People
Maxere
Listen to the story
Maxere names a people, written in black rather than the red usually kept for peoples, beside the road from Nagae to Antiochia, between the river Araxes and the Taurus mountains. The spelling points to the Maxerai, a branch of the Hyrcanians near the Caspian Sea, named after the river Maxeras and known only from the geographer Ptolemy. Yet the far better known Massagetae suit the position better: steppe nomads east of the Caspian, first described by the Greek historian Herodotus, who says Cyrus the Great fell fighting them. Which of the two the map means is still open.