art. He was also the God of Light and Truth.
Apollo's oracle at Delphi played an important part in mythology. The answers to questions were delivered by a priestess in a trance, caused by a vapor rising from a cleft in the rock over which her seat was placed. Apollo was called Delian from Delos, and Pythian from killing the serpent Python. Another name given him was "the Lycian," and in the Iliad he is called "the Sminthian," the Mouse-god. Often he was the Sun-god, though accurately, the Sun-god was Helios, child of the Titan Hyperion.
Apollo at Delphi was a purely beneficent power, guiding men to know the divine will and showing them how to make peace with the gods. Nevertheless, there were a few tales of him that show him pitiless and cruel. Two ideas were fighting in him as in all the gods: a primitive, crude idea and one that was beautiful and poetic.
The laurel was his tree. Many creatures were sacred to him, chief among them the dolphin and the crow.
Artemis (Diana)
Artemis, also called Cynthia, was Apollo's twin sister, daughter of Zeus and Leto. She was one of the three maiden goddesses of Olympus. She was the Lady of Wild Things, Huntsman-in-chief to the gods. She was careful to preserve the young; she was "the protectress of dewy youth" everywhere. Nevertheless, she kept the Greek Fleet from sailing to Troy until they sacrificed a maiden to her. On the other hand, when women died a swift and painless death, they were held to have been slain by her silver arrows.
As Phoebus was the Sun, she was the Moon, called Phoebe and Selene (Luna in Latin). In the later poets, Artemis is identified with Hecate, "the goddess with three forms," Selene in the sky, Artemis on earth, Hecate in the lower world and in the world above when it is wrapped in darkness. Hecate was the Goddess of the Dark of the Moon, associated with deeds of darkness, the Goddess of the Crossways.
The cypress was sacred to her; and all wild animals, but especially the deer.
Aphrodite (Venus)
Aphrodite was the Goddess of Love and Beauty. She is described as the daughter of Zeus and Dione in the Iliad, but later poems claim she sprung from the foam of the sea. Aphros is foam in Greek. This sea-birth took place near Cythera, from where she was wafted to Cyprus. Both islands were sacred to her, and she was called Cytherea or the Cyprian as often as by her proper name.
With her, beauty comes. The winds flee before her and the storm clouds; sweet flowers embroider the earth; the waves of the sea laugh; she moves in radiant light. Without her there is no joy nor loveliness anywhere. This is the best picture the poets paint of her.
However, she had another side. She is a soft, weak creature in the Iliad, but in later poems she is usually shown as treacherous and malicious, exerting a deadly and destructive power over men.
She is usually the wife of Hephaestus (Vulcan), the lame and ugly god of the forge.
The myrtle was her tree; the dove her bird - sometimes, too, the sparrow and the swan.
Hermes (Mercury)
Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, daughter of Atlas. He was graceful and swift of motion. On his feet were winged sandals; wings were on his low-crowned hat, too, and on his magic wand, the Caduceus. He was Zeus's Messenger, who "flies as fleet as thought to do his bidding."
He was the shrewdest and most cunning; in fact he was the Master Thief. Zeus made him give back Apollo's herds, and he won Apollo's forgiveness by presenting him with the lyre which he had just invented, making it out of a tortoise's shell. He was God of Commerce and the Market, protector of traders.
In odd contrast to this idea of him, he was also the solemn guide of the dead, the Divine Herald who led the souls down to their last home.
He appears oftener in the tales of mythology than any other god.
Ares (Mars)
Ares was the God of War, son of Zeus and Hera, both of whom detested him. He is hateful throughout the Iliad. Homer calls him murderous, bloodstained, the incarnate curse of mortals; and, strangely, a coward, too, who bellows with pain and runs away when he is wounded. Yet he has a train of attendants on the battlefield which should inspire anyone with confidence. His sister is there, Eris, which means Discord, and Strife, her son. The Goddess of War, Enyo walks beside him, and with her are Terror and Trembling and Panic. As they move, the voice of groaning arises behind them and the earth streams with blood.
The Romans liked Mars better than the Greeks liked Ares. He never was to them the mean whining deity of the Iliad, but magnificent in shining armor, redoubtable, invincible.
Ares figures little in mythology. In one story he is the lover of Aphrodite and held up to the contempt of the Olympians by Aphrodite's husband, Hephaestus; but for the most part he is little more than a symbol of war. He is not a distinct personality, like Hermes or Hera or Apollo.
He had no cities where he was worshiped. The Greeks said vaguely that he came from Thrace, home of a rude, fierce people in the northeast of Greece.
Appropriately, his bird was the vulture. The dog was wronged by being chosen as his animal.
Hephaestus (Vulcan and Mulciber)
Hephaestus was the God of Fire, son of Zeus and Hera, sometimes of Hera alone. Among the perfectly beautiful immortals he only was ugly. He was lame as well. He was cast out of heaven, either by his mother or by Zeus. In Homer he is highly honored, the workman of the immortals, their armorer and smith, who makes their dwellings and their furnishings as well as their weapons. In his workshop he has handmaidens he has forged out of gold who can move and who help him in his work.
In the later poets his forge is often said to be under this or that volcano, and to cause eruptions.
His wife is one of the three Graces in the Iliad. He was a kindly, peace-loving god, popular on earth as in heaven. With Athena, he was important in the life of the city. The two were the patrons of handicrafts, the arts which along with agriculture are the support of civilization; he the protector of the smiths as she of the weavers. When children were formally admitted to the city organization, the god of the ceremony was Hephaestus.
Hestia (Vesta)
Hestia was Zeus's sister, and like Athena and Artemis a virgin goddess. She has no distinct personality and she plays no part in the myths. She was the Goddess of the Hearth, the symbol of the home, around which the newborn child must be carried before it could be received into the family. Every meal began and ended with an offering to her.
Each city too had a public hearth sacred to Hestia, where the fire was never allowed to go out. If a colony was to be founded, the colonists carried with them coals from the hearth of the mother-city with which to kindle the fire on the new city's hearth.
In Rome her fire was cared for by six virgin priestesses, called Vestals.
The Lesser Gods of Olympus
There were other divinities in heaven besides the twelve great Olympians. The most important of them was the God of Love, Eros (Cupid in Latin).
In the early stories, he is oftenest a beautiful serious youth who gives good gifts to men. Plato said, "Love - Eros - makes his home in men's hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs. His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will. And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness."
In the later poets he was Aphrodite's son and almost invariably a mischievous, naughty boy, or worse. He was often represented as blindfolded, because love is often blind. In attendance upon him was Anteros, sometimes the avenger of slighted love, sometimes the one who opposes love; also Himeros or Longing, and Hymen, the God of the Wedding Feast.
Hebe was the Goddess of Youth, the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Sometimes she appears as cupbearer to the gods; sometimes that office is held by Ganymede, a beautiful young Trojan prince who was seized and carried up to Olympus by Zeus's eagle. There are no stories about Hebe except that of her marriage to Hercules.
Iris was the Goddess of the Rainbow and a messenger of the gods. Now the one, now the other is called upon by the gods.
There were also in Olympus two bands of lovely sisters, the Muses and the Graces.
The Graces were three: Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth) and Thalia (Good Cheer). They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child of the Titan, Ocean. Except in a story Homer and Hesiod tell, that Aglaia married Hephaestus, they are not treated as separate personalities, but always together, a triple incarnation of grace and beauty. The gods delighted in them when they danced enchantingly to Apollo's lyre, and the man they visited was happy. They "give life its bloom." Together with their companions, the Muses, they were "queens of song," and no banquet without them could please.
The Muses were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. In later times each had her own special field: Clio was Muse of history, Urania of astronomy, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy, Terpsichore of the dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love-poetry, Polyhymnia of songs to the gods, Euterpe of lyric poetry. Hesiod says, "We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know, when we will, to utter true things." They were companions of Apollo, the God of Truth, as well as of the Graces. The man they inspired was sacred far beyond any priest.
As the idea of Zeus became loftier, two august forms sat beside him in Olympus: Themis, which means the Right, or Divine Justice, and Dike, which is Human Justice. But they never became real personalities. The same was true of two personified emotions esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer and Hesiod: Nemesis, usually translated as Righteous Anger, and Aidos, reverence and shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunate - not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is not deserved.
From time to time a few mortals were translated to Olympus, but once they had been brought to heaven they vanished from literature.
The Gods of the Waters
Poseidon (Neptune), was the Lord and Ruler of the Sea and the Friendly Sea. Underground rivers, too, were his.
Ocean, a Titan, was Lord of the river Ocean, a great river encircling the earth. His wife, also a Titan, was Tethys. The Oceanids, the nymphs of this great river, were their daughters. The gods of all the rivers on earth were their sons.
Pontus, which means the Deep Sea, was a son of Mother Earth and the father of Nereus, a sea-god far more important than he himself was.
Nereus was called the Old Man of the Sea - "A trusty god and gentle," who never lies. His wife was Doris, a daughter of Ocean. They had fifty lovely daughters, the nymphs of the Sea, called Nereids from their father's name, one of whom, Thetis, was the mother of Achilles. Poseidon's wife, Amphitrite, was another.
Triton was the trumpeter of the Sea. His trumpet was a great shell. He was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite.
Proteus was said to be Poseidon's son or attendant. He had the power both of foretelling the future and of changing his shape at will.
The Naiads were also water nymphs. They dwelt in brooks and springs and fountains.
Leucothea and her son Palaemon, once mortals, became divinities of the sea, as did also Glaucus, but all three were unimportant.
The Underworld
The kingdom of the dead was ruled by one of the twelve great Olympians, Hades or Pluto, and his Queen, Persephone. It is often called by his name, Hades. It lies beneath the secret places of the earth. In the Odyssey, the way to it leads over the edge of the world across Ocean. In later poets there are various entrances to it from the earth through caverns and beside deep lakes.
Tartarus and Erebus are sometimes two divisions of the underworld, Tartarus the deeper of the two, the prison of the Sons of Earth; Erebus where the dead pass as soon as they die. Often, however, there is no distinction between the two, and either is used, especially Tartarus, as a name for the entire lower region.
In Homer the underworld is vague. The ghosts' existence is like a miserable dream. The later poets define the world of the dead more and more clearly as the place where the wicked are punished and the good rewarded. In the Roman poet Virgil this idea is presented in great detail. Virgil too is the only poet who gives clearly the geography of the underworld. The path down to it leads to where Acheron, the river of woe, pours into Cocytus, the river of lamentation. An aged boatman named Charon ferries the souls of the dead across the water to the farther bank, where stands the adamantine gate to Tartarus. Charon will receive into his boat only the souls of those upon whose lips the passage money was placed when they died and who were duly buried.
On guard before the gate sits Cerberus, the three-headed, dragon-tailed dog, who permits all spirits to enter, but none to return. On his arrival each one is brought before three judges, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, who pass sentence and send the wicked to everlasting torment and the good to a place of blessedness called the Elysian Fields.
Three other rivers, besides Acheron and Cocytus, separate the underworld from the world above: Phlegethon, the river of fire; Styx, the river of the unbreakable oath by which the gods swear; and Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.
Somewhere in this vast region is Pluto's palace, but beyond saying that it is many-gated and crowded with innumerable guests, no writer describes it. Around it are wide wastes, wan and cold, and meadows of asphodel.
The Erinyes (the Furies), are placed by Virgil in the underworld, where they punish evildoers. The Greek poets thought of them chiefly as pursuing sinners on the earth. They were inexorable, but just. They were usually represented as three: Tisiphone, Megaera and Alecto.
Sleep, and Death, his brother, dwelt in the lower world. Dreams too ascended from there to men. They passed through two gates, one of horn through which true dreams went, one of ivory for false dreams.
The Lesser Gods of Earth
Earth herself was called the All-Mother, but she was not really a divinity. The Goddess of the Corn, Demeter (Ceres), and the God of the Vine, Dionysus, also called Bacchus, were the supreme deities of the earth.
The other divinities who lived in the world were comparatively unimportant. Pan was the chief. He was Hermes' son; a noisy, merry god; but he was part animal too, with a goat's horns, and goat's hoofs instead of feet. He was the goatherds' god, and the shepherds' god, and also the gay companion of the woodland nymphs when they danced. Sounds heard in a wilderness at night by the trembling traveler were supposed to be made by him, so that the expression "panic" fear arose.
Silenus was sometimes said to be Pan's son; sometimes his brother, a son of Hermes. He was a jovial fat old man who usually rode an ass because he was too drunk to walk. He is associated with Bacchus as well as with Pan.
Besides these gods of the earth there was a very famous and very popular pair of brothers, Castor and Pollux (Polydeuces), who in most of the accounts were said to live half of their time on earth and half in heaven. They were the sons of Leda, and are usually represented as being gods, the special protectors of sailors. They were also powerful to save in battle. They were especially honored in Rome.
But the accounts of them are contradictory. Sometimes Pollux alone is held to be divine, and Castor a mortal who won a kind of half-and-half immortality merely because of his brother's love.
The usual story is that Leda bore two mortal children to him, Castor and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife; and to Zeus, who visited her in the form of a swan, two others who were immortal, Pollux and Helen, the heroine of Troy. According to one version the two were never separated again. One day they dwelt in Hades, the next in Olympus, always together. They are always represented as living just before the Trojan War.
According to this version the two were never separated again. One day they dwelt in Hades, the next in Olympus, always together.
The late Greek writer Lucian gives another version, in which their dwelling places are heaven and earth; and when Pollux goes to one, Castor goes to the other, so that they are never with each other.
Two stars were supposed to be theirs: the Gemini, the Twins.
They were always represented as riding splendid snow-white horses.Homer distinguishes Castor above Pollux for horsemanship.
The Sileni were creatures part man and part horse. They walked on two legs, not four, but they often had horses' hoofs instead of feet, sometimes horses' ears, and always horses' tails.
The Satyrs, like Pan, were goat-men, and like him they had their home in the wild places of the earth.
In contrast to these unhuman, ugly gods the goddesses of the woodland were all lovely maiden forms, the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains, and the Dryads, sometimes called Hamadryads, nymphs of trees, whose life was in each case bound up with that of her tree.
Aeolus, King of the Winds, also lived on the earth. An island, Aeolia, was his home. Accurately he was only regent of the Winds, viceroy of the gods. The four chief Winds were Boreas, the North Wind, Zephyr, the West Wind, Notus, the South Wind, and the East Wind, Eurus.
There were some beings, neither human nor divine, who had their home on the earth. Prominent among them were:
The Centaurs. They were half man, half horse, and for the most part they were savage creatures, more like beasts than men. One of them, however, Chiron, was known everywhere for his goodness and his wisdom.
The Gorgons were also earth-dwellers. There were three, and two of them were immortal. They were dragonlike creatures with wings, whose look turned men to stone. Phorcys, son of the Sea and the Earth, was their father.
The Graiae were their sisters, three gray women who had but one eye between them. They lived on the farther bank of Ocean.
The Sirens lived on an island in the Sea. They had enchanting voices and their singing lured sailors to their death.
Very important but assigned to no abode whether in heaven or on the earth were The Fates, who give to men at birth evil and good to have. They were three, Clotho, the Spinner, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, the Disposer of Lots, who assigned to each man his destiny; Atropos, she who could not be turned, who carried "the abhorred shears" and cut the thread at death.
The Roman Gods
The twelve great Olympians mentioned earlier were turned into Roman gods also. The influence of Greek art and literature became so powerful in Rome that ancient Roman deities were changed to resemble the corresponding Greek gods, and were considered to be the same. Most of them, however, in Rome had Roman names. These were Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), Neptune (Poseidon), Vesta (Hestia), Mars (Ares), Minerva (Athena), Venus (Aphrodite), Mercury (Hermes) , Diana (Artemis), Vulcan or Mulciber ( Hephaestus ), Ceres (Demeter).
Two kept their Greek names: Apollo, and Pluto; but the latter was never called Hades, as was usual in Greece. Bacchus, never Dionysus, was the name of the wine-god, who had also a Latin name, Libel.
It was a simple matter to adopt the Greek gods because the Romans did not have definitely personified gods of their own. They were a people of deep religious feeling, but they had little imagination. They could never have created the Olympians, each a distinct, vivid personality. Their gods, before they took over from the Greeks, were vague, hardly more than "those that are above." They were The Numina, which means the Powers or the Wills.
Until Greek literature and art entered Italy the Romans felt no need for beautiful, poetic gods. They were a practical people and they did not care about anything of that sort. They wanted useful gods. Simple acts of everyday life were closely connected with them and gained dignity from them as was not the case with any of the Greek gods except Demeter and Dionysus.
The most prominent and revered of them all were the Lares and Penates. Every Roman family had a Lar, who was the spirit of an ancestor, and several Penates, gods of the hearth and guardians of the storehouse. They were the family's own gods, belonging only to it, really the most important part of it, the protectors and defenders of the entire household. They were never worshiped in temples, but only in the home, where some of the food at each meal was offered to them. There were also public Lares and Penates, who did for the city what the others did for the family.
There were also many Numina connected with the life of the household. Everything important to the farm was under the care of a beneficent power never conceived of as having a definite shape.
Saturn was originally one of the Numina, the Protector of the Sowers and the Seed, as his wife Ops was a Harvest Helper. In later days, he was said to be the same as the Greek Cronus and the father of Jupiter, the Roman Zeus. In this way he became a personality and a number of stories were told about him. In memory of the Golden Age, when he reigned in Italy, the great feast of the Saturnalia was held every year during the winter. The idea of it was that the Golden Age returned to the earth during the days it lasted. It kept alive in men's minds the idea of equality, of a time when all were on the same level.
Janus, too, was originally one of the Numina, "the god of good beginnings," which are sure to result in good endings. He became personified to a certain degree. Naturally his month, January, began the new year.
Faunus was Saturn's grandson. He was a sort of Roman Pan, a rustic god. He was a prophet too, and spoke to men in their dreams.
The Fauns were Roman satyrs.
Quirinus was the name of the deified Romulus, the founder of Rome.
The Manes were the spirits of the good dead in Hades. Sometimes they were regarded as divine and worshiped.
The Lemures or Larvae were the spirits of the wicked dead and were greatly feared.
The Camenae began as useful and practical goddesses who cared for springs and wells and cured disease and foretold the future. But when the Greek gods came to Rome, the Camenae were identified with those impractical deities the Muses, who cared only for art and science.
Lucina was sometimes regarded as a Roman Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, but usually the name is used as an epithet of both Juno and Diana.
Pomona and Vertumnus began as Numina, as Powers Protecting Orchards and Gardens. But they were personified later and a story was told about how they fell in love with each other.