Knidoslu Ktesias

Trained in Knidos's famous medical school, Ctesias lived for years at the Persian court as personal physician to King Artaxerxes II, taking on diplomatic duties alongside medicine. After returning home he turned what he had seen and heard at court into two great works: the "Persica", an account of Persian history, court life and customs, and the "Indica", describing the people, animals and geography of India. The originals are lost, yet as one of the chief sources consulted by later writers such as Diodorus and Plutarch, he shaped ancient historiography.

He is the one who carried the name of the Knidos medical school to the most distant courts of the ancient world. The "Indica" is the first known free-standing Greek work on India; its fabulous tales were criticised and copied for centuries. That lines written by a native of this peninsula fed the image of Persia and India for a thousand years shows the intellectual reach of Knidos in antiquity.