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Robby -- you are correct, hinduism IS akin to the religion of the Romans. Both of these are Indo-European / Aryanic religions

The original Indo-european religion seems to have had two families of gods -- either inchaote or personalized gods

In the most primitive like the Baltic or Slavic or Germanic the two families of gods remained -- the Aesir and the Vanir in the Nordic legends

the more "advanced" ones put around a lot of philosophy around it -- and that was in the Indo-Iranic religions. The Indic i.e. the Vedic religion had the Asuras and the Devas -- in the earliest Veda, the Rig Veda from 2000 BC, the early gods like Varuna and Agni were called Asuras, but by the 900s Asuras were brought down to the level of "bad guys" -- not demons yet, but "sueprnatural beings who were bad not evil" -- the gods were hardly "good" either. In the Avestani, Irani world the opposite happened - the Daevas were reduced to hearth gods of the home and the Ahuras (since the "S" in Indic becomes "H" in Avestani Irani) were elevated until Zoroaster came and elevated one of the Ahuras -- Ahura Mazda to the top

In the Greek world they combined this with the Semitic god stories and you have one "family", the Olympians overthrowing another, the Titans

The Roman religion was also highly primitive -- the daevas and asuras were gods of the hearth (deva, deus, divius, divine..) that never progressed into higher philosophy unlike the Greeks or Iranis or Indians

Back to indian and you see a notable change after 700 BC when Jainism arises to 300 BC when Buddhism arises -- the old Vedic ways are thrown aside and replaced with a deeper philosophy

But Buddhism and Jainism had a tendency to stagnate thought and that's what happened after hinduism absorbed these.

India stayed running in place until the Moslems invaded

But Christianity came first in 40 AD with St. Thomas and the Asura-Deva angle got another jolt with the Asuras reduced to demons. At the same time the Dravidian gods of Shiva and Vishnu came to the fore and Vishhu absorbed many local gods and heroes to be Vishnu of the 11 incarnations.

Hindus now became almost monotheistic with the increasing separation into Vaishnavites, Shaivites etc. focusing on one god as THE god with others as emanations.