To the historian of Halikarnassus, we have to oppose the physician of the neighboring town Knidus,—Ktêsias, who contradicted Herodotus, not without strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially upon that which is the very foundation of the early narrative respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed that Cyrus was noway related to Astyagês.[320] However indignant we may be with Ktêsias, for the disparaging epithets which he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is to us inestimable,—we must nevertheless admit that as surgeon, in actual attendance on king Artaxerxês Mnêmon, and healer of the wound inflicted on that prince at Kunaxa by his brother Cyrus the younger,[321] he had better opportunities even than Herodotus of conversing with sober-minded Persians; and that the discrepancies between the two statements are to be taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose one out of four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity. [320] See the Extracts from the lost Persian History of Ktêsias, in Photius Cod. lxxii, also appended to Schweighaüser’s edition of Herodotus, vol. iv, p. 345. Φησὶ δὲ (Ktêsias) αὐτὸν τῶν πλειόνων ἃ ἱστορεῖ αὐτόπτην γενόμενον, ἢ παρ᾽ αὐτῶν Περσῶν (ἔνθα τὸ ὁρᾷν μὴ ἐνεχώρει) αὐτήκοον καταστάντα, οὕτως τὴν ἱστορίαν συγγράψαι. To the discrepancies between Xenophon, Herodotus, and Ktêsias, on the subject of Cyrus, is to be added the statement of Æschylus (Persæ, 747), the oldest authority of them all, and that of the Armenian historians: see Bähr ad Ktesiam, p. 85: comp. Bähr’s comments on the discrepancies, p. 87. [321] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 8, 26.