Ctesias - Birth:
Ctesias was born c. 416 in Cnidus, Caria, the son of Ctesiarchus or Ctesiochus, according to the Suda. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.08.23 describes his writing on India as the first full monograph on India, although it describes mostly the area that is modern Pakistan, not subcontinental India.
Sources:
Jona Lendering
Andrew Nichols (trans.), Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London: Bristol Classical, 2011. Reviewed by Floris Overduin
Sources:
Jona Lendering
Andrew Nichols (trans.), Ctesias. On India, and Fragments of His Minor Works. London: Bristol Classical, 2011. Reviewed by Floris Overduin
Ctesias - Writing Career:
Ctesias was a Greek physician and historian who wrote 23 books on the history of Babylonia, Assyria, and the Persian Empire to 398 B.C. His sources were Persian archives. Based on what he heard at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II Mnemon from 404 to 398/7, Ctesias wrote a history of India. This included an account of the unicorn.
Ctesias - Remnants:
The work of Ctesias has been lost, although there is an abstract of Ctesias in the writing of Photius of Constantinople (9th C.).
Ctesias - Reputation:
Ctesias had access to valuable sources, but he is still considered unreliable since he reports on sensational phenomena, like the aforementioned unicorn, gold-guarding griffins, pygmies, people with feet large enough to serve as parasols, and dog-headed humans. He also describes poisons and an absence of headaches among the Indians (source: BMCR review). Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates (and Diodorus Siculus) were familiar with his work. Ctesius is an important source for information on the Achaemenid Empire from Xerxes expedition to Greece in 480/79 to Alexander the Great.
