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Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels. Trans., with an introduction and commentary, by William Hansen. (Exeter, U.K.: Exeter University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 215, preface, three appendixes, index.)
Between the third century B.c. and the third century A.D., a genre of writings known as 11 paradoxography" achieved immense popularity in Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Empire. Paradoxa are records of unusual events and bizarre phenomena, such as giant skeletons, animal oddities, vampires and ghosts, and monstrous births. Some twenty or so paradoxographers are known from scanty fragments or allusions to their works by other ancient authors; only seven books devoted to natural marvels have survived in nearly complete form. These texts contain rich troves of popular lore for folklorists and historians of ancient culture, yet the genre of marvel writing has been largely ignored by classicists and historians, and few translations are available. William Hansen has provided the first-ever English translation of Phlegon of Tralles, whose Book of Marvels reflects the passion for the bizarre in the second century A.D. Hansen, who has published extensively on the popular literature of antiquity, is admirably qualified to introduce folklorists to Phlegon's fascinating, long-neglected texts.
A substantial introduction gives an excellent history of marvel writing in Greek and Latin literature and its later influence, with many helpful references. Hansen traces the origins of paradoxography to "a confluence oftwo trends in Greek literature" (p. 2). A strong interest in the wondrous was already evident in the earliest works of Homer and Hesiod (eighth century B.C.), but the systematic recording of marvels came into fashion in the late fifth century B.C. (the time of Herodotus), as "fabulous histories, ethnographies, and travel accounts" of exotic peoples and places "were produced in increasing numbers" (p. 2). Around the same time, there was a rage for compilations. The vogue for publishing collections of wonders reveals "a growing enjoyment...