PART VI
CHAPTER 17
THE LARGE CITY OF ANTIOCH in northern Syria was a good choice for a military command center. As Antony waited for Cleopatra to join him, he planned the political reordering of the east that was an essential precursor of his campaign against Parthia. The eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor had to be securely under his control before he could safely march out with his legions. Egypt was central to his plans, and Antony’s summoning of the mistress he had not seen for nearly four years had at least as much to do with politics as with passion. He had for obvious reasons been unable to summon her to Rome as Caesar had done. Yet on several occasions he had been close enough to have engineered a diversion to Alexandria and still had made no effort to see her—a fact that would not have escaped her. While he could not have doubted that, despite his neglect, Cleopatra was still his political ally, like any man who extracts himself from a highly charged, sexually engrossing extramarital affair, he must have felt a certain awkwardness about the coming reunion and the reactions of his former lover.
Unlike Cleopatra’s tardy, teasing response to Antony’s summons to Tarsus in 41, this time she responded quickly. Antony’s abandonment of her had not made the thirty-three-year-old queen either bitter or unduly sentimental. Even if she longed for his return to share her bed and support her in her lonely autocratic role, she was wise enough to know that his reason for wishing to see her that winter was above all strategic. She could also reflect that she was in a different league from the other regional rulers whom he was wooing. She was no parvenu adventurer or grateful princeling but the descendant of an ancient line. Her kingdom—rich, stable and with a long and proven history of loyalty to Rome—was easily the most important to Antony’s plans. If she was clever, she could drive a hard bargain politically.
On the personal level, Cleopatra knew that she and Antony were compatible. She had charm, intelligence and charisma and she also had some emotional ammunition. Octavia had given Antony a daughter but she had borne him a son. Though she easily could have chosen to leave them behind, she disembarked at Antioch with the young twins, Alexander and Cleopatra, whom Antony had never seen. Between three and four years old, they would have been an appealing sight and an effective reminder of the bonds that had once bound the Inimitable Livers.
Whether sentiment, lust or political expedience was the prime catalyst, Cleopatra and Antony very quickly resumed their affair. On Antony’s side, the speed and completeness with which he returned to Cleopatra’s arms suggest that he had reached a watershed. He was yielding with relief, indeed relish, to a life that suited him far better than that of Rome. He was once again the “new Dionysus” with, as his consort, no demure Roman matron but the powerful queen of the east.
Antony himself now added to the Egyptian queen’s powers. Within a few weeks—probably by the close of 37—Cleopatra had coaxed enormous concessions from her once more fervent lover. In the Levant, Antony gave her a string of wealthy coastal cities along the Syrian coast, where only the ports of Tyre and Sidon remained independent. Further inland, Cleopatra acquired the kingdom of Ituraea, whose ruler Antony had executed for colluding with the Parthians. South of Ituraea, Cleopatra took control of some of the Decapolis—meaning “ten cities”—along what is today the border between Israel and Jordan. Along the southeastern coast of Asia Minor, Cleopatra gained territories in Cilicia, including two important harbor towns.
Cleopatra also wanted lands in Judaea that were key to the trade route between Syria and the Persian Gulf, which was a potential rival to Egypt’s lucrative trading links via the Nile and the Red Sea. Herod had only recently regained his kingdom when, thanks to Sosius, he had finally defeated Antigonus and taken Jerusalem. Sosius had dispatched Antigonus in chains to Antony, who had had him executed. Herod, meanwhile, had preserved the city and its temple from looting by buying off the Roman soldiery with lavish bribes. Perhaps Cleopatra felt that now was a good time to target Herod, still shakily establishing himself and loathed by many of the Hasmonaean faction.
However, on this Antony dug in his heels. Just as Cleopatra had feared when she learned that the Senate had agreed to make Herod its king, a strong, independent Judaea was integral to Antony’s strategy and he refused to deliver the kingdom up to her. It was not in her nature to give up, though. So relentless were her claims that Antony sought to appease her by forcing Herod to renounce most of his coastline so that the only port left to him was Gaza. This gave Cleopatra almost the entire seaboard from Egypt to the far north of modern Lebanon. Antony also made Herod hand over his valuable plantations of date palms and balsam near Jericho, some fifteen miles from Jerusalem. Herod’s palm groves—nicknamed “hangover palms” for the potency of the wine pressed from the luscious dates—were the finest in the ancient world, while his two balsam groves produced the so-called balm of Gilead, sold at enormous profit for both perfume and medicine. Cleopatra allowed Herod to lease back his groves, but only in return for an immense annual rent.
Finally, Cleopatra made gains at the expense of Malchus, king of the Nabataean Arabs, whose lands ran south along the Red Sea and southwestward to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Sinai Peninsula and included the stronghold of Petra.* In particular, she acquired territory on the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the Nabataeans harvested the bitumen or asphalt that collected on the surface of the salty water and had a variety of profitable uses, from mortar and medicine to insecticides and embalming dead bodies. As with Herod’s date palms and balsam, Cleopatra was happy to lease the bitumen deposits back to the original owners. To placate the dangerous and covetous queen, and also to give himself scope to interfere in the affairs of his Arab neighbors, Herod offered to gather the moneys on the Egyptian queen’s behalf—an offer she gladly accepted. Not only was this an effortless way of collecting revenue, but there was a good chance that Herod and the Nabataean king might fall out over it, which could only be to her advantage.
Herod’s concessions to Cleopatra did not lessen her antipathy to him as a rival influence on Antony nor her wish to erode his state. Indeed, she soon revealed her continuing hostility by intervening in Judaean affairs. In the spring of 37, shortly before the capture of Jerusalem, Herod had married the beautiful, highly strung Mariamme, a princess of the Hasmonaean (Maccabee) dynasty he had replaced. The Hasmonaeans, as descendants of an ancient priestly line, had combined the role of ruler with the important post of high priest. Hyrcanus, Mariamme’s grandfather, had been high priest until the usurping Antigonus had deposed him and, according to Josephus, savagely “cut off Hyrcanus’s ears” to prevent him ever holding the office again, since the law required high priests to be “complete and without blemish.” The Parthians had subsequently released Hyrcanus, who had returned to Judaea but could not of course resume his duties. Herod, as an Idumaean with no venerable priestly forebears, lacked the necessary pedigree for the post, leaving Mariamme’s sixteen-year-old brother, Aristobolus, apparently as beautiful as his sister, as the obvious choice. Herod, however, feared giving his brother-in-law so much influence and, citing his young years as an excuse, appointed another man.
This gave Cleopatra her opportunity. The mother of Aristobolus and Mariamme, Alexandra, who was Hyrcanus’ daughter, was a longtime friend of Cleopatra’s. Angered by Herod’s treatment of her son, in late 37 this forceful and formidable woman entrusted a message pleading for help to a musician, who duly carried it to Cleopatra in Antioch. She in turn interceded with Antony, who ordered Herod to depose his candidate and appoint Aristobolus in his place. Herod had no choice but to obey.
Despite the irritant of Judaea, Cleopatra must have been delighted by the extent of Antony’s gifts, which far exceeded his concessions when, four years earlier, she had sailed upriver to Tarsus in her gilded barge. Antony had, in Plutarch’s words, presented her “with no slight or trivial addition to her possessions.” The net effect of his new concessions was almost completely to restore the great Egyptian empire of the early Ptolemies. Papyrus records and coins minted around this time in Syria reveal that an exultant Cleopatra recalculated the start of her joint rule with Caesarion to begin in the year 37–36 as if everything before this had been a mere overture.
Antony’s acknowledgement of their children was another bonus for Cleopatra. At Antioch the twins were honored with highly symbolic additional names. The little boy was named Alexander Helios and the girl Cleopatra Selene. In Greek eyes, Helios the sun and Selene the moon were themselves twins and close associates of Victory. In the Greek world, people associated the sun with the dawning of a golden age when east and west would dwell in harmony, and Romans too ascribed a special significance to it, as shown in Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue. After his victory at Philippi in 42, Antony had issued coins bearing the image of a blazing sun. Now, to mark the designation of his young son Alexander as Helios, Antony ordered fresh coins depicting the glory of the sun’s rays, as if he and Cleopatra were about to usher in a shining new age. The golden child who would heal the world would be their son, not any future son of Antony and Octavia’s, as Vergil had perhaps been suggesting. The choice of “moon” for little Cleopatra implied that, like her mother, she was an earthly representation of Isis, goddess of the moon. The imagery was also a studied swipe at Parthia, whose king claimed the title “Brother of the Sun and Moon.” By appropriating the names, Antony was showing his contempt for the pretensions of his enemy.
Cleopatra awarded herself a new title in celebration of her new lands. The Syrian cities of which she was now overlord hailed her as Thea Neotera or “Youngest Goddess,” another reminder that she was Isis incarnate, divine mother, ever youthful, ever giving. Silver coins minted in Antioch around this time portray her as strong-jawed, hawk-nosed, powerful in an almost masculine sense, and her image was complemented on the other side of the coin by an equally commanding depiction of Antony. The message was clear: this was an alliance almost of equals in which the military might of Rome would be bolstered by Egyptian wealth.
Opinion in Rome was, predictably enough, outraged. Some of Cleopatra’s new possessions had previously been administered by Rome, so Antony was effectively handing Roman territory to Egypt. Plutarch believed that
what was particularly infuriating about the honors he conferred on Cleopatra was the shame of it all. And he only highlighted the scandal by acknowledging the twin children she had borne him whom he . . . surnamed respectively Sun and Moon. But he was good at glossing over disgraces, and so he used to say that the greatness of the Roman empire manifested itself not in what Romans took but in what they gave, and that if one had noble blood it should be spread by begetting heirs from many sovereigns . . . he used to claim that his own ancestor was fathered by Heracles, a man who did not rely on just a single womb for the conception but followed his natural inclinations.
However, after Antioch, Antony became a one-woman man. Not even his critics’ propaganda suggested Antony had any other lover than Cleopatra thereafter. But even if, with the benefit of hindsight, Antioch was a tipping point in the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony, when they began to commit their destinies, both personal and political, to each other, Antony’s gifts to Cleopatra were not the mindless acts of a man wallowing in sensuality or even in a love deepened and renewed. He had not, as his critics later suggested, lost all self-control and sense of duty—sins unforgivable in Roman eyes. Instead, his actions reflected practical politics. Although, unlike his other major allies, Cleopatra was not expected to provide contingents of soldiers, she had a major role in the forthcoming struggle against Parthia—not only to provide a large proportion of the necessary funds but also to build, equip and man a navy for him. The squadrons Antony had yielded to Octavian under the Treaty of Tarentum had depleted his forces and her help with replacements was essential. Many of Cleopatra’s new lands were richly forested with groves of oak and forests of cedar. There would be no shortage of timber for the Egyptian-built fleet that Antony intended should patrol the eastern Mediterranean on his behalf while he was fighting in Parthia.
Antony’s expansion of Egypt and bolstering of its resources was also part of his wider strategy. Just as he had been intending before Fulvia and his brother had rebelled against Octavian and disrupted his plans, he still wished to remodel the east into a coherent core of provinces to be directly administered by Rome and protected by a buffer zone of loyal kingdoms. Egypt with her enhanced possessions would, as in the past, enjoy the special status justified by her long and loyal relationship with Rome. Antony intended the other kingdoms to be ruled by Hellenic Asian monarchs of his own choosing. In some cases he selected able men with no dynastic connections with the lands they were to govern and whose loyalty would therefore be to him, such as Amyntas in the central kingdom of Galatia and Polemo in Pontus to the northeast. In addition, Antony awarded Cappadocia, to the southeast, bordering Parthia on the Euphrates, to Archelaus, son of the beautiful Cappadocian princess Glaphyra, with whom Antony had once had an affair. In Judaea, Antony knew he could rely on Herod, who owed his position entirely to Rome.
As Antony negotiated alliances and contributions of troops with Asian rulers, he recognized that success against Parthia would make Rome beyond doubt the most powerful state in the known world and—equally beyond doubt—himself the most powerful Roman, entirely eclipsing Octavian. Cras-sus would be avenged and his legionary eagles recovered, and the road to India and beyond would lie open to Antony as it had previously only to Alexander.
In working out his campaign strategy, Antony could study the invasion plans Caesar had assembled just before his death while reviewing the lessons of Crassus’ catastrophic defeat. He decided that, unlike the unfortunate Crassus, he would not invade Parthia directly from Syria by marching east into the deserts of northern Mesopotamia, where his infantry could be picked off by the more mobile mounted Parthians. Instead, he would attack from the north by circling through the lands of Artavasdes, king of Armenia, whom he had cajoled by force into an alliance. He would then turn down past Lake Van and the towering 16,750-foot-high Mount Ararat into the lands of Parthia’s staunch ally Media, whose king was also, confusingly, named Artavasdes, and thence into Parthia. This route would, initially at least, give his troops the protection of more broken and mountainous country less suited to the Parthian horsemen.
Antony also hoped to profit from Parthia’s internal problems. The Parthian king Orodes, distraught at the death of his son Pacorus at Roman hands, had named his next son, Phraates, as his heir. Unwilling to wait, Phraates had promptly murdered his father and more than thirty of his brothers and other close relations to take the throne. In the resulting chaos, a group of important Parthian noblemen had defected to Antony, including Monaeses, governor-general of Parthia’s western frontier. Antony rewarded him with a substantial stretch of land in Roman Syria. All seemed to augur well for a successful campaign.
After ordering Canidius Crassus, his most senior and able general, to begin further preparatory campaigns in the Caucasus, Antony left Antioch with Cleopatra and some of his legions in the spring of 36. However, by the time they reached Zeugma on the Euphrates, Cleopatra had discovered that she was again pregnant. No doubt reluctantly, the queen, who numbered both Parthian and Median among the many languages she spoke, accepted Antony’s instruction to return home. She would have much preferred to accompany the momentous expedition, participating as an allied leader and sharing in the spoils, in much the same way as her ancestor Ptolemy had accompanied Alexander. She would also have wanted to remain by Antony’s side to keep herself and not Octavia in the forefront of his mind and affections and to ensure that when the campaign ended he returned to his family in Alexandria—not to the one in Rome.
Antony and his legions marched northeast up the Euphrates to Carona (modern Ezerum), where he rendezvoused with Canidius Crassus and the troops of his allies. Antony’s army comprised sixty thousand Roman legionaries, ten thousand cavalry from Roman Spain and Gaul and an allied contingent of some thirty thousand, among whom the largest component, nearly half, was supplied and led by Antony’s new ally, Artavasdes of Armenia. To satisfy the logistical needs of such an army in hostile territory, Antony had also procured a large supply convoy. Knowing that there was little good timber available on his chosen route to fabricate them, he assembled in advance a strong siege train of battering rams, catapults and other heavy equipment to assault the fortified towns of Media and Parthia. The battering rams were iron-capped tree trunks that swung on iron chains from large frames and could be propelled by brute manpower into the masonry and gates of enemy towns. Plutarch, who is said to have used for this part of his history a lost account of the campaign by Dellius, one of Antony’s leading generals and the man who had summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus, wrote that one of the battering rams was as long as eighty feet and that the whole siege train needed three hundred wagons to transport it.
Midsummer had passed before Antony led his army out from Ezerum, rumor of whose size and magnificence had already, according to Plutarch, terrified even the Indians living beyond Bactria and made the whole of Asia tremble. Antony’s first objective was to capture the Median capital of Phraaspa, possibly for use as a winter base from which he could launch his final assault on Parthia the following spring, once the cold and snow had departed.* However, like many Roman generals before and after operating outside lands they knew well, Antony seems to have taken insufficient account of the terrain he would encounter and the vast distances he would have to cover. He miscalculated how long it would take to get to Phraaspa and in particular how cumbersome and slow his extensive siege train would prove to be over the upland country. Impatient to make progress, Antony took a fatal decision to divide his forces. He himself led the major body forward more quickly, leaving the siege train to follow at its own pace under the protection of two understrength legions commanded by the general Statinius and a contingent of troops from Pontus led by their newly appointed king, Polemo.
When Antony’s main body of men arrived beneath the walls of Phraaspa, the city refused to surrender, and Antony, bereft of his siege equipment, was compelled to set his men to constructing a great earth rampart by the wall from which they could fire down into the city. In the meantime, Phraates, the Parthian ruler, had heard that Antony had left his siege train to follow behind and immediately ordered a force of fifty thousand mounted archers to encircle and attack it. They were led by Monaeses, whose allegiance to Antony had proved short-lived and probably had been a deceptive ruse from the start. The Parthians were using compound bows that could outdistance the simpler Roman bows and gave their arrows such velocity that they could penetrate the legionaries’ armor. Deprived of any ability to maneuver to confront their enemy by the need to protect their lumbering, heavy equipment, Antony’s forces were soon overwhelmed. Statinius was killed, Polemo and many others were captured, the siege equipment was burned, and the Parthians acquired more Roman standards. Antony’s reluctant ally, the Armenian king Artavasdes, gave up on the Roman cause at this point, according to Plutarch, and decamped back to Armenia, taking all his men with him, further damaging the morale of Antony’s remaining forces, who, with his desertion, perhaps already numbered scarcely more than three quarters of those who had set out.
No sooner had Artavasdes departed than the Parthians themselves appeared at Phraaspa “flushed with their success” and taunting the Romans as they galloped around their position. Antony, strong in a crisis, decided that to leave his men inactive would only further damage their morale and so he took out a strong force, including all his remaining cavalry, ostensibly on a foraging expedition but in fact in a bid to entice the Parthians into a pitched battle. As usual, the Parthians kept their distance, firing arrows from the safety of their saddles as they circled the Roman columns. Suddenly Antony gave the order for his own cavalry to charge. Yelling and screaming, they plunged into the Parthian ranks before they could disperse and were soon followed into the heaving mêlée by Antony’s battle-hardened legionaries. The shock of their combined assault unnerved the Parthians and put them to flight. Antony sent his men in pursuit but did not succeed in inflicting serious casualties or taking many prisoners.
Almost as soon as he returned to Phraaspa and the siege, the Parthian horsemen were back, again harassing his camp and relentlessly firing their arrows from a distance. Next, a sortie by the Medes from their city panicked the Roman legionaries on the artificial mound Antony had ordered to be built overlooking the wall. They fled ignominiously back to the main camp. Determined to maintain discipline, Antony inflicted decimation on those who fled, dividing them into groups of ten and then executing one of their number chosen by lot.*
As the siege wore on, the circling Parthian horsemen began to shout overtures for a truce. Fearing the onset of winter, Antony agreed to negotiations.† His starting demand was for the return of Roman eagles and any surviving prisoners lost at Carrhae and elsewhere. However, Phraates refused this concession and Antony had to content himself with the promise of safe passage out of the country. The Parthians did not even keep this promise and harried the retreating Roman columns constantly.
Antony once more showed his great courage and leadership in adversity. Rallying his men, he insisted that they keep in formation, with the infantry marching in hollow squares protected by javelin throwers and slingers and, beyond that, by a screen of cavalry who were instructed to keep close order and not to be enticed into pursuing apparently fleeing Parthian horsemen. Plutarch records how Antony won the loyalty of his men:
All whatever their rank or fame would have sacrificed their lives for Antony. They surpassed the behavior of ancient Romans. Among the many reasons for this were Antony’s high birth, his eloquence, his straightforward manner, his prodigious generosity, his sense of humor and his geniality. By the way he shared in the distress and difficulties of the ill and the unfortunate, granting them as best he could whatever they wanted, he made even the wounded and the sick as eager to serve him as those who were well and strong.
Despite all their bravery, Antony’s men still suffered heavy losses on their retreat along a shorter and even more mountainous route shown to them by a local guide. However, their discipline endured. On one occasion they saved themselves and their comrades by forming the famous Romantestudo (tortoise) formation for protection as they descended one of the jagged, barren and steep hills common in the area with the Parthians firing down on them from above. Plutarch described how:
The Roman shield-bearers wheeled around and enclosed the lightly armored troops within their ranks, dropping down on one knee and holding out their shields as a defensive barrier. The men behind then held their shields over the heads of the first rank while the third rank did the same for the second rank. The resulting shape looks very like a roof and is the surest protection against arrows, which merely glanced off it. The Parthians however mistook the Romans falling on to one knee as a sign of exhaustion and so dropped their bows, grabbed their javelins and rushed to join battle at close quarters. But the Romans suddenly leapt to their feet roaring their battle cry and lunged forward with their spears, killing the front ranks of the Parthians and putting all the rest to flight.
Nevertheless, starvation weakened the men, who turned to eating roots, some of which proved so poisonous as to provoke diarrhea, vomiting, delirium and then death. Only once on their harrowing twenty-seven-day retreat, as they neared one of the final barriers to their crossing back into Armenia, the river Araxes, did their discipline fail. Antony had ordered a night march to avoid a Parthian assault of which he had been warned. During the march the Romans seem to have given way to panic. Perhaps unsettled at some rumor of attack, they lost all cohesion and floundered in the dark, turning violently on one another, plundering their own baggage wagons and even stealing Antony’s drinking vessels. Antony contemplated the necessity for suicide, summoning one of his bodyguards and making him swear that on his command he would run him through “and cut off his head to prevent the enemy capturing him alive or recognizing him in death.”
However, rising, as usual, to a practical crisis, Antony mastered any despair he felt and took the sensible decision to halt the march and make camp. This eventually led to the restoration of order and calm. The feel of the cool breeze from the river on their cheeks reassured the troops of its proximity. The next day, once more in good order, they crossed. The watching Parthian horsemen made a show of unstringing their bows—a sign that they would pursue them no further.
Once back in Armenia, Antony reviewed the ragged ranks of his troops to find that, in addition to the desertion of all Artavasdes’ contingent, he had lost some twenty-five thousand men, half through illness and disease. Much as he and his men might have wanted to, Antony was in no position to punish the Armenian king for his desertion but had to be friendly toward him to secure rations and safe passage.
As soon as he could, Antony seems to have sent a message to Cleopatra asking her to join him and to bring supplies before ordering his legions to continue their retreat back through Syria to the Mediterranean coast. It was deep, cold winter and there were incessant snowstorms, and eight thousand more of his men fell on the march. When Antony finally completed his retreat from Phraaspa, which modern historians have likened to Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow, he had showed great leadership but, just like Napoleon, had sacrificed his best troops and lost his best chance for world domination.
Also like Napoleon, once certain his troops were safe from further attack, Antony himself had hurried ahead to assess the consequences of failure and plan for the future. He arrived at the small port of Leuke Come (White Village), on the Syrian coast, to which he had summoned Cleopatra. However, released from the day-to-day rigors of command, he seems to have collapsed, losing his resolution and wandering around aimlessly longing for Cleopatra’s arrival. Plutarch wrote: “He missed her terribly . . . Before long he devoted his time to drinking himself into a stupor, although he could not recline at the table for long before leaping to his feet in the middle of a drinking session to go to look for Cleopatra’s coming.”
Plutarch was wrong in ascribing Antony’s distress solely to an overwhelming desire to be reunited with Cleopatra, which, he alleged, had also led him, “as if he had been drugged or bewitched,” to rush the Parthian campaign. However, Antony no doubt yearned for her arrival, not only for the fresh resources she would bring and the strategic advice her astute brain could provide, but also for her emotional consolation and support at a time when his grand ambitions had been shattered.
He was even more in need of her comfort and reassurance when news reached him that while he had been retreating in defeat and despair, Octavian had finally succeeded in crushing Sextus Pompey. After a series of humiliating naval defeats earlier that year that had left Octavian almost suicidally depressed, on September 3, 36, his navy, trained and led by Agrippa, had vanquished Sextus at the battle of Naulochus off the Sicilian coast. Sextus had fled to Asia Minor and Octavian was enjoying the prestige of military success that had so long eluded him.
Octavian had also used the situation, without any consultation with Antony, to get rid of Lepidus. He had summoned the triumvir and his legions from Africa to assist in the assault on Sextus. Lepidus had invaded Sicily from the west and, following Sextus’ defeat at sea, had pushed eastward to take and sack Messina. By this point, eight of Sextus’ legions had surrendered to him. With a combined force of twenty-two legions, Lepidus, so long kept on the margins by Octavian and Antony, made an ill-judged attempt to claim Sicily for himself. Octavian’s response was to enter his camp with only a handful of men, whereupon Lepidus’ legionaries at once went over to him. A contemptuous Octavian spared the groveling Lepidus his life but dismissed him from the triumvirate, took over his fertile, corn-producing province of Africa and sent him into ignoble exile in a seaside resort south of Rome. It was an ominous clearing of the decks.
*Meaning “rock” in Greek, Petra was an apt name for the rose-red city carved into rock and entered by a narrow defile.
*The Medes are generally regarded as the ancestors of today’s Kurdish people. The location of Phraaspa is a matter of some academic dispute. The generally accepted suggestion is Qaleh-i-Zobak, now in northwest Iran.
*Decim is the Latin word for “ten.”
†Winter is both harsh—temperatures also starts early (late October) in also starts early (late October) in these uplands.