To the ancient Greeks and Romans, planets meant "wandering stars". That means that unlike all of the other stars, which moved together through the sky day by day, season by season, planets moved relative to all of the other stars on a regular basis. They did not understand why. They did not know that they were round masses of rock that, like earth, orbit the sun. They named them after Gods to honor the gods.

hi! you may be interested in these previous posts

• When did scientists recognize the planets in our solar system as (relatively) nearby planets, and not as other stars. How did they know that these celestial bodies were planets and not stars?

• What was the relationship between Ancient Greek religion/ and the named for them? Did they think Venus, Mars, etc were the actual ?

• Why were the planets named after the gods the ancients named them after? More specifically, why was Saturn given his own planet instead of a more... prominent god?

• Did ancient Greeks know that Olympos was the highest mountain in Greece when they placed their there? Did they know Jupiter is the largest when they named it after the king of , Zeus?

• When ancient people named the planets after their gods, did they really believe that what they saw in the sky was that god, or did they know it was just an object named after them?