DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26205#0011
9
merely a “pure personification” (reine Personifikation, to use the term
introduced by K. Reinhardt9). We face, then, a classification dilemma:
deity or personification?
This problem also concerns other personifications of abstract ideas,
including, among others, the personifications of Roman provinces, of which
many (e. g. Africa, Britannia, Dacia) were worshipped as deities10. These
facts prove that the ancients were relaxed about such differentiations, and
only has modern science attempted to systematize and classify them.
For the same reasons, ancient literature fails to explain this question.
In texts by ancient authors, and also among epigraphic material, the same
river happens to be regarded as either a deity or the personification of its
waters. Many rivers received divine worship and their cult existed, which,
taking into account the climatic and hydrographic conditions of Greece
and Italy (particularly the latter’s southern part and Sicily) where fresh running
water was far more essential to human life than in central or northern Europe,
is obvious and goes without saying.
Undoubtedly in some cases we can speak of the image of a river god
and not of a personification. This pertains to the images from the domain
of mythology, where a river god appears in the company of other deities.
However, also in these mythological scenes, the embodiment of a river often
only performs the function of the determinant of the action’s venue, so it
should rather be classified as personification.
Sometimes the opposite applies. The bust or full figure making the
personification of a river, visible on many coins but also on the objects of
other categories, appears at the foot of another deity. Such personification
is of a strictly defined nature, more often then not propaganda, yet because
of the reverence enjoyed by a river, can serve as the image of a river god.
The author feels obliged to stress yet again that this important (for us,
not the ancients) question cannot be univocally settled, and only in a few
cases on the pages of this book can it be attempted to classify properly a given
image. The impossibility of definite interpretation was also recognized by the
often quoted Imhoof-Blumer, who entitled his catalogue Fluss- und Meergotter
auf griechischen und romischen Miinzen, having at the same time provided
it with a subtitle Personifikationen des Gewasser.
9 Reinhardt, p. 33.
10 Ostrowski, Prowincje, p. 90, note 42.
merely a “pure personification” (reine Personifikation, to use the term
introduced by K. Reinhardt9). We face, then, a classification dilemma:
deity or personification?
This problem also concerns other personifications of abstract ideas,
including, among others, the personifications of Roman provinces, of which
many (e. g. Africa, Britannia, Dacia) were worshipped as deities10. These
facts prove that the ancients were relaxed about such differentiations, and
only has modern science attempted to systematize and classify them.
For the same reasons, ancient literature fails to explain this question.
In texts by ancient authors, and also among epigraphic material, the same
river happens to be regarded as either a deity or the personification of its
waters. Many rivers received divine worship and their cult existed, which,
taking into account the climatic and hydrographic conditions of Greece
and Italy (particularly the latter’s southern part and Sicily) where fresh running
water was far more essential to human life than in central or northern Europe,
is obvious and goes without saying.
Undoubtedly in some cases we can speak of the image of a river god
and not of a personification. This pertains to the images from the domain
of mythology, where a river god appears in the company of other deities.
However, also in these mythological scenes, the embodiment of a river often
only performs the function of the determinant of the action’s venue, so it
should rather be classified as personification.
Sometimes the opposite applies. The bust or full figure making the
personification of a river, visible on many coins but also on the objects of
other categories, appears at the foot of another deity. Such personification
is of a strictly defined nature, more often then not propaganda, yet because
of the reverence enjoyed by a river, can serve as the image of a river god.
The author feels obliged to stress yet again that this important (for us,
not the ancients) question cannot be univocally settled, and only in a few
cases on the pages of this book can it be attempted to classify properly a given
image. The impossibility of definite interpretation was also recognized by the
often quoted Imhoof-Blumer, who entitled his catalogue Fluss- und Meergotter
auf griechischen und romischen Miinzen, having at the same time provided
it with a subtitle Personifikationen des Gewasser.
9 Reinhardt, p. 33.
10 Ostrowski, Prowincje, p. 90, note 42.