People
Derbicce
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The Derbicce were a nomadic people east of the Caspian Sea, and the Tabula sets their name between the lower courses of the rivers Nigrinus and Oxus. Greek writers knew of them from the fifth century BC. In one version of the Cyrus legend, told by the Greek historian Ctesias, the Derbicce rose with Indian allies against the Persian king around 530 BC and were crushed, yet Cyrus himself was mortally wounded in the fighting. Ancient authors never quite agreed where they lived, and the geographer Ptolemy even places them in two regions. The map's placement fits the geographer Eratosthenes and, later, Pliny.