Did the ancients Greeks and Romans identify the planets as the corresponding gods in any way or did they simply name them after the gods?

by Redtyuw

By this I mean, did they in any way view the planet Jupiter as an aspect or manifestation of Jupiter? Or were the names simply to honor the gods? I know that they viewed the Sun and the Moon as gods in their own rights.

Searocksandtrees

hi! you may be interested in this pile of posts which all talk about the names/naming of the planets (including non-Roman-god-derived) and the relationships between the planets and the gods they were named after:

[deleted]

They are closely identified (but this doesn't mean that the god is only the planet).

I don't have time for an exhaustive reply but here is a place I remember well:

For example, when at the end of the second book of the Aeneid the morning star (Lucifer) appears guiding Aeneas to finally leave the destroyed Troy, then it is very transparently his mother Venus guiding his way (Venus is stella matutina [=lucifer] and guides as stella maris the way for seafarers, nowadays these are epithets of the Virgin Mary; Venus rises as the morning star in the East and sets as the evening star in the West guiding Aeneas' voyage from Troy to the "evening-lands" of Italy).

Iamque iugis summae surgebat Lucifer Idae
ducebatque diem, Danaique obsessa tenebant
limina portarum, nec spes opis ulla dabatur;
cessi, et sublato montes genitore petivi.

Now above the crest
of loftiest Ida rose the morning-star,
chief in the front of day. The Greeks held fast
the captive gates of Troy. No help or hope
was ours any more. Then, yielding all,
and lifting once again my aged sire,
for refuge to the distant hills I fled.

(translation by Theodore C. Williams)

According to Servius' commentary on the Aeneid in Varro's version of the story the morning star ("quae Veneris dicitur" "which is said to belong to Venus") accompanied Aeneas until he arrived in Italy without ever vanishing, Servius also links the appearance of this star to Venus' promise to never leave Aeneas (Nusquam abero, et tutum patrio te limine sistam - You will nowhere be without me and will safely place you at your father's doorstep; Servius reads numquam - "never" - for nusquam).