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Chapter 23 - Chapter 9: The Fall of the Gods

The legacy of Crow Queen-Triss served Trivya hundreds of years ago, which is another name for Diana, one of the twelve main gods of Rome, essentially a divine spirit's guise.

The empire's polytheism is integrative.

Take Diana for example. She did not originate in Rome. She is the Nemi Goddess, 'Diana of the Wood,' a great nature goddess worshipped in the forests near Nemi Lake.

Initially, Diana was only a mountain and forest goddess of Rome, but she later subsumed another Roman moon goddess, Luna, thus becoming Rome's primary moon goddess,

Romans liked to use Roman gods to merge with foreign gods with similar divine positions. Around the 5th or 6th century BC, Diana worship had contact with the ancient Greeks. Until the Roman era, Diana subsumed the Greek goddess Artemis, and was thus also considered the goddess of hunting, plants, and animals.

Simultaneously, Diana also subsumed the Greek goddess Hecate and the Carthaginian sky goddess Kleista.

The empire's polytheism is an ever-expanding process.

When the empire conquered the European continent, it began to assimilate Greek religion and Greek mythology. Greek gods Castor, Polydeuces, Apollo, and others became Roman deities and fused with one another. After Rome's disastrous defeat in the second war against Carthage, to escape Carthage's grasp, they even introduced the Great Mother Sibyl, worshiped by the Little Asians, into the Roman religion according to the "oracle."

Furthermore, the Persian deity Mitra and the principal deities of Egyptian religion, Osiris and Isis, also became objects of Roman worship.

The gods of those conquered peoples were generally also assimilated into Rome's pantheon.

This is the origin of the initial 'Pantheon.'

This is somewhat similar to the people of the Celestial Dynasty; divine spirits are taken for use, and anything usable is absorbed as part of us.

Nowadays, the pantheon has been closed, no longer allowing any sacrifices. Since the adoption of Christianity as the empire's state religion, the priests who once served the gods have disappeared one by one, with some even being judged as evil wizards.

The legacy of Crow Queen-Triss originates from here, and those with supernatural powers are more inclined to worship divine spirits, as they cannot even comprehend where their own magic power comes from.

It is because of this relationship that the forest demoness sought her aid, and called her 'Priestess.'

If it were still the time of polytheistic belief.

Crow Queen-Triss wouldn't be hiding in exile at all; she would most likely be the chief priestess of the goddess Diana, with a very high social standing, equivalent to the church's archbishop.

Hecate's synonym Trioctitis was translated into Latin as Trivya by the Romans.

This is the origin of Crow Queen-Triss. Their lineage served the guise of the Roman goddess Diana after she engulfed Hecate goddess, the goddess of witchcraft and the death goddess, so this lineage of Trivya priests faced brutal suppression by the church.

Perhaps in the Middle Ages, some witches burned at the stake might have later awakened magic powers or learned witchcraft through certain means.

But before the empire was destroyed, many wizards were inheritances of the polytheistic era's divine priests.

Or to be more straightforward,

If divine spirits truly existed in this world, then the entirety of the pantheon combined would not be enough to fight a single God, as eventually, secular 'monotheism' completely replaced 'polytheism.'

Those priest systems inherited for thousands of years, existent since ancient Greek times, all bore the mark of 'heresy.'

The ancient Olympic Games.

Held from 776 BC, every four years, until banned by the Roman emperor in 394 AD, lasting 1170 years.

In that year,

The ancient Olympic Games were banned, the doors of the pantheon were closed, the sacrificial flames extinguished, and polytheism became a thing of history. The priests who once served the gods also faced the end of an era.

The Inquisition Court was quietly established.

As Crow Queen-Triss said - "Our era has ended..."

The decline of the gods.

Crow Queen-Triss only wanted to find a country that could provide shelter for her kind. She used prophecy to glimpse the future and saw the unification of monotheism across the European continent.

This is a clash of belief and divine authority above royal power.

God won.

.........

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