CTE'SIAS, the eon of Ctesiochus, was a Creek physician and historian, who flourished about the end of the fifth century B.C. He belonged to an A.sclepiad house at Cnidoe, but spent seventeen years of his life at the court of Artaxerxes Mnemon. (Diodor. ii. 32.) We gather from Tzetzes (Chit L 1, S2), that he was taken prisoner at the battle of Cynaxa (401 B.o.), and Diodorus says that he was raised from the situation of n captive to his post of royal physician but it appears from Xenophon and Plutarch (` Anab.' i. 8, § 27 ; vit. Artaxerxes; c. xi.) that be was one of Artaxerxes' immediate at tendants at that battle, so that of course he could not have fallen into the hands of the Persian, on that occasion. It is more probable that the great estimation in which Greek physicians were held in Persia, where they had, since the time of Demoesdes, completely superseded the Egyptian practitioners, induced Ctesias to follow the example of some of his countrymen, and betake himself to a country where his art was so much more appreciated and so much better rewarded than in Greece. Ctesiaa wrote—I, 'Persian History,' in twenty-three books, of which the first six treated of the Assyrian monarchy, and the remainder carried down the history of Persia to the year 398 B.C. (Diod. xiv. 46 ; and the end of the 'Persica' in
Photius.) 2, 'Indian History; in one hook. 3, 'A Treatise on Mountains.' 4,' A Description of Sea-coasts.' 5, ' On the Revenues of Asia.' 6, ' On Medicine.' We have many fragments of his his torical writings, especially of the ' Persian History,' which are mainly preserved in the 'Myriobiblon' of Photius: there are also fragments in Diodorus, Alian, and other writers. Diodorus says (ii. 32) that he bad access to the royal archives; but Aristotle, Plutarch, and Lucien, charge him in strong terms with inaccuracy and falsehood. Mr. Clinton thinks that Ctesias had no intention of misrepresenting, but that his materials were not trustworthy (I Fasti Helleffici; id. p. 308); and an elaborate justification of his general veracity has been at tempted by Bahr, in the introduction to the best edition of the remains of this author which has yet appeared. Ctesiaa wrote mainly in the Ionic dialect.