The Roman civilization grants a leading place to the religion. Nothing is made in the Roman world without mixing with it of the member of a religious order. The everyday life, the public life, the war, the marriages, the health, the death, the foundation of a city either a journey: everything is accompanied with very precise rites intended to favor the actions or the current projects either to spend at best the stages of a life.
The relation of Romans with the religious domain is not based on a morality nor on a spiritual way to be followed to improve its behavior. It is in fact an interpersonal skills of exchanges: the men ask, worship, make offerings or sacrifices, respect particular rites and in exchange, the divinities are supposed to favor them (at least if they are satisfied by the returned worshipcult. Romans thus tries by all means to incur the protection of the divinities.
The rites, the formulae, the worship are codified and organized. The cult is highly varied: there is the domestic cult, the public cults, and even the imperial cult. The faiths of Romain evolve over time, often in parallel in the political life and in the transformations of the city. Politics and religion form a strange association in the Roman civilization. Both careers were moreover for a long time inseparable. For Romain, the power of Rome is even dependent on the support of the divine strengths.
It is the multitude of gods who accompanies Romans: powerful gods or minor divinities, Roman gods either foreign gods likened as for example the gods Greek either accepted as they stand or with adaptations as for the oriental gods (Isis, Cybèle or Mithra for example). These more and more numerous divinities will finally make way, but not without clashes, for a new religion which advocates the faith in a unique god. It is the succession of Christianity.
From the VIth century before J-C, Romain assimilates certain foreign divinities. It is in particular the case for the Greek gods. But Romain does not content with integrating the Greek gods, they trace downright their pantheon on the Greek pantheon and establish correspondences between Roman gods and Greek gods. Certain divinities will downright be hellenized.