How did you discover the Roman gods?

Salvete!

In my case I was born in a Roman-Catholic family, but somehow the idea of the Christian god did not appeal to me. As a child I sometimes imagined in church that the rather boring mass was in honor of the older Greek gods that appeared far more interesting to me.
As soon as it was legally possible, I formally renounced Catholicism. This was at a time, before it had become fashionable and caused some difficulties with my family and the Roman-Catholic school that I attended.

Then I became interested in the Sumerian religion. I assumed that, since it was the oldest known religion, it had also to be closest to the truth, if there was one. Source material was sparce though.

A little bit more than ten years ago I realized that my personal relation to the Sumerian religion was questionable, since I had neither Sumerian nor Semitic-Babylonian ancestors. My ancestors had been of Roman culture and had firmly remained in the Roman identity, even when Rome had become Catholic. I therefore assumed that the Roman religion would be better suited for me. Furthermore I was able to identify a Graeco-Roman equivalent for almost all of the Sumerian gods. So I just needed to change the names of the gods and I could be faithful to them and at the same time be faithful to my own culture, to which I had naturally a stronger connection.
Later I joined Nova Roma, where I found more details about how the Cultus Deorum worked.

Meanwhile I am realizing how much of the Roman religion has still survived in the Roman-Catholic church, if we just remove biblical mythology from it. So in a way I have gone full circle. I started as Catholic and ended as Roman, and the differences now seem to be rather superficial and easy to overcome. Since I have always preferred the older original to newer copies, I think I am on the right path, while the Roman-Catholic Church has deviated from it and included alien elements.
Due to their recent politics the Catholic Church has been busy abolishing themselves. During the global lockdown this year they have ultimately shown to the world that they have lost their faith long ago and now put the government above their god. Instead of seeking consolation from their god, they abandoned him out of fear of a disease, which is harmless compared to earlier diseases like the Black Plague, which had only strengthened the faith in that time.
Christianity has died this year. Now all that remains of Western religion is the Cultus Deorum.
We are either faithful to the Roman gods, or we will vanish as civilization.

Valete!
C. Florius Lupus

I’ve always adored Apollo from childhood. Apparently I saw a picture of one of his statues when we visited an old Roman fort and I apparently stood there for about 20 minutes just staring at it. I mostly found the myths through Greek Mythology so I was brought up with those as it was the closest I could get but I always felt more of a pull to the Roman versions. If I found fragments of the Roman myths through the history books and pieced it all together.

I’m quite new to Religio Romana as I’m used to the more Hellenistic version of worship but I’m really enjoying learning more and how the rituals and prayers are structured differently.

Then again I am a huge nerd who loves researching 

I came to this quite meaningfully. I studied philosophy at the university, I was interested in the eclecticism of Aristotle, Plato, then I got acquainted with the thoughts of Plotinus, between which I found the golden mean of the pragmatics of Rome, simplicity and strictness of rules with freedom of faith. I would call it the elegance of tradition.