Region
Gretia
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Gretia is usually read as Graecia, meaning Greece, yet here it names not the Aegean homeland but the land around Massilia, modern Marseille, the colony founded by Greeks from Phocaea. The name seems remarkably old, perhaps older than the emperor Augustus, a fossil from the time when this stretch of Gaul towards the river Durance was simply the Greeks' country. Unusually for a region, it is written in black. Its first two letters lie in a crease of the parchment, so even the reading is uncertain: the first might be G, C, E or S, the second perhaps P rather than R.