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Updated: June 10, 2025
So that for the present, till I am better informed, and I am not over curious in it, I shall make Ctesias, and the other Indian Historians, the Inventors of the extravagant Relations we at present have of the Pygmies, and not old Homer. Bibliothec.
The town stretching to the middle of the plain, near the Euphrates, the funerary mound was conspicuous at many stades' distance like an acropolis; they tell me that it still exists although Nineveh was overthrown by the Medes when they destroyed the Assyrian empire." The exaggerations in which Ctesias indulged may here be recognized.
E. G. his accounts of Indian and Æthiopian monsters; of serpents whose eyes were jewels of magical virtue; of pygmies; of golden water; of the speaking tree; of a woman half white and half black, etc.; he incorporates in his narrative the fables of Ctesias, Agatharchidas, and other writers.
But she did not give up her habit of revolting whenever she had a chance, and DARIUS, the son of Hystaspes, tired of besieging her, ended by dismantling her fortifications, while XERXES went farther, and pillaged her temples. But the chief buildings remained standing. Towards the middle of the fifth century they excited the admiration of Herodotus, and, fifty years later, that of Ctesias.
If he had really carried his arms into the heart of Asia Minor, and threatened the whole of that extensive region with subjugation, we can scarcely suppose that he would have been considered so peaceful a ruler. Neither is it easy to imagine that in that case no classical writer not even Ctesias would have taxed Herodotus with an error that must have been so flagrant.
The Scyths were commanded by a queen, Zarina or Zarinsea, woman of rare beauty, and as brave as she was fair; who won the hearts, when she could not resist the swords, of her adversaries. A strangely romantic love-tale is told of this beauteous Amazon. It is not at all clear what region Ctesias supposes her to govern.
The brief epitome which we possess of Ctesias omits to make any mention of these minor conquests, while Herodotus sums them all up in a single line; but there is reason to believe that the Cnidian historian gave a methodized account of their accomplishment, of which scattered notices have come down to us in various writers.
Leading Athenians, Solon, Hippias and Themistocles, had been received at Eastern courts or had accompanied Eastern sovereigns to war, and one more famous even than these, Alcibiades, had lately lived with a Persian satrap. Greek physicians, Democedes of Croton, Apollonides of Cos, Ctesias of Cnidus, had ministered to kings and queens of Persia in their palaces.
The religious spirit displayed is, as might have been expected, in the highest degree exclusive and intolerant; but it is earnest, constant, and all-pervading. In the next place, we cannot fail to be struck with the energetic character of the monarch, so different from the temper which Ctesias ascribes, in the broadest and most sweeping terms, to all the successors of Ninus.
Ctesias tells the fairy-tale that Darius marched northward for fifteen days, that he then exchanged bows with the Scythian king, and that, finding the Scythian bow to be the largest, he fled back in terror to the bridge, which he hastily crossed, having left a tenth of his army as a sacrifice to his mad ambition.
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