Island
Insula F[uni]codes
Filicudi
Listen to the story
A hole in the parchment sits just above Insula Funicodes, and a tear running from it has taken one or two letters out of the middle of the name, so that part is restored rather than read. The island is Filicudi, one of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily. Older copies disagree about the missing letters, and none of their readings turns up in any ancient text. The geographer Ptolemy called the island Phoenicodes, the Greek geographer Strabo and the Roman writer Pliny knew it as Phoenicussa, and a list of places compiled in Ravenna gives Enicodes.