History student Stefan Penders of Leiden University delved into a special subject for his graduation thesis this year. He researched the enormous popularity of river gods on coins and in statues in the Roman Empire. His research shows that control over water was an important legitimacy for imperial power. Penders won the Volkskrant-IISH thesis prize for his research.
It fascinated Stefan Penders, a history student at Leiden University, that rivers were often depicted as mythological creatures in Roman art. Large, often half-reclining bearded men, symbolized important rivers in the Roman Empire such as the Tiber, the Nile, the Euphrates and the Rhine. When Penders also noticed that little has been written about this in the scientific literature, the choice for his graduation research was quickly made.
He found that to the ancient Romans, their rivers were more than just a simple line on a map. They personified them with human traits. This indicates that the rivers had an important symbolic meaning. The symbolism went in all directions. Rivers had mythological, power-political and economic aspects. Controlling the rivers was an important legitimacy for the emperor's power.
What fascinated you about this special subject?
“I became fascinated when I saw an old movie poster from the movie Pan's Labyrinth therefore saw an image of a faun, a mythical creature with the hind legs of a horse or a goat and the upper body of a human being.
There are all kinds of Roman works of art by nature gods, including river gods. These sculptures were often dismissed as decorative objects and were gathering dust in museums, without their significance for the Romans ever having been properly explored. By investigating the meaning of those many statues of river gods, I wanted to discover more about how the Romans saw their world."
Why did you think there was more behind those river gods statues?
“There is much written about rivers in Roman sources. They also occupy an important place among Roman authors. River gods are often portrayed as supernatural beings, but with human traits. That artistic tradition is much older. You also see it in the ancient Greeks, where the Romans initially got their ideas about rivers and river gods. Scientific models, of course, did not yet exist. The Romans also tried to explain the nature around them mainly by seeing natural phenomena as people. I thought perhaps there was a link between the many Roman texts about rivers and all those striking sculptures of river gods.”
Water and power were closely related to the Romans, you write. How do you see that?
“During the Flavian dynasty, the number of statues of river gods increased enormously. I found an explanation for that. The great emperor Augustus was very busy building aqueducts and bridges during his reign. He invoked special geographical knowledge about rivers and distant regions. After a civil war, the Flavian emperors came to power. They had no direct bloodline with Emperor Augustus and therefore had to legitimize their claim to power in a different way.”
“They tried to emulate Augustus, the empire's first great emperor, by also emphasizing the control of the water. By putting up all those statues of water gods, they emphasized a kind of continuity. The Flavians – and their successors in the second century AD – chose to depict many river gods, often holding a cornucopia or rod in hand. In this way the emperors showed that they had control over the water and all the good that the rivers produced. This was extremely important as a legitimacy for their imperial power.”
You draw many different conclusions in your thesis. Which do you think is the most important?
“It has become a broadly coherent whole about how the ancient Romans viewed the phenomenon of flowing water, which is so important to them. It had mythological, power-political and economic aspects. I think it is the synthesis between those different parts that is the strength of my thesis.”