Status Updates From Ctesias' History of Persia:...

God this intro is so much more based with all the Indo-European comparativist LORE. But it only makes the fact that Ctesias' narratives, NO LESS THAN HERODOTUS'S PERSIAN LOGOI MIND YOU, being Achaemenid epic written in Greek, by Greeks, verifiable by cross-referencing with both the Avesta, the Pahlavi texts and the Shahnameh, is just NOT AT ALL BROUGHT UP OR MENTIONED

Another Indo-European motif, here in the story of Cyrus: the women revealing their nudity to make the warriors back away, like in the tales of Cuchulainn and Bellerophon.

More proof of the Persica having its roots in very ancient Indo-Iranian tradition: Indo-Euro motif in which the warrior is made to live and dress like a beautiful woman (see elsewhere: Achilles, Thor, Arjuna, etc) in the "history" of the Median Empire.

The very long intro actually makes it a good case that the fragments of the Persica of Ctesias are what remains of a Persian history in the ANE model and how the Persians saw it, so this is actually a good place for me to start Indo-Iranian studies as far as epic and narrative go.