Ktesias of Knidos

Ktesias of Knidos ( Greek  Κτησίας Ktēsías ) was an ancient Greek doctor and historian . He lived in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC. He became famous for the Persiká , which he wrote, only fragmentarily handed down , but because of its novel-like character he has also been heavily criticized until recently.

Life

Ktesias was born in the Carian town of Knidos (perhaps around 441 BC), a not unimportant Greek city on the west coast of Asia Minor . He came from an old family of doctors, his father was called Ktesiarchos or Ktesiochos. In the Byzantine Lexicon Suda it says:

“Ktesias: son of Ctesiarchos or Ktesiochus, from Knidos; a doctor who healed Artaxerxes, who is called mnemon, in Persia and wrote Persika in 23 books. "

This information, based on Ktesias' own statements, is accepted by the majority of scholars. As a member of an Asklepiaden family, Ktesias' professional career was basically mapped out. It came to the court of the Persian great king Artaxerxes II at an unknown point in time . Mnemon , however, the circumstances in this regard are unclear. Diodorus , who in the 1st century BC Wrote a universal story and used Ktesias as a source, indicates that Ktesias came there as a prisoner of war and stayed in Persia for 17 years. Diodorus also mentions his medical skills, which is why some researchers assume that Ktesias was regularly appointed to the Persian court. The indicated 17 years of his stay at the Persian court are possibly also imprecise and it was possibly only 7 years. Jan Stronk, who wrote the current Ktesias edition including the translation, continued to assume 17 years for the stay and believes that Ktesias was around 413 BC. In Persian captivity and 397 BC. BC left the court again. Recently, however, Stronk also thinks a stay of 7 years at the Persian court is conceivable and that Ktesias was in Persian service for a total of 17 years.

In any case, at the time of the Battle of Kunaxa in 401 BC , Ktesias was standing . Apparently as the personal physician of the Persian great king Artaxerxes II. Mnemon in his service and healed him according to Xenophon . During his time at court, Ktesias also looked after members of the royal family. He seems to have had the favor of Parysatis . The details are unclear, however, especially since Ktesias has probably exaggerated his own role at court, even though he was apparently also on a diplomatic mission for the great king. 398/97 BC Ktesias has returned home. He also traveled to Greece himself, after 393/92 BC. He died.

After his return to Knidos, Ktesias wrote several (mainly historical) treatises, only fragments of which have survived ( The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 688).

It should be noted, however, that a minority within modern research considers this biography to be largely fictitious and doubts that Ktesias served the great king or was ever at the Persian court (like Marco Dorati, see below).

Works

Persiká

Content and tradition

His main work are the Persiká ("History of Persia") in 23 books that Ktesias wrote in Ionian Greek . Even before Ktesias, Greeks had written special works on Persia, which are known as Persiká . These works were evidently a reaction to the Greeks' curiosity for this strange world and were intended to help the Greek reader understand it better. However, the Persiká des Ktesias were to become the most famous (and notorious) work of this genre.

The Persiká des Ktesias is a description of the ancient oriental-Persian history, which reached from the mythical time of King Ninos , which was dealt with in detail, to the present experienced by Ktesias. In the first six books of Persiká , Ktesias described the history of the Assyrian-Medic empires (this part of the work was therefore also known as Assyriaká or Mediaká ) up to the founding of the Persian empire. Historical people were mixed with mythical people and the legendary Queen Semiramis was treated, for example . The actual history of Persia was dealt with from the 7th book and reached from Cyrus II to the year 398/97 BC. Chr.

• Book 1 to 3: History of Assyria from Ninos to the fall of Nineveh . Ninos builds the Assyrian Empire (which after Ktesias would have been more extensive than the Persian Empire), founds the city of Ninos (Ninive) and marries Semiramis. Semiramis founds Babylon and leads campaigns as far as India. Rule of Sardanapalus (probably based on Assurbanipal ) and revolt of the Medes , end of the Assyrian Empire.
• Book 4 to 6: Medical history from the reign of Arbakes to Astyages.
• Book 7 to 11: Cyrus II. Cyrus against Astyages, victory against Astyages and marriage to Amytis. War against Kroisos of Lydia . Last years and death of Cyrus.
• Book 12 and 13: Cambyses II to Xerxes I conquest of Egypt, conspiracies at court and accession to the throne of Darius I. Beginning of the Persian Wars , defeat of the Persians and assassination of Xerxes.
• Book 14 to 17: Artaxerxes I. Rebellion in Egypt, escapades at court and death of Artaxerxes.
• Book 18: Xerxes II. To Dareios II. Court intrigues lead to the murder of Xerxes' II. Revolt of Ochos, who reigns as Dareios II. Unsuccessful rebellions against this and unsuccessful conspiracies at court as well as reports of further debauchery.
• Books 19 to 23: the first eight years of Artaxerxes II's reign . Darius II's death in Babylon, revolt of the younger Cyrus against Artaxerxes, who, however, remains victorious. Report on Tissaphernes and the help that Ktesias gives to the captured Spartan general Klearchus, who ultimately dies. Ktesias is on a diplomatic mission and returns to Knidos. An overview of the distance from Ephesus to Bactria and a list of the kings from Ninos to Artaxerxes II are attached .

The Persiká have been lost as a whole, but a brief extract ( epitome ) of the work has been preserved in the library of the Middle Byzantine scholar Photios , which has come down to us in several manuscripts. Friedrich Wilhelm König assumed that Photios only had books 7 to 23 in the original; in any case it is unclear how faithfully Photios reproduced in his excerpt what he read at Ktesias. Apart from a short papyrus fragment, there are also excerpts from the work by several other authors. A certain Pamphila wrote an excerpt from the Persiká in three books as early as the 1st century , but nothing has survived. Some more detailed fragments can be found among others in Diodorus, Athenaios , Plutarch (Vita Artaxerxes' II.), Nikolaos of Damascus and Aelian , although the assignment of the passages as Ctesias fragments is not always certain. The second book of Diodorus, which described the Assyrian-Babylonian period in it (with very little truth content), is apparently almost entirely drawn from Ktesias. Thus it is possible to get a very good picture of the structure and content of the Ctesian work. Dinon of Colophon leaned on Ktesias and also wrote a Persian story. Apparently, Ktesias was read in late antiquity and in the Middle Byzantine period, before his works were lost.

The way history is represented in the Persiká

Thanks to his Persiká, Ktesias was soon regarded as an authority on the history of the Orient and was used by numerous authors. As popular as reading the Persiká des Ktesias was apparently, even if its credibility was not undisputed even in antiquity, his work is viewed critically in modern research (see reception below). Ktesias himself claimed to have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the conditions of the Persian Empire and its history during his time at court . Given his long stay at the Persian royal court and the intimate knowledge he gained from it, one would have to assume that the story of the Ktesias is particularly reliable and accurate, but the opposite is largely true. However, and this is the main problem with any preoccupation with the Ctesian work, as a rule it must remain uncertain how exactly the fragments reflect the original work and which errors are ultimately to be blamed on Ktesias himself.

In any case, according to the fragments, Ktesias often made imprecise (for example, according to him, the city of Nineveh was on the Euphrates river and not, what would have been correct, on the Tigris) or completely exaggerated information (for example on army strengths); He also placed less emphasis on chronological accuracy. For example, he moved the battle of Plataiai before the battle of Salamis . Nevertheless, Ktesias polemics against other authors, notably Herodotus .

"[...] whereby he [Ktesias] almost constantly reports opposing things to Herodotus, and even rebukes him in many cases as a liar and names a storyteller [...]"

The focus of the plot at Ktesias was apparently the Persian royal court, where he detailed various court intrigues and scandal stories and probably reflected at least partially real conditions. However, it is by no means certain that Ktesias intended to present the Greek reader with a negative image of the Persian court and its "decadence"; It is quite possible that he rather wanted to point out the (not always simple) conditions there (Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, see evaluation). At least in places the description took on romance-like features, although Ktesias did not see himself as a novelist but as a historian. Again and again he emphasized his special knowledge, but adorned the plot richly literarily.

In the Assyriaká, according to the majority opinion of the research, no historical information is in fact conveyed, but rather mythical figures and largely invented actions are presented. Lenfant, for example, sees it a little differently, who is of the opinion that Ktesias used the Achaemenid Empire as a foil and based this model on the representation of the Assyrian Empire. Lenfant also assumes that there are some historical elements in the Assyriaká (for example with regard to Sardanapalos). König was also of the opinion that Ktesias fell back on indigenous Persian traditions and processed them; the historical Assyrian king Sargon II could be equated with Ninos, although the tendentious Persian reports that Ktesias processed are not in agreement with the historical deeds, but only reflect partial aspects. In research, however, the value of the narrative there is generally regarded as extremely low or as nonexistent.

The military conflicts between Greeks and Persians, a main motif in the depiction of Herodotus, play only a subordinate role in Ktesias; presumably he took over the representation of Herodotus for the Persian Wars - assuming that the corresponding excerpts reproduce the Ctesian narrative with some accuracy - and simply rewrote it, sometimes quite arbitrarily. Arnaldo Momigliano, on the other hand, believed that Ktesias had used reports that were independent of Herodotus (similarly recently Dominique Lenfant), but this is mostly rejected in modern research. The final part of the Persiká is judged more favorably by several researchers due to the time experienced by Ktesias himself (which was also described in more detail) and viewed as a quite useful source, although this part is not without problems.

swell

It is unclear which sources Ktesias relied on in each individual case. He may have learned Persian and may have used narratives and oral reports, the reliability of which were questionable, for his work. Because of his position at court, Ktesias had at least the opportunity to receive reports from people of high standing; according to some researchers, however, he stuck to unreliable rumors. According to Diodorus, Ktesias himself is said to have used Persian records in the "royal archives":

"This [Ktesias] says that from the royal documents in which the Persians, according to a local custom, recorded their ancient history, he researched every single thing with great diligence, put together his own historical work from it and overpowered the Hellenes."

It is very controversial in modern research whether this statement is true. The very existence of such archives is sometimes questioned, which is the basis for an assessment. But even if there were such archives, for which there are certainly several references, it is still unclear whether Ktesias actually consulted them. In any case, Ktesias seems to have used written sources; inscriptions may also come into question.

Indicá

Ktesias also wrote a smaller script in a book about India, the Indicá . An excerpt from the work has also come down to us in Photios; apart from that some other fragments have been preserved, because this work apparently also found some readers. In the Indicá, Ktesias describes the north of the Indian subcontinent, the customs of the inhabitants, the fauna and flora.

The representation contains absolutely correct information (e.g. about the Indian elephant or species of the genus Edelsittiche ), but also reveals novel-like features. According to Photios, the work had no internal structure at all, rather it strung different themes together. Ktesias seems to have made an uncritical collection of all the stories and myths that circulated about India. Among other things, he reports of griffins guarding gold, of Kynokephaloi (literally "dog-headed"), perhaps a misinterpretation of a comment on lower boxes that "had to eat with the dogs" in reports by contemporaries, and manticors , also later again and again in Reports about India mentioned mythical creatures with lions' bodies, human heads and scorpion tails.

However, India appeared to the Greeks as a legendary wonderland on the edge of the world, about which little concrete information was available before the Alexanderzug . Herodotus also briefly discussed India in his histories and also reported miracle stories, such as huge ants digging for gold. Ktesias never claims to have traveled to India himself, but only to tell of stories or of things he saw in Persia. In addition, Photios hardly made a systematic excerpt from the Indicá , but mainly highlighted interesting episodes for him; nevertheless, the extract is probably quite reliable overall. Felix Jacoby , who otherwise viewed Ktesias critically, said that the Indicá deserve less of the sometimes harsh criticism since Aristotle and that the work is a "valuable document" regarding the level of knowledge of the Greeks about India at the time.

Other works

A few other writings are ascribed to Ktesias, of which only very few fragments have survived and therefore no concrete statements can be made about them:

• "Asiatic Periplus " ( Περίπλους Ἀσίας Períplous Asías ) or Periodos (the exact title is unclear) in three books, quoted in Stephanos of Byzantium .
• “About the tributes in Asia” ( Περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν φόρων Perì tôn katà tên Asían phórôn ), perhaps an appendix to the Persiká , but this is unclear.
• "Over the mountains" ( Περὶ ὀρῶν Perì orôn ) and "Over the rivers" ( Περὶ ποταμῶν Peri potamôn ), quoted in Plutarch, but doubtful.

Ktesias may also have written medical treatises, but nothing has survived (apart from two short quotations from Galenos and Oreibasios ).

Reception and evaluation

The credibility of the Ktesias was attacked several times in antiquity. Aristotle , Arrian and Lukian (who, however, also criticized Herodotus in a similar way) and others viewed his works as a collection of rumors and miracle stories; also Plutarch expressed rather disparagingly of Ctesias, but moved him closer still. In any case, the Persiká were evidently used frequently and influenced the Greek image of the Persians considerably. Photios judged Ktesias to be "clearly understandable and read with pleasure". Like Herodotus, Ktesias is also not prone to “outmoded digressions”, but does not dispense with fables. But sometimes he lapsed into the “common man's way of speaking”, which was anathema to the Middle Byzantine classicists. The Indicá were probably used less often, but they are also quoted by Aristotle, Arrian and Aelian, although the authors mostly expressed their skepticism about the news there.

The assessment of Ktesias' Persiká is controversial in research to this day. On the one hand, there was and is strong criticism (e.g. because of numerous verifiable factual errors, especially since the first part of the work apparently contains almost only fabulous stories). Some scholars consider his work to be more of a "historical novel" (better said as a historical work with novel-like features, because Ktesias clearly assigned his work to the genre of histories ) or a pure scandal story ( Felix Jacoby ). Jacoby in particular, who wrote numerous historian articles for RE , viewed the source value of the Ktesias as extremely low and rated the author very negatively. Jacoby's harsh criticism is based not least on the fact that he used Herodotus and Thucydides as a yardstick and accordingly many of the following historians did rather poorly with him.

In the scientific controversy surrounding Ktesias there is now an approach that poses the question of the source value of the Persiká differently: This consists in the fact that Ktesias' work cannot be used as a factually correct description of the Persian court, since it is at least very questionable how reliable his information is in detail; but one could use Ktesias as an excellent primary source for the “Persian image” in ancient Greek historiography. There is no doubt that Ktesias, as a Greek, wrote for Greeks and painted a picture of the Orient that helped shape the ideas of later generations. According to the Achaemenid expert Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, the Persian court is characterized by Ktesias as "decadent". With its luxury, the allegedly numerous conspiracies and harem intrigues, it is opposed to the Greek world antithetically. This perspective was to determine the Western image of the Orient with the stereotypes already described by Ktesias for many centuries.

On the other hand, Ktesias is still regarded by other researchers as an eyewitness and intimate connoisseur of the Persian court. Even a sharp critic like Jacoby admitted that the final part of the work (unlike the beginning with fabulous rulers and apparently largely invented events) is a not entirely unimportant, but nevertheless problematic source for Persia.

In 2004, Dominique Lenfant warned against a too quick condemnation of the author, who, in her opinion , had processed autochthonous reports (albeit uncritically) in the Persiká and was a very good source for these local reports. Like Dominique Lenfant, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones assumes that Ktesias processed local narratives and offered real insights into court life under Artaxerxes II. He therefore presented the reader (at least for this period) with a historical narrative, but not from a purely Greek perspective.

Lenfant and Llewellyn-Jones assume that Ktesias can in principle be used as a source for the Persian Empire - and not just for the Greek Persian image. Accordingly, one could not consider Ktesias as a "good historian" who examined his material in detail. Rather, he has collected narratives and processed them uncritically, but thus faithfully reflect local perspectives. Likewise, according to Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, the representation of the Persian court may not be correct in all details, but Ktesias wrote down what he saw, heard and how he interpreted it. Accordingly, Ktesias constructed a view of the Orient, but not from a Greek, but from a native perspective, of course presented by a Greek who tried to understand this world, which was foreign to most Greeks.

Marco Dorati, on the other hand, advocated the radical thesis as early as 1995 that Ktesias had never been to Persia, at least his autobiographical information was therefore falsified, but this approach has not caught on. Reinhold Bichler suggested in 2004 to understand Ktesias as a “joker” who deliberately wrote a downright “Herodotus slap”. Like Bichler, Bruno Bleckmann also regards the Ktesias report on the Persian War as a text with little source value. Bleckmann, however, does not believe in a literary game by the author; Rather, he thinks that Ktesias wanted to separate himself from Herodotus very consciously in order to give his own work a justification - according to Bleckmann, a technique common at the time. In 2006 Josef Wiesehöfer organized an international conference on Ktesias; the 2011 publication of the articles sheds new light on numerous aspects of the work. As before, those researchers who believe they can use Ktesias as a source for Persian internals are opposed to those who deny it. The outcome of the debate, which also reflects different scientific traditions, is open.

Jan Stronk pointed out a few years ago that Ktesias should not be understood primarily as a historian in the narrower sense. Although Ktesias considered himself an authority on Persia, he did not intend an exact historical description. Historical facts were processed by him with rich literary embellishments into a novel historical-novel-like plot. The Persiká are therefore not a historical work in the strict sense, but neither are they a pure fairy tale. In the most recent critical edition of Persiká , Stronk also emphasized that we cannot be sure what exactly Ktesias wrote anyway, as additions, omissions and different interpretations by the following authors, to whom we owe the quotations and summaries of his work, can never be ruled out . Due to tradition, our picture of Ktesias is fundamentally incomplete and possibly distorted; Llewellyn-Jones expressed himself similarly, referring to the Ktesias picture filtered by other authors. According to Stronk, the often criticized Persiká also reflect, at least in part, oral traditions.

Editions and translations

• Friedrich Wilhelm König (ed.): The Persika des Ktesias von Knidos (= Archive for Orient Research , Supplement 18). Graz 1972 (edition and translation).
• Dominique Lenfant (Ed.): Ctésias de Cnide. La Perse, l'Inde, autres fragments. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-251-00518-8 (authoritative edition of the Ktesias fragments; also contains sections whose attribution to Ktesias is contested by other researchers; review ).
• Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, James Robson (Eds.): Ctesias' "History of Persia". Tales of the Orient . Routledge, London a. a. 2010 (English translation of Persiká [based on Lenfant's edition] with a detailed introduction).
• Andrew Nichols: Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London 2011.
• Andrew Nichols: The complete Fragments of Ctesias of Cnidus. Diss. Gainesville 2008 (English translation of the Persiká and Indicá and other fragments with an introduction and a brief commentary; online ; PDF; 2.7 MB).
• Jan P. Stronk (Ed.): Ctesias' Persian History. Part I: Introduction, Text, and Translation . Wellem Verlag, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-941820-01-2 (collection of all Greek, Latin and other fragments with English translation and detailed introduction).

literature

• Eran Almagor: Plutarch and the Persica. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2018.
• Janick Auberger: L'Inde de Ctésias. In: Jean-Claude Carrière (ed.): Inde, Grèce ancienne, regards croisés en anthropologie de l'espace. Paris 1995, pp. 39-59.
• Reinhold Bichler : Ktesias "corrects" Herodotus. On the literary assessment of Persika. In: Herbert Heftner , Kurt Tomaschitz (Ed.): Ad fontes! Festschrift for Gerhard Dobesch on his sixty-fifth birthday on September 15, 2004, presented by colleagues, students and friends . Self-published by the editors, Vienna 2004, pp. 105–116 ( online ; PDF; 115 kB).
• Joan M. Bigwood: Ctesias' "Indica" and Photius. In: Phoenix 43, 1989, ISSN  0031-8299 , pp. 302-316.
• Bruno Bleckmann : Ktesias of Knidos and the Persian Wars: Historical Variants on Herodotus. In: Bruno Bleckmann (ed.): Herodotus and the era of the Persian wars. Realities and fictions. Colloquium on the 80th birthday of Dietmar Kienast . Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-08406-6 , pp. 137–150 ( European histories 14).
• Jan Boncquet: Ctesias' Assyrian King-List and his Chronology of Mesopotamian History. In: Ancient Society 21, 1990, ISSN  0066-1619 , pp. 5-16.
• Felix Jacoby : Ktesias 1. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XI, 2, Stuttgart 1922, Sp. 2032-2073 (fundamental).
• Rüdiger Schmitt: Ctesias . In: Ehsan Yarshater (ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica . Volume 6 (4), pp. 441–446, as of December 15, 1993, accessed on June 16, 2011 (English, including references)
• Carlo Scardino: Ktesias of Knidos. In: Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-61818-5 , pp. 618-620
• Jan P. Stronk: Ctesias of Cnidus, a Reappraisal . In: Mnemosyne Series 4, No. 60, 2007, pp. 25-58.
• Christopher Tuplin: Doctoring the Persians. Ctesias of Cnidus, Physician and Historian. In: Klio 86, 2004, pp. 305-347.
• Josef Wiesehöfer , Robert Rollinger , Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi (eds.): Ktesias' world. Ctesias' World. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-447-06376-0 ( Classica et Orientalia 1).

Web links

Original texts

• Literature by and about Ktesias von Knidos in the catalog of the German National Library
• Epitoms of Persica and Indica at Photios (English)

literature

• Jonah Lendering: Ctesias of Cnidus . In: Livius.org (English)
• Christopher Tuplin: Ctesias as Military Historian. (PDF; 504 kB)

bibliography

• Margareta M. Berktold, Birgit Gufler, Irene Huber, Inge Klingler: Ktesias Bibliography. (PDF; 109 kB)

Remarks

1. ^ So Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), p. 11.
2. ↑ Felix Jacoby's RE article is still fundamental to his life and work : Jacoby (1922).
3. ↑ Suda , keyword Ktêsias , Adler number: kappa 2521 , Suda-Online (= Testimonium 1). Translation after König (1972), p. 199.
4. ↑ Diodor, Bibliothek , 2,32,4.
5. ^ Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), p. 12.
6. ^ Jacoby (1922), col. 2033
7. ↑ Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), pp. 12f.
8. ↑ Stronk (2010), p. 8f.
9. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1.8.
10. ↑ On the possible time of death, see Stronk (2010), p. 11 with note 27.
11. ^ Dominique Lenfant: Greek Historians of Persia. In: John Marincola (Ed.): A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography . Oxford et al. a. 2007, p. 200ff.
12. ↑ See also König (1972), p. 34ff.
13. ↑ On the various passages in Ktesias see Jacoby (1922), Sp. 2040ff .; König (1972), p. 34ff.
14. ↑ See also Stronk (2010), p. 107ff.
15. ↑ A list of authors, are detectable in their works excerpts from Ctesias, Llewellyn-Jones / Robson, (2010), pp 220-226.
16. ↑ See Stronk (2010), p. 34f.
17. ↑ Fragment 13, excerpt from Photios.
18. ↑ Testimonium 8a, excerpt from Photios. Translation according to König (1972), p. 1.
19. ↑ See for example Jacoby (1922), Col. 2063f.
20. ↑ Jacoby (1922), Col. 2042ff .; see. also the overview in Stronk (2010), p. 32f.
21. ↑ See generally the introduction in Lefant (2004), summarized on p. XLIIf.
22. ↑ König (1972), p. 36f.
23. ↑ See Bleckmann (2007).
24. ↑ Bleckmann (2007), pp. 139f.
25. ↑ Diodor, Bibliothek , 2.32 (= fragment 5). Translation according to König (1972), p. 161f.
26. ↑ On the possibility that such archives existed, see Stronk (2007), p. 37ff., Stronk (2010), p. 16ff. and also König (1972), p. 33; Pierre Briant is more skeptical : From Cyrus to Alexander . Winona Lake 2002, p. 6 and p. 422ff., Who does not deny its existence in principle.
27. ↑ For general information on the sources, see Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), pp. 55ff .; Stronk (2010), p. 15ff.
28. ↑ Andrew Nichols: Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London 2011 (annotated English translation); Stavros Solomou: The Indica of Ctesias of Cnidus. Dissertation. London 2007 (text edition, translation and commentary of the Indicá ).
29. ↑ Herodotus, Historien , 3,102.
30. ↑ Bigwood (1989).
31. ↑ Jacoby (1922), col. 2037-2039.
32. ↑ In English translation by Andrew Nichols: Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London 2011, p. 83ff.
33. ↑ Andrew Nichols: Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London 2011, pp. 89f.
34. ↑ Andrew Nichols: Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London 2011, pp. 87f.
35. ↑ Testimony 13.
36. ↑ See, for example, Stronk (2007), pp. 40–43, on the assessment of the Ktesias in research.
37. ↑ Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg: Decadence in the empire or decadence in the sources: Ctesias, from source to synthesis. In: Same (Ed.), Achaemenid History I. Leiden 1987, pp. 33ff.
38. ^ Introduction in Lenfant (2004).
39. ↑ Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), p. 81ff. Against this assumption that Ktesias was a useful source for this time, see Carsten Binder: Plutarchs Vita des Artaxerxes. A historical comment. Berlin 2008, about p. 57f.
40. ↑ Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), pp. 82f.
41. ↑ Marco Dorati: Ctesia falsario? In: Quaderni di storia 21, 1995, pp. 33-52.
42. ↑ Bichler (2004)
43. ↑ Bleckmann (2007).
44. ↑ Stronk (2007), p. 43ff.
45. ↑ Stronk (2010), p. 31ff.
46. ↑ Llewellyn-Jones / Robson (2010), pp. 35f.