''Rhenus Pater'' ("Father Rhine", German ''Vater Rhein'') is the

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

or river god of the

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...

, attested in epigraphy and associated with

Neptunus Neptunus is a baseball and softball club in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Following its 2014 championship season, the club signed a sponsorship contract for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons with Curaçao and competes under the name Curaçao Neptun ...

, called "father of nymphs and rivers" by

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...

(10.7). Because of his depiction with horns also called ''Rhenus bicornis'', and as an allegory of the subjugated barbarian tribes called ''Rhenus cornibus fractis'' "Rhenus with broken horns" by

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

. There are records of Celtic and Germanic human sacrifice to river gods, and of the Rhine specifically records of a custom of submerging newly-born infants as a test of either their vitality, or as an oracle to determine if they had been conceived in wedlock. The allegory was taken up again as a motive in the German Baroque period, and again in 19th-century German Romanticism ('' Rheinromantik'').''Rheinromantik zwischen Köln und Bingen: Ein Mythos und Symbol Europas''
, ''nrw-stiftung.de'' 2002

References

{{reflist *Helmut Birkhan, ''Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur.'' Vienna, 1997, pp. 689f. Rhine Personifications of rivers Sea and river gods