River
Flumen Pastium
Listen to the story
Curiously, the label of Flumen Pastium stands in black at the river's mouth, not in red at its source. On the map the river rises together with a nameless stream in unnamed mountains, cuts across the road between Brindisi and Balentium and flows into the Ionian Sea. The name is usually read as the Pactius, an Apulian river listed by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, so the entry probably dates from the early imperial period at the latest. Where it actually ran is disputed. Scholars have looked for it in a small stream near Brindisi and among the brooks near Bari.