Thus, for about a thousand years, from Homer’s time onward, Greek mythology so strongly influenced the religions of both Greece and Rome that The New Encyclopædia Britannica says: “The importance of Greek mythology in the intellectual, artistic, and emotional history of Western man can hardly be overestimated.” At least religiously speaking, Horace, a Latin poet of the first century B.C.E., was correct when he said: “Captive Greece took Rome captive.”

Greek religion drew also from other sources. The New Encyclopædia Britannica points out that “the Hellenistic world, which favoured mystery religions with special zeal, adopted [from Egypt] the cults of Osiris, Isis, and Horus.” From there “they were spread over the entire Roman Empire.”