On The Circumstances And Reasons For The Transformation Of Ctesias’ Research And Evaluation Since The 20th Century

Ctesias of Cnidus,who was active in the late 5^th and early 4^th centuries B.C.,is a relatively special Greek historian.After 17 years as a royal physician at the Persian court,Ctesias returned to his homeland and through his experiences wrote works such as the“Persica”and the“Indica”.Because of the specificity of the content and subject matter,some of the later ancient writers,when writing works related to the East,often regarded these two works of Ctesias as standard,citing their contents on the history,geography,and customs of the East.Meanwhile,the contents of Ctesias’works are strange and absurd compared to the Greeks,as well as various fantastic and peculiar creatures and natural phenomena,many ancient writers since Aristotle have questioned and criticized his authenticity.During the Middle Ages,Ctesias’original works faded from public view,and they next came to attention in the 16^th century,during the Renaissance.During the 19^th century,as the work of organizing the fragments of Ctesias continued to improve,more and more fragments from the works of ancient authors were collected and classified according to their themes and contents,and the textual work laid an important foundation for the development of Ctesias studies that emerged during this period.Since the 20^th century,the study and evaluation of Ctesias has showed distinct phases,and the publication of the third volume of FGr H in 1958,which contains the complete collection of Ctesias’fragments,provided a great convenience to scholars who engaged in this study since then.In the first phase,due to the influence of modern western historiography,scholars as a whole have taken a completely negative attitude toward Ctesias,viewing him as an unworthy historian and his works as having no significant historical value.In the second phase,the Orientalist thinking that emerged after the Islamic revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s spilled over into the field of historiography in the context of a worldwide rethinking of Western centrism after World War II.Ctesias was included in the Orientalist model against the Western discourse system due to the specificity of his works,and the so-called fictional and inaccurate contents of his works became the ancient precursors of the author’s competent conjecture and discrediting of the East.In the third stage,since the 1970s,a critical reflection on Ctesias emerged,and scholars abandoned their preconceptions and began to examine his works in a more neutral and objective manner,which led to a substantial development in the study of Ctesias.Since the 21st century,many scholars have continued to improve the content of the Ctesias’fragments on the basis of FGr H and introduced translations and commentaries in other languages with significant scholarly value,which have become the basis of current Ctesias studies.At the same time,thematic studies that combine the results of different disciplines and address specific issues have emerged in the academia,bringing Ctesian studies to a deeper level.