Po (river) - History

History

The Po river is first certainly identified in the Graeco-Roman historians and geographers of the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, long after the valley had been occupied successively by prehistoric and historic peoples: Ligures, Etruscans, Celts, Veneti, Umbri, and Romans. At that late date the ancient authors were attempting to explain the provenance of the name. Perhaps the earliest of these, Polybius (2nd century BC), uses Pados (in Greek) and says that it was to be identified with the Eridanos of the poets. Moreover, the country people call it Bodencus.

This implies that a "country" population either remained from prehistoric times or adopted the name in use by that substrate. The name has been segmented as Bod-encus or Bod-incus, the suffix being characteristic of the ancient Ligurian language of northern Italy, southern France, Corsica and elsewhere.

Pliny the Elder has the most to say about the Padus of his times. Herodotus had expressed doubt concerning the existence of a river in Europe, Eridanos, which flowed into the northern sea, he said, from which amber came. He believed it was a Greek name (there are other Eridanos rivers in Greece), "invented by some poet," but makes no conjectures as to where it might be. Pliny points out that in his own time the Eridanos had become wrongly identified with the Padus. He does not know when or how, but like Herodotus he blames the poets. Amber is supposed to have come from there. Phaëthon, son of the sun, struck by lightning changed into poplars and exuded tears every year, which is the source of amber (a myth of Pausanias). Expressing surprise at the ignorance of the poets, Pliny says "There can be no doubt that amber is the product of the islands of the northern ocean (Baltic Sea)" and attributes its introduction into the Po valley to the Veneti, the last link in a trade route to the north through Pannonia and Germany.

Pliny (Hist. Nat., iii. 122) also gives the Ligurian name of the Po river as Bodincus, which he translates as "bottomless". The root bod- has been generally analyzed as containing the PIE base *bhu(n)d(h)- seen in Sanskrit budhnah and Avestan buna- "bottom", Greek pythmen "foundation", Latin fundus "bottom", Old Irish bond "sole of the foot". The word Bodincus appears in the place name Bodincomagus, a Ligurian town on the right bank of the Po downstream from today’s Turin.