Salvete comreligiones

My perspective of the Gods worshipped early in Rome is that Roman understanding was based in the cultural milieu of Italy, or more specifically the shared culture of the Tyrrhenian coast. That was a Mediterranean culture, contact between the western Mediterranean and Italy going back to at least 1500 BCE. So you cannot speak of a Rome ever having been free of "foreign" influences. But I also think there is more to learn about Roman perspectives by looking at the other Italic tribes and their beliefs, than to construct through questionable reasoning a mythological connection between Romans and any Indo-European speaking people. My background is in history and social anthropology, and I have a strong interest in archaeology, especially that of pre-Roman Italy. So theories based on myth do not interest me. Actually, I know a good deal about myths of the world, and have found that those who promote an idea of certain myths being specific to IE's is entirely false. And someone like Dumezil, speaking from an historian's background, used falacious methodology in constructing his theories, comparable to van Daniken. I come more from Momigliani's school of thought.

There are traces of some things at Rome that may go back to Italia neolitica. Since the Italian Neolithic can be traced to the Balkans, and since some of the deities shared by Rome and Greece can likewise be traced to the Neolithic cultures of the Balkans, I can accept that Ceres and Demeter are two titles used for the same Goddess. But there are also several differences between Italic deities and those of Greece. I do not subscribe to notions that all earth goddesses are the same goddess. Ceres is not, for example, the same goddess as Isis. And, too, being goddesses and gods, They would have been in Italy before the arrival of any peoples that Romans might trace back to. The Italic peoples experienced their deities as they came upon Them. So I am much more interested in how Ceres was perceived by Sabellians in Campania and looking at those parallels to better understand Roman perceptions, than I would be of how distant people in India thought about their deities. Parallels found outside Italy are interesting to note and may offer some further insight, but I don't think you can really build any theory about Roman perceptions on such foreign culti deorum. I suppose you will better understand my meaning, hopefully, as I go along posting my thoughts.