"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
"As Matt Waters demonstrates in Ctesias' 'Persica' and Its Near Eastern Context, there is a whole treasury of folk tales and legends to be found in Ctesias that resonate with stories known or partly known from earlier Near Eastern literary texts."—American Historical Review