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

personification Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person, often as an embodiment or incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified, including: places, especially cities, National personification, countries, an ...

or river god of the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

, attested in epigraphy and associated with Neptunus, 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 and Celtiberian poet born in Bilbilis, Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of '' Epigrams'', pu ...

(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 Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

. 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