The attempt to arrive at Plutarch's method of work through a literary reading of his Lives and other treatises has yielded some interesting results in the case of the fourth century BCE Persica volumes. Let us start with our understanding of these works and conclude with Plutarch's manner of composition.

THE PERSICA

Some of the features which can be attributed to the lost works used by Plutarch and to their authors were probably those that the biog-rapher presumed to be common knowledge and regarded as infor-mation shared by his intended readers. This inference is feasible due to the fact that Plutarch seems to have worked with the assumptions and anticipations of his audience, and therefore had to postulate their beliefs and the degree of their familiarity with texts or portrayals in order for his imagery and messages to be successfully decoded. However, our study has shown that certain other traits appear to be unknown to Plutarch.

Ctesias

A fundamental distinction that recurs in Plutarch's text is that between Ctesias as a historical agent spending time in Persia and acting as the king's physician and Ctesias as an author, depicting, among other stories, his own activity. Plutarch testifies to the extent that Ctesias mentioned himself in the last books of his Persica as a significant agent acting in the circles of the king and of his mother, mediating between the king and Clearchus and his Greeks, between Clearchus and Parysatis and between Artaxerxes and Conon and Evagoras in Cyprus. Ctesias also emphasised his role in saving the king when he was injured. The fact that Ctesias was a figure in his own narrative enabled the physician to allude to the circumstances in which his own work was created.

Plutarch seems to stress an element in Ctesias’ work which is not noticed in other passages ascribed to him and is hardly ever discussed in connection to his work. This is the feature of subtle and elusive metapoetic references to Ctesias’ own historical writing and his awareness of the methods and imagery employed, including awareness of the question whether, and to what extent, historical reports can be truthful.