• PugJesus@piefed.socialOPMEnglish
    18·
    14 days ago

    Explanation: The Romans were very… fond of stealing things from everyone. Not just in the usual, “Loot, kill, burn” that most pre-modern cultures were fond of, but in the sense of stealing cultural ideas and practices from the conquered.

    You see, the Romans believed that other people were better than them… at specific tasks. As all peoples had their own specialties and advantages, why not adopt ideas from those people who are better at metallurgy, or art, or appeasing the gods?

    Of especial note to the meme is the practice of the Romans taking the gods of other peoples - sometimes literally! While the Romans often simply adopted foreign cults, beginning the practices of said cult back in Rome (sometimes simply equating the foreign god with a native one - “They call Venus, Aphrodite - I’m sure She doesn’t mind what name she’s called by, we’re all worshipping the same divinity” - other times taking it wholesale, “We need a new god to look after us, can never have too many!”), sometimes their theft was explicit.

    The Romans, you see, believed very strongly in the ability of gods to shift whom they favored, at the behest of (sufficiently humble and pious!) mortals. And two common ways of shifting the favor of a given god, was by either moving them, or asking them to move themselves!

    In the first case, as with Magna Mater (from Anatolia - what-is-now Turkiye - where the Romans believed their ancestors came from) and Isis (from Egypt), holy relics of the goddess were moved to Rome, where they were highly honored and beseeched by the Roman people! After all, once the goddess sees how HONORABLE AND PIOUS the Roman are, why would they not favor the Romans instead of those DISSOLUTE FOREIGN BARBARIANS? The gods recognize quality, after all!

    In the second case, there was a specific ritual - evocatio - that was carried out by the general of the Roman army (who was typically also a politician, and with religious functions as well). In the process of this ritual, the Roman general tells the ‘enemy’ god that the enemies of the Romans aren’t honoring them enough, and that Rome will give them the APPROPRIATE AND NOBLE HONORS if they abandon the WEAK AND IMPIOUS enemies of Rome and give their favor to the ROMANS instead!

    In this case, victory was seen as acceptance by said god (after all - if the god did not want the Romans to win, the god would not have given them victory over the enemy!), and the god would then be built a suitably grand temple to honor them by ROMAN HANDS thereon. Famously, this was how an aspect (‘Juno Regina’) of the major Roman goddess Juno was ‘acquired’ from the city of Veii in Italy.

    Pictured in the meme are the Blood Ravens from the sci-fi franchise Warhammer 40,000, who are memetically known for taking things that belong to other groups of their franchise.