River
Caput Fluminis Nusacus
Dnipro ?
Listen to the story
Caput Fluminis Nusacus means 'source of the river Nusacus', and the map shows it rising from a small unnamed lake set below an equally nameless mountain range, the same heights from which the Don springs. Its position points to the Borysthenes, the great river of the region, which is probably the Dnipro in Ukraine. The name Nusacus appears nowhere else. It may be a copyist's slip for Nusapris, close to the later name Danapris, or it may be a Germanic name meaning 'full of cliffs', perhaps given for the river's rapids. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that eleven days' travel upstream led into utterly empty land.