Island
Insula Brigades
Alicudi
Listen to the story
Alicudi, one of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily, is the island marked on the Tabula as Insula Brigades. Greek and Roman writers knew it as Ericusa or Ericodes, a name said to come from the large ferns that grow there, and the Greek geographer Strabo describes it as uninhabited, used only for grazing. The map's form seems to be a garbled copy of that name; a list of places compiled in Ravenna has a similar slip. The letters have faded, and even close inspection leaves the reading uncertain, while the printed editions of 1598 and 1753 read Birgades.