My understanding from school is that the Greeks and Romans worshipped (or at least believed in) the same Gods, but used different names. I always thought it would be like if your name was “John” in English, it would be “Juan” in Spanish, but the same person nonetheless.
Today, many different religions also have different names for the God that originally revealed himself to Abraham as a burning bush (e.g., “Allah,” “Jehovah,” or just “God”).
So, was it like that?
In: Culture
It was indeed comparable to the different Abrahamic religions although to different degrees. The Roman gods were the same ones as the Greek gods with some different names and other differences. It is likely that the Roman religion were not directly derived from the Greek but developed from a common ancestry. There were a lot of religions with about the same gods in them, including the Norse religions. This did not go unnoticed at the time either as when the names for the weekdays which the Romans named after the gods were translated to Germanic languages they also translated the names of the gods. So Friday is in ancient Greek called “Aphrodites” in Roman it was “Veneris” (Venus) and in modern English it is “Friday” (Froy). The same goddess with three names but the same properties and different myths. It should also be noted that the Romans were very tolerant to other religions and also adopted a lot of gods, myths and customs from the regions the conquered. This is not something we saw a lot with Greek religion.
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