Imagine you are a Roman historian in the first century CE, venturing into the dark forests of Germania. You witness a sacred ritual involving an ancient people known as the Suebi, and at the center of their worship is a physical emblem of a ship—a Liburna warship, to be exact. Your conclusion? They must be worshipping the Egyptian goddess Isis.

In this episode of pplpod, we act as historical detectives to unpack a 2,000-year-old puzzle that has baffled scholars for centuries. We dissect Chapter 9 of Tacitus’s ethnographic work, Germania, and explore the fascinating (and flawed) logic of Interpretatio Romana—the Roman habit of mapping foreign deities onto their own Mediterranean pantheon.