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Peter, you wrote:
"Forgot religion!  Mostly the same gods; changed names and attitudes. "

It's not entirely what you may think. The Classical Roman and Classical Greek 
pantheons are similar, in part because of that Roman affection for all things 
Greek, but more importantly because the pantheons are descended from a common 
Indo-European source --a common ancient religious system that preceded both 
Greeks and Romans and has other descendants as well. The reconstructed IE 
name for the sky god at the head of the pantheon is "Dyeus" with a variant 
"deiw-". This evolved in the Italic dialects to give the general word "deus" 
as well as the name for the deity "Ieu" or "Iou" and in Greek dialects the 
name evolved into "Zeus". In the ancient Germanic pantheon, the same name 
(for the same sky god) became "Tiu" or "Tiw" which is preserved in a word we 
use every week: Tuesday (I guess Tiw fell in significance in the Germanic 
pantheon later, hence we've got Thor's day aligned with the continental 
Jove's day). 

So how the heck do we get "Jupiter" from all of this? This topic is well 
off-topic for NavList, but here's my chance to swing back towards celestial 
navigation --well, astronomy at least. Ya see, it turns out that the name 
"Jupiter" --the name of the greatest planet in the Solar System and one of 
the navigational planets-- is actually derived from a phrase: it was 
"godfather" or "Iou pater" or, yep, "Jupiter". Even the word "day" is derived 
from the same root (the "sky god" is the god of daylight). 

Think of that the next time you measure the altitude of 'Jupiter in daylight on a Tuesday'. :-)

-FER
PS: For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyeus


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