Sur la vie de Ctésias

Eck, Bernard

doi:10.3406/reg.1990.2487

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…) suggests to take Ctesias on his word: he was taken prisoner, he stayed seventeen years at the court and he left for Greece in 398/7 BC. Eck (1990) also believes that Ctesias stayed for seventeen years in Persia, as does Holzberg (1993, 80). Cf.…”

Section: Ctesias and His Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Cf., e.g., the remarks of Burn (1962, 11-3); cf. for a convenient, though limited, review of modern writers on Ctesias Bigwood 1976 and n. 1; also Bigwood 1978 and n. 3;also Brown 1978, Eck 1990and Lenfant 1996 Th e negative judgement on Ctesias in modern literature has not been limited to Jacoby. His views marked, however, a turning point in the way historians regarded Ctesias' work: in the late nineteenth century that view had been relatively positive, with Macan as a notable exception.…”

Section: Judgements On Ctesiasmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Ctesias of Cnidus, a Reappraisal

Stronk

2007

Mnemosyne

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Th e works of Ctesias of Cnidus have frequently been regarded as second rate at best. His reliability as a historian has been seriously questioned in particular, not only by Felix Jacoby and many historians aft er him, but also by authors in antiquity. Doubts were especially raised about Ctesias' Indica, but also the trustworthiness of his Persica was-and still is-considered dubious. Th is verdict appears to be unfair, for two reasons. Th e first is that hardly anything that can be attributed directly to Ctesias has survived: the overwhelming majority of material ascribed to Ctesias has been transmitted by other authors, who used their source not necessarily with proper care. Th e second is to be found in Demetrius' On Style: here a new perspective on Ctesias is offered. It shows that we should no longer regard Ctesias primarily as a historian, but as a forerunner of a new literary genre (culminating in the classical novel) mixing historical fact with fictitious elements. It is only because of the lack of a proper word in antiquity to describe this genre that the term 'history' was applied to his work as well. It would confuse many generations of historians and deny Ctesias his proper place in Greek literary history.

show abstract

Section: Ctesias and His Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Judgements On Ctesiasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ctesias of Cnidus, a Reappraisal

Stronk

2007

Mnemosyne

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

IV. Hellenistic Historians

2001

New Surveys in the Classics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The two centuries that separate Thucydides and Polybius saw a vast change in the historical map of Greece. The cosy world of the Aegean, upon which the destinies of Sparta and Athens had played themselves out, became the larger oikoumenê extending from Spain to India. From the north, the mainland Greeks had to contend with the rising power of Macedon, which eventually swept all before it. Then Alexander’s conquests, on a scale never previously seen, opened up the entire world of the Near East and part of the Far East to Greek arms and Greek culture, and this interaction left in its wake a series of kingdoms of varying size in Macedon, Egypt, and Syria, with an appetite amongst themselves for competition and conquest. In the other direction, the Celtic incursions, culminating in the great attack on Delphi in 278, compelled the Greeks to turn their eyes westward. The Sicilian Greeks, of course, had their own varied history during this time, both amongst themselves and against the great power of Carthage. And also from the west, Rome slowly but steadily began to come within the purview of the Greeks. Not surprisingly given such changes, the ways of writing history changed as well. Numerous writers in the fourth and third centuries penned histories of great breadth and variety, and by the time Polybius came to write his own work, he had before him a vast array of approaches to the past. As we shall see, Polybius expressed himself forcefully on these types of historiography, and it will be worth while here to give a brief summary of them.

show abstract

THEEKTHESISOF CYRUS THE GREAT: A CASE STUDY OF HEROICITY VERSUS BASTARDY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Haussker

2017

Camb. class. j.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores two contrasting accounts of the exposure of Cyrus the Elder: the lengthy version in Herodotus, replete with characteristics of the infancy of royal mythological heroes, and that in Isocrates’ Philippus, in which the ekthesis implies illegitimacy and inferiority, as part of Isocrates’ political agenda. Cyrus’ alleged exposure is an ideal case study for the ambivalence of infant exposure in classical Greek discourse, either to signify heroicity in an individual destined for greatness and the founding of a dynasty (as in Herodotus), or to allude to illegitimacy and so exclude the individual from civil society (as in Isocrates).

show abstract

Sur la vie de Ctésias

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Ctesias of Cnidus, a Reappraisal

Ctesias of Cnidus, a Reappraisal

IV. Hellenistic Historians

THEEKTHESISOF CYRUS THE GREAT: A CASE STUDY OF HEROICITY VERSUS BASTARDY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About