EXPERT ADVISORY – Sept. 1, 2026 — R0074
As people on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border continue to navigate choppy waters following a Presidential executive order renaming Lake Ontario, a Brock University expert says there are valuable lessons to be learned by revisiting the past.
“The fascinating thing about studying the ancient world is that almost everything we experience today has parallels with what happened before,” says Katharine T. von Stackelberg, Associate Professor of Classics and Archaeology.
There is a trope in ancient history that tells the tale — and spells the outcome — of rulers laying claim to large bodies of water, she says.
Renaming attempts by ancient Greek and Roman leaders didn’t end well.
“Renaming a place is a form of control. But in the ancient world, it was understood that nature — seen as being divine — could be co-opted, but never fully controlled. When historians give accounts of such attempts, it’s always meant to be read as a warning,” she says.
Imposing a new name on a territory or geographical feature in the Greco-Roman world was not common, von Stackelberg explains. Instead, the topological naming practices of the Greek and Romans were consistently cognizant of local peoples and tribes.
“Essentially, as the Romans expanded their territories and encountered rivers or mountains, they would use the name of the tribe or community that was nearest, or most dominant, as a toponym,” she says.
Von Stackelberg notes that the most famous recorded example of a ruler asserting dominion and ownership over a body of water happened in 480 BCE, when Persian king Xerxes the Great crossed a narrow body of water known as the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles Straight).
“Xerxes, who had a gigantic army, needed to cross the Hellespont to subjugate the Greeks,” she says, “and he instructed his army engineers to construct a pontoon bridge to create a walkway between anchored boats.”
He then marched his army across while delivering rousing speeches, ordering his soldiers to whip the water as they made their way.
“It was an act of dominance, a public relations gesture of sorts,” von Stackelberg says. “They symbolically dropped shackles into the water to demonstrate Xerxes’s ‘control’ of the waters.”
Despite this impressive display, the Persian army never gained control of the Greek city states, with the event signalling a foundational moment for Greek history.
About 500 years later, von Stackelberg says the Roman Emperor Caligula enacted the same scene with similar consequences.
“In 39 CE, Caligula created a pontoon bridge on the Bay of Naples in a similar show of power. He marched at the head of his troops wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great, playing the role of conqueror and showing his domination of the waters,” she says.
Caligula then attempted to invade the British Isles, but he never actually crossed the English Channel.
“He stopped at the shoreline and staged a show, ordering his soldiers to collect seashells as spoils of their campaign to bring back to Rome,” she says.
Caligula’s reign ended a year later.
Both stories, according to von Stackelberg, are recorded in historical texts as examples of unfitness to rule and megalomania.
“These instances of attempting to dominate waters entered ancient cultural consciousness as examples of ‘hubris’ — an excessive arrogance that invites one’s own downfall,” she says.
Von Stackelberg says these tales became moral lessons passed down through the ages as warnings against overstretching one’s limits. As centuries passed, “hubris” came to more generally describe sowing the seeds of one’s own destruction.
For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
*Melinda Cheevers, Communications Specialist, Brock University, [email protected] or 289-241-5855
– 30 –
Recent Comments