River
Flumen Himera
F. Grande
Listen to the story
A river line on the northern coast of Sicily carries the name Flumen Himera, written along the stream itself because there was no room to set it horizontally. The copyist of around 1200 actually wrote an N where an H belonged, an easy slip between two similar letters, but the river is beyond doubt the Himera, today the Fiume Grande. It reached the sea near Thermae, between the towns of Himera and Thermae. Sicily had a second Himera on its southern coast, and ancient writers believed the two rivers rose from one and the same spring. That southern river is missing from the map.