The most important writer of the group of authors who are said to have composed Persica works is Ctesias of Cnidus (fl. 400–390 BCE). Of all the authors treated in this book, Ctesias the physician is the only one about whom we have relatively secure information concerning his life and work, even though it all appears to ultimately come from his own descriptions, and despite the fact that certain issues are still unclear. Contrary to other scholarly treatments of Plutarch's use of Ctesias, we shall divide the discussion here into two chapters: the first is the group of passages in which Ctesias’ name is explicitly stated as a source by Plutarch, and the second is the class of sections which can be attributed to Ctesias with a high degree of probability. In this chapter, after an analysis of the passages in Plutarch's work, we shall combine our observations with what is known of Ctesias from other sources, to infer Plutarch's work method and his purpose of using Ctesias in the Artaxerxes and mentioning this source.

PLUTARCH AND CTESIAS

Apart from one instance, all the explicit references to Ctesias in Plutarch's corpus come from the Artaxerxes. This fact leads to the most likely conclusion that Ctesias’ work was only read and used by Plutarch for this biography, even though abridged sections from his Persica may have been encountered by the biographer in other works and collections of which we have no possibility of knowing. The first passage comes from the beginning of the Artaxerxes and seems to imply that the intended readers are familiar with Ctesias’ name and reputation (Art. 1.4):