Surely a matter of
choice in most cases. I have one practical reason for calling 'Athena' this goddess on coins with Greek legends (plus of certain
coloniae such as
Deultum): In Extensis Portfolio and elsewhere I
search by keywords, so
Ceres,
Jupiter,
Juno,
Mars, Minerva,
et al., bring up the coins of the
Rome mint (and of course the other
denarii, as from Amisos and
Laodicea, that are regular Imperial coins, even if oddly spellt sometimes). Demter,
Zeus,
Hera, Ares, Athena,
et al., bring up the deities on my few
Greek coins and all the Greek Imperials and
coloniae that use the selfsame
types. That is convenient!
As a matter of scholarship, I never would use a Greek name for an entity such as
Bonus Eventus or
Mars as
Quirinus or
Virtus Augusti or
Annona, and I strongly prefer the use of their Greek names for figures based on known Greek representations, or, as here, when I see Athena dressed in a narrow
peplos with a Classical Phidian
aegis: it may be based on a Hadrianic-Antonine imitation, but it is Attic, and it is not Minerva or Menvra.
Apollo and
Nemesis and
Dionysos don't really have Latin names (
Bacchus also is Greek, but it is not
his name). I basically reserve
Helios for Rhodes, and for the father of Ikaros, though I'm not sure what the Campanians called the sun on the
Republican denarii (no matter). The sun god that has a major widespread cult is
Roman Sol.
Personifications that exist in both languages' literature, such as
Homonoia /
Concordia and
Tyche /
Fortuna I treat on the Keyword Convenience principle, except that, e.g.,
Fortuna Redux has no Greek equivalent as an idea; it is a
Roman Imperial concept.
The only thing that I would say categorically is
never to call
Apollo a sun god, by any name. The epithet
phoibos is more like
gloriosus. The
Romans (apart maybe from some flatulent wordy rhetoricians) NEVER conflated
Apollo with the Sun; rather, they replaced, they edged out,
Apollo in the emperor's cohort (so to speak) as the cult of
Sol Invictus developed and grew. If someone disagrees with that, he or she has the civil right to do so, but I stand by it and for
good reason. To anyone who quotes Authorities, I refer to that wonderful Novice in Uberto Eco's
Name of the Rose.Pat L.
If I were
writing poetry, I'd consider metre, surely; if a novela, I'd put in a speaker's mouth whatever name he would use or that would
help characterize him.