While Tacitus's "Mercury", "Mars", and "Hercules" are generally held to refer to Odin, Tyr, and Thor respectively, the identity of "Isis" has been a matter of debate. In his translation of Germania, scholar J. B. Rives comments that while, in Tacitus's time, the cult of Isis was widespread and is well attested in provinces on the border of Germania, Tacitus's identification is problematic because the cult of Isis seems to have spread with Greco-Roman culture. Rives comments that "most scholars believe that Tacitus has misidentified a native Germanic ritual that bore some resemblance to a well-known Isiac ritual that involved a ship [...]".Rives (1999) footnote number 27. Page number not provided in text.
