Region
Patavia
Nijmegen
Listen to the story
Patavia is a late Roman spelling of Batavia, the land of the Batavians in the Rhine delta, whose chief town lay at Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Caesar called it the island of the Batavians, and the Greek historian Zosimus imagined a true island in the river, larger than any other. The Batavians were famed as brave warriors and superb horsemen who served Rome as elite troops. Unusually for a region, the name stands in black. The spelling with P turns up in a late geographical text, so the entry probably belongs to a fifth-century update of the map, though scholars have also suspected a mix-up with Patavium, Virgil's Padua.