Sea or bay
Asice Sardinia
Listen to the story
Asice Sardinia is a puzzling line of capital letters set in the sea between Sardinia and the mainland. The name has faded badly, and older copies read it so; the green paint of the water may already have damaged the lettering before the copy of around 1200 was made. Scholars have taken it for a garbled distance note, “from Sicily” or “from Corsica to Sardinia”, with the figure in stadia lost. The objections are strong: such a note would stand between the two islands, the Corsica reading needs several letters lost or miscopied, and a clear dot after the final letter closes the entry.