Ctesias

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Ctesias

Ctesias of Cnidus (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
) was a Greek physician

Physician

A physician, medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, or medical doctor practices medicine, and is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and injury....
and historian

Historian

A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time....
from Cnidus in Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionians and Dorians Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there....
. Ctesias, who flourished in the 5th century BC, was physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon, whom he accompanied in 401 BC on his expedition against his brother Cyrus the Younger

Cyrus the Younger

Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II of Persia and Parysatis, was a History of Persia prince and general. The time of his birth is unknown, but he died in 401 BC....
.

Ctesias was the author of treatises on rivers, and on the Persian revenues, of an account of India

India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
(which is of value as recording the beliefs of the Persians about India), and of a history of Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
and Persia in 23 books, called Persica, written in opposition to Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
in the Ionic dialect

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
, and professedly founded on the Persian royal archives.

Persica
The first six books treated of the history of Assyria and Babylon

Babylon

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, sometimes considered an empire, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad....
to the foundation of the Persian empire; the remaining seventeen went down to the year 398 BC.

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Ctesias of Cnidus (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
) was a Greek physician

Physician

Historian

Caria

Cyrus the Younger

India

Assyria

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
in the Ionic dialect

Ionic Greek

Persica

The first six books treated of the history of Assyria and Babylon

Babylon

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greeks rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The Suda only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus ; but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus shows that he survived that emperor....
, Plutarch

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
and especially Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
, whose second book is mainly from Ctesias. As to the worth of the Persica there has been much controversy, both in ancient and modern times. Although many ancient authorities valued it highly, and used it to discredit Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, many people consider Ctesias's account of little historical value. People argue that this is due to the fact that Ctesias's account of the Assyrian kings does not reconcile with the cuneiform

Cuneiform script

Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of writing system. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictography....
evidence. The satirist Lucian

Lucian

Lucian of Samosata was an Assyrian people rhetorician, and satire who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature....
thought so little of Ctesias' historical reliability that in his satirical True Story
True Story

True Story may refer to:*True History a travel tale by Lucian of Samosata*True Story an album by Terror Squad* True Story an album by Timaya...
he places Ctesias on the island where the evil were punished. Lucian wrote that "The people who suffered the greatest torment were those who had told lies when they were alive and written mendacious histories; among them were Ctesias of Cnidus, Herodotus, and many others." (A True Story, 2.31).

External links

, by Jona Lendering
translated by J. H. Freese (1920)
translated by J.H. Freese (1920)