Ctesias' Persica in Its Near Eastern Context

by Matt Waters

Overview

The Persica is an extensive history of Assyria and Persia from around 400 BCE. It was written by the Greek historian Ctesias, who served as a doctor to the Persian king Artaxerxes II. In this volume, Matt Waters offers a fresh interdisciplinary analysis of the text. He shows in detail how Ctesias' history, though written in a Greek literary style, was infused with two millennia of Mesopotamian and Persian motifs, legends, and traditions. Waters' revealing study contributes significantly to knowledge of ancient historiography, Persian dynastic traditions and culture, and the influence of Near Eastern texts and oral tradition on Greek literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299310943
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Series:	Wisconsin Studies in Classics
Edition description:	1
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Matt Waters is a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He is the author of Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations                
Preface and Acknowledgments                     
 
Introduction               
1 The Eunuch In-between                  
2 Semiramis, Queen of Battle            
3 A Different Kind of Education for Cyrus              
4 The Inverted Hero’s Many Faces: Other Sagas in the Persica                   
Conclusion                 
 
Appendix: Regnal Dates of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Kings                     
Notes              
Bibliography              
Index

Editorial Reviews

A pleasure to read. Waters opens new paths in Ctesian studies, showing that the Persica is not merely the product of a Greek playing literary games, but may actually have its origins in genuine documents from the ancient Near East.”—Jan Pieter Stronk, editor and translator of Ctesias’ Persian History, Part 1


“This welcome study examines how the Greek author Ctesias processed an ancient Near Eastern and Iranian body of thought into a Greek world of ideas.”—Josef Wiesehöfer, Kiel University

From the Publisher