River
Fluvius Novaria
Agogna
Listen to the story
Fluvius Novaria rises on the map high in the Alps near Chur, crosses the roads to Lake Constance and winds down to join the Po at Lomello. It is the Agogna, which flows past the walls of Novara and borrows the town's name here, while a list of places compiled in Ravenna keeps its older name, Agunia. The mouth at Lomello is drawn correctly, but the real river rises on Mottarone between Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore and never meets those Alpine roads, probably because the map squeezes distant places together. The Greek historian Polybius names a people, the Agones, whose name seems tied to the river.