Tiberinus

This article deals with Tiberinus as the god of the Tiber River. For more meanings, see Tiberinus (disambiguation) .

Tiberinus finds Romulus and Remus

Sesterce of Trajan . On the back, Tiberinus puts his knees on the defeated Dacia lying on the ground .

Tiberinus (also Tiberinus pater ) is the river god of the Tiber in Roman mythology . Tiberinus is actually an adjectival form and to be added to Tiberinus deus ("God Tiber") or Tiberinus pater ("Father Tiber"). According to Servius , the river is called Tiberinus in a religious context , poetically Tibris and everyday Tiberis .

The cult of Tiberinus is said to have been introduced by Romulus , but the name Tiberinus does not appear in connection with the very old, Tiber festival of Volturnalia on August 27th. The feast of Tiberinus on December 8th is the foundation feast of the god's sanctuary located on a Tiber island. Another shrine was in Ostia . It is unclear whether the fishing festival ( ludi piscatorii ) celebrated on June 7th was related to the cult of Tiberinus.

Tiberinus also appears at a central point in the founding myth of the city of Rome. In the Aeneid of Virgil , Tiberinus speaks in a dream to Aeneas sleeping on the bank of the river and promises him the founding of the city at the point where he will find a wild boar with 30 freshlings in the morning , and he tells him to meet with Euandros to ally the leader of a colony of Arcadians who had founded the city of Palatium (on today's Palatine Hill) nearby. Virgil describes the river god clad in a grass mantle and wearing a wreath of reeds on his head. In Ovid who also schilfbekrönte Tiberinus explained to the poet the origin of the ritual of Argei to which at the Ides of May by the Pons Sublicius of straw men were thrown into the river.

According to a recent tradition, the name of the river goes back to Tiberinus Silvius , King of Alba Longa , who fell into the river during a battle and drowned in the process. Previously the river should have been called Albula .

Romulus and Remus ( Peter Paul Rubens , ca.1614). Left in the reeds Tiberinus with Ilia.

According to a story by Ennius , Ilia was sentenced to drown in the Tiber by Amulius , king of Alba Longa, because as a vestal she had become the mother of Romulus and Remus . Ilia is identified with Rhea Silvia , but is considered the daughter of Aeneas and Lavinia . The river god saved Ilia from drowning and made the goddess his wife. He also saved the twins who were exposed on the Tiber from drowning.

literature

• Georg Wissowa: Tiberinus . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 5, Leipzig 1924, Sp. 932-935 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Rohde: Tiberinus 1. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI A, 1, Stuttgart 1936, Col. 784-788.
• Gretchen E. Meyers: The Divine River: Ancient Roman Identity and the Image of Tiberinus. In: Cynthia Kosso, Anne Scott (Eds.): The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Technology and Change in History. Vol. 11. Brill, Leiden & Boston 2009, pp. 233-248.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} CIL 14.376 line 17.
2. ^ Servius Commentarius in Vergilii Aeneida 8, 31.
3. ↑ Minucius Felix Octavius 25, 7; Augustine De civitate dei 4:23; 6, 10.
4. ↑ CIL 1 ² p. 32; Varro De lingua latina 6, 21.
5. ↑ Virgil Aeneid 8: 31-67.
6. ↑ Ovid Fasti 5, 637-662. Compare also Dionysius from Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1, 19, 38.
7. ^ Livy Ab urbe condita 1, 3, 9; Servius Commentarius in Vergilii Aeneida 8, 330; Varro De lingua latina 5, 30.
8. ^ Servius Commentarius in Vergilii Aeneida 1, 273; 3, 333; Horace Carmina 1, 2.