Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 40:160 (Oct 1883)
Article: Ctesias Of Cnidus
Author: H. A. Schomp

BSac 40:160 (Oct 1883) p. 758

Ctesias Of Cnidus

Prop. H. A. Schomp

Perhaps no period in history is of more real interest to the historian, antiquarian, or biblical student than the few centuries immediately preceding 400 B.C., when the Greeks made their first invasion of Upper Asia. Precious must be all the knowledge of the East which even the fragmentary records of history and monumental inscriptions have left to us. Most of our knowledge of Upper Asia at this period, at least in so far as profane history is concerned, we owe to Herodotus and Ctesias of Cnidus; both Asiatic Greeks by birth and living almost as contemporaries. The works of Xenophon, it is true, have some value here; but chiefly as the observations of a judicious traveller, and not as the laborious researches of the industrious historian. In his Anabasis he holds closely to his theme — the march of the Greeks; and in the Cyropaedia he portrays a character too unreal to be historical. As a historian, then, of Persia, Xenophon is of little value. Other Greek writers have touched upon Persian history, but their meagre accounts, while throwing a gleam of light occasionally here and there, oft-times perplex rather than aid us in our efforts to penetrate

BSac 40:160 (Oct 1883) p. 759

the obscurities of that little-known period. Such writers were Hecataeus of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, and Hellanicus of Mitylene; but these are of small account as authorities for Persian history.

As to Herodotus, perhaps in no part of his history is he less informed than where he attempts to give us an account of the primitive chronicles of the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians. In Egypt he is an eye-witness of much that he relates, and he has evidently long resided on the banks of the Nile. Not so as to Mesopotamia. It seems absolutely certain that he was never more than once east of the Halys; and then he travelled by a single road to Babylon, if indeed he ever visited this place at all, which has been much questioned. Into Assyria, Media, and Persia proper he evidently did not penetrate, and his chief authority seems to have been a priest of Belus at Babylon. Being a stranger of the hated Greek race, and visiting Babylon during the reign of the son of Xerxes, when the memory of Salamis and Plataea must have been fresh in the minds of the haughty Achaemenidae, Herodotus’s opportunities for investigating the sources of Persian, Median, and Assyrian history must have been indeed small. Is it wonderful, then, that a Chaldean gloss should cover his story, since he probably received most of his information from no better authority? But more of this hereafter.

As to Persian authorities for the period in question, outside of inscriptions absolutely nothing exists. Several centuries after the Moslem conquest,...