Tales of the riverbank: the power of the Po

It may not be the grandest of the world’s waterways – the Nile and Amazon are ten times its length – but the Po has always exerted a fertile grip on the Italian imagination. Virgil called it ‘the king of rivers’; Dante died in its marsh estuary, having earlier described in Purgatorio how Jacopo del Cassero was chased there and fell fatally, ‘entangled in the mud and reeds of the Paduan swamp’, leaving a pool of blood on its waters.

Yet the rest of the world has been less interested. Perhaps it has something to do with the modern name’s slightly comical sound: shortened from the original, more euphonic Padus – ‘the Paduan plain’ fits every metre – the word ‘Po’ somehow lacks the weight the river deserves. If the Thames had been shortened to the ‘Toe’ it would have had far less poetical traction.