Island
Insula Achillis [sive Leuca dicta
Zmiinyi, Зміїний
Listen to the story
On the Tendra Spit, a long sandbar off the mouth of the Dnieper in Ukraine, stood the shrine of Achilles that gave Insula Achillis its name. The faded legend is read as adding that the island was also called Leuke, which is why it is often taken for Snake Island off the Danube delta, home to another sanctuary of Achilles. The copyist drew a temple on the island, now invisible to the naked eye but recovered with a hyperspectral camera. The Roman writer Pliny likened the spit to a sword, and excavations there found a burial mound, dedications and some twelve hundred coins.
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