Sea or bay
Hadriaticum Pelagus
Adriatisches Meer · Adriatic
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Hadriaticum Pelagus, the Adriatic Sea, takes its name from Atria, an old Etruscan town near the mouth of the Po, and the Roman writer Pliny notes that Romans also called it the Upper Sea. The name is lettered large and with evident care, yet it stands far along the map from where the Adriatic really lies, for the sea's waters reach back across earlier sections of the parchment. That puzzle led older research to read the label as the Ionian Sea instead, stretching from Sicily to Crete. Damage to the parchment has almost erased the letters P and E.