Ancient Greek and Roman religion was not the naive polytheism it is sometimes portrayed as but a sophisticated and internally diverse tradition: the Olympian pantheon coexisted with mystery religions at Eleusis, the philosophical religion of the Stoics and Platonists, the oracular tradition at Delphi, and the intimate cult of the household Lares and Penates. The gods of Greece and Rome were not omnipotent moral legislators but powerful presences whose favor had to be cultivated through ritual, whose nature could be explored through myth, and whose relationship to humanity was one of complex reciprocity rather than simple command. The philosophical tradition that grew alongside this religion — Plato's vision of the Good, the Stoic logos, the Neoplatonic One — became one of the primary intellectual frameworks through which early Christianity and Islam understood their own theology.
Rumi