River
Fluvius Zerninum
Tronto
Listen to the story
For lack of room at its source and on the shore, the name of Fluvius Zerninum was written not beside the river but out in the open Adriatic, beyond its mouth, a device repeated for several neighbouring rivers on this coast. The black lettering has badly faded; older copies read it as Nerninum or Herninum, and only the first letter is really in doubt. No river of that name is known from any ancient source. The map shows it rising in the Apennines and reaching the sea between Castrum Truentinum and Castrum Novum, so it is usually taken for the Tronto, which the Greek geographer Strabo called the Truentinus, though some prefer the smaller Salinello or the Vibrata.