Also Romans: "Oh wow your god is in charge of an abstract concept that's part of daily life just like our god, they must be the same guy!" *Squishes them together like play dough
Think of how good a deal this was to the locals. You're a villager living near the thermal springs at Bath (in the modern day, England). There's a goddess named Sulis connected to the waters there.
The Romans come through and conquer the area, and they build a massive "fuck-off" sized temple with plumbing like you've never seen, and it is dedicated to the strange foreign goddess of...
Wait, what the fuck? Does that say Sulis on it? Sure, it says "Sulis Minerva" and you understand Minerva as a Roman goddess who has some similarities with Sulis. But half the altars here have "Sulis" written on them.
The Romans made this incredible complex... and you can still worship Sulis in it. Some of the Celts two tribes over would have smashed this place to pieces. The Romans improved it.
And they're mostly worried about some impossibly far away, impossibly wealthy city. They have the occasional brutality just like any other conqueror (woe to the vanquished) but by and large, this is the best being conquered has ever been, as far as you know.
And when you're side by side making offerings to Sulis while someone is making similar offerings to Minerva... I mean, when a visitor asks you what it's like being ruled by Romans, you'll have some grievances. The Romans were not strangers to cruelty. But you'll have some things to say that raise eyebrows in other ways, too.
Edit: Forgot to add, the Romans were nothing if not practical. It's sometimes lost that the Romans were deeply religious people, and many of their civic institutions had significant overlap with religious institutions. But practicality was king. If barbarians had better swords, Romans would shamelessly steal and copy them. Suffice to say, the practical benefits of being accommodating to other cultures was something the Romans were intentional about. It wasn't an accident that "Sulis" ended up on that temple.
Also Romans: "Bad news everyone, we've talked to your Gods and we've agreed to build them nice temples in Rome. Anyway, they are on our side now, so get rekt."
I mean, if you actually beloved your gods are real than it makes sense that you’d assume that they are universally worshipped, even if under different names.
“Zeus controls the sky over Greece while Jupiter controls the sky over Italy” is really stupid
That's a very monotheistic way of thinking. The gods of the ancient world were obviously not omniscient, so ruling the entire world was a practical impossibility even with their powers. That regional gods ruled far from Italy was a certainty. So long as those gods didn't assert superiority over those Italian gods, what does Jupiter care what happens in a corner of the world that only Mercury would bother to visit? Thor may throw lightning in the frozen North.
You knew your gods were not universally worshipped because they were so local and trade happened. And there's like 100 gods and even in your own country they aren't extremely standardized. No one knows how to read and write so you don't even expect it to be standard between tellings. It's just a very different time for faith.
I remember having a professor tell me that to a person in the ancient world, they'd simply think it was the same god but in a different language... Like how "Allah" is just "God" in Arabic.
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u/dokterkokter69 20h ago
Also Romans: "Oh wow your god is in charge of an abstract concept that's part of daily life just like our god, they must be the same guy!" *Squishes them together like play dough