River
Fluvius Patabus
Maas · Meuse
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The lower course of the Meuse, in the Netherlands, is the usual identification for the Fluvius Patabus, a river whose name is written in red and occurs in no other ancient text. Patabus probably stands for Batavus, making it the river of the Batavians, and on the map it borders their homeland, marked Patavia, on the side facing Gallia Belgica. Later research mostly prefers the Waal, the Rhine arm that Caesar called Vacalus. The map, like the Roman writer Pliny and the geographer Ptolemy, gives the river its own mouth into the sea rather than making it a branch of the Rhine.