<P> The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements . The stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individual's personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state . Heroism was an important theme . When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are more concerned with ritual, augury, and institutions than with theology or cosmogony . </P> <P> The study of Roman religion and myth is complicated by the early influence of Greek religion on the Italian peninsula during Rome's protohistory, and by the later artistic imitation of Greek literary models by Roman authors . In matters of theology, the Romans were curiously eager to identify their own gods with those of the Greeks (interpretatio graeca), and to reinterpret stories about Greek deities under the names of their Roman counterparts . Rome's early myths and legends also have a dynamic relationship with Etruscan religion, less documented than that of the Greeks . </P> <P> While Roman mythology may lack a body of divine narratives as extensive as that found in Greek literature, Romulus and Remus suckling the she - wolf is as famous as any image from Greek mythology except for the Trojan Horse . Because Latin literature was more widely known in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater influence on narrative and pictorial representations of "classical mythology" than Greek sources . In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical . </P> <P> Because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology . This perception is a product of Romanticism and the classical scholarship of the 19th century, which valued Greek civilization as more "authentically creative ." From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting . The Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city . These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny . In Rome's earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship . As T.P. Wiseman notes: </P>

Why did the romans change the names of the greek gods