Indica (Ctesias)

The book contains the first known reference to the unicorn, ostensibly an ass in India that had a single 1.5 cubit (27 inch) horn on its head, and introduces the European world to the talking parrot as well as falconry, which was not yet practiced in Europe.

[2] In the second century AD, the satirist Lucian depicted Ctesias as being condemned to a special part of hell reserved for those who spread wild lies during their lifetimes.

[2] Indica apparently included such anecdotes as the description of a race of one-legged people called the Monosceli, another whose feet were so big they could be used as umbrellas (the Skiopolae), men with tails like satyrs, and claimed that people in the actual land of Serica (a word thought in some other cases to be the Greek word for part of China) were 18 feet tall.

Conversely, the book did serve as the original source for a great deal of actual knowledge about the East that appears to have been completely absent in Western literature.

Though only fragments exist today, its probable contents are very well-known because they were the main reference for Mediterranean knowledge of India for centuries and therefore are cited and quoted by many ancient authors whose works do survive to this day.