Roman Polytheism Replaces Christianity.

This idea just popped into my head today, imagine if somehow, Roman Polytheism had become the dominant religion in western culture, surviving and strengthening to the present day, while Arabian Polytheism replaced Islam. Christianity either never existed, or was stamped out in it's infancy. Judaism is still a small, ostracized middle eastern religion. What would our culture be like?, what would politics, and history be like?
 
Religion would probably take a Hinduisc route. Suicide would still be an honorable way out. Outside of that I'm not terrible sure. Maybe a worse dark age?
 
Well, Roman polytheism, isn't a religion in the modern Western sense, so it really couldn't take the place of Christianity in any meaningful way. I suspwect, though, that a lot of the cultural developments that happened IOTL with Christianity would still happen ITTL. Religion as a motivating factor for everyday behaviour is overrated. Those Roman polytheists would very likely still experience a contraction of political space, a quasi-Platonist reverence for the otherworldly and disdain for the physical, a culture of scriptural learning and a decline of urban society. These things were part and parcel of therir history and culture, not outcomes of their conversion.

Northwestern Europe would most likely suffer most from this, because Catholic Christianity created a conduit of Mediterranean cultural values and social technology without which they may be left to try out nonviable approaches for longer. But even that is not a given, looking at the way Viking society developed functioning large polities without depending on a literate clerical class.
 
It's more likely a sort-of European equivalent to Hinduism would evolve. There'd be a certain unified mythology but no organisational unity and a lot of regional diversity.

Not very unlikely, since most of European paganism had a similar origin already. Heck, in some ways it had the same as Hinduism.
 
You wouldn't believe how many minor saints were really Roman polytheistic deities in disguise (forgot the English title of the book I read it in, something like Ancient Man?)
 
Probably something along the lines that have been said.of course the Roman Empire would still be destroyed. As for what that would mean it may not mean everything becomes completely Germanic as the Germanics would have likely accepted Roman forms of their own gods.

I don't think NE Europe would suffer. Religious wise the gods of the Med certainly reached every corner of the Empire and beyond.

In one irony, Julian the Philosopher, fought against an Alemanni chief who had become a devotee of Isis during his Gaul Campaign.
 
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