Paradoxography is a genre of Classical literature

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 which deals with the occurrence of abnormal or inexplicable phenomena of the natural or human worlds.

Early surviving examples of the genre include:

• Palaephatus
  Palaephatus
  Palaephatus was the original author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, the work of paradoxography On Incredible Tales , which survives in a Byzantine edition....
  
  ' On Incredible Things (4th century BC?)
• the Collection of Wonderful Tales composed by Antigonus of Carystus
  Antigonus of Carystus
  Antigonus of Carystus , Greek writer on various subjects, flourished in the 3rd century BC. After some time spent at Athens and in travelling, he was summoned to the court of Attalus I of Pergamum...
  
   (fl. 3rd century BC), partly on the basis of a paradoxographical work of Callimachus
  Callimachus
  Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
  
  
• Aratus
  Aratus
  Aratus was a Greek didactic poet. He is best known today for being quoted in the New Testament. His major extant work is his hexameter poem Phaenomena , the first half of which is a verse setting of a lost work of the same name by Eudoxus of Cnidus. It describes the constellations and other...
  
  ' Phaenomena (c. 240 BC), a poem partially concerned with unusual manifestations of weather as signs from the Gods
• Apollonius paradoxographus
  Apollonius paradoxographus
  Apollonius paradoxographus was the author of a paradoxographical work Mirabilia which was compiled from the works of earlier writers....
  
  ' Mirabilia (2nd century BC)

It is believed that the pseudo-Aristotelian

Pseudo-Aristotle

Pseudo-Aristotle is a general cognomen for authors of philosophical or medical treatises who attributed their work to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, or whose work was later attributed to him by others....

 On Marvellous Things Heard

On Marvellous Things Heard

On Marvellous Things Heard is a collection of thematically arranged anecdotes traditionally attributed to Aristotle. The material included in the collection mainly deals with the natural world...

(De mirabilibus auscultationibus) "contains a core of early material from the Hellenistic period

Hellenistic period

The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic era describes the time which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was so named by the historian J. G. Droysen. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia...

 which was then added to over time, including some material that was added in the 2nd century C.E. or even later."

Phlegon of Tralles

Phlegon of Tralles

Phlegon of Tralles was a Greek writer and freedman of the emperor Hadrian, who lived in the 2nd century AD.His chief work was the Olympiads, an historical compendium in sixteen books, from the 1st down to the 229th Olympiad , of which several chapters are preserved in Eusebius' Chronicle, Photius...

's Book of Marvels, which dates from the 2nd century AD is perhaps the most famous example of the genre, including in the main, stories of human abnormalities. Phlegon's brief accounts of prodigies and wonders include ghost stories, accounts of monstrous births, strange animals like centaurs, hermaphrodites, giant skeletons and prophesying heads. Phlegon's writing is characterised by brief and forthright description, as well as by a tongue-in-cheek insistence on the veracity of his claims.

Other works of this genre in Greek include Heraclitus the paradoxographer's On Incredible Things (1st or 2nd century AD) and Claudius Aelianus

Claudius Aelianus

Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...

' On the Nature of Animals (3rd century AD).

In Latin, Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...

 and Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 wrote works on admiranda (marvelous things), which do not survive.

Further reading

• Anton Westermann, Paradoxographoi, Braunschweig and London, 1839.
• Otta Wenskus, Lorraine Daston, "Paradoxographoi," in Der neue Pauly, vol. 9, Stuttgart, 2000, cols. 309-314.
• William Hansen (ed. & tr.), Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996