About this Site

The site

The primary purpose of the site is to provide online English versions of the paradoxographical texts in one place. When this project was started, only three of these texts had been published in English translations: the pseudo-Aristotelian περὶ θαυμασίων ὰκουσμάτων (De mirabilius auscultationibus – On Marvellous Things Heard); Phlegon’s περὶ θαυμασὶων (On Marvels) and περὶ μακροβίων (On Long-lived Persons), made accessible through a translation with commentary by William Hansen; and the compilation of the anonymous Paradoxographus Vaticanus, with translation and commentary by Jacob Stern. Antigonus' ἱστοριῶν παραδόξων συναγωγή (Compilation of Marvellous Accounts) has been translated with commentary as a PhD thesis by I.R. Ciuca, but this has not been published. More texts are becoming available (see the Core Bibliography), but I will still provide my own translations on this site as not all of the published versions are freely available.

My translations are based primarily on Giannini’s 1964 critical edition of the texts. Giannini's Greek text and a framework of cross-references will also eventually be added, but will lag behind the translations themselves, since the latter are more useful to the general reader. It should be stated at the outset that the translations fill the gaps in the literature in the manner of sand-bags rather than dressed stone: they have their origin in reference versions put together as an aid to private study. Nonetheless, in the continuing absence of more scholarly translations of the complete corpus in open-access form, it seems useful to release them into the wild as they are.

The first translation undertaken was that of Anigonus, since this is the most substantial of the paradoxographical works yet to be translated into an accessible English text. The remaining texts will be translated in turn, leaving till last the two most easily accessible in existing translations: the Loeb translation of Ps-Aristotle On Marvellous Things Heard is already in the public domain, and Hansen's translation of Phlegon is available in print in a very affordable edition.

The site is intended to be a true online resource; thus, in making cross-references, I will link to versions of texts in the public domain rather than necessarily citing the best available (though these will, of course, appear in bibliographic details). So the user will be directed for purposes of comparison to, for example, D’Arcy Thompson’s translation of Aristotle’s History of Animals or to William Smith’s comprehensive but outdated dictionaries of classical geography and biography rather than to the current best resources. Those readers who have access to academic libraries will know where to look for the most up-to-date references, while those who do not will be saved from the frustrating experience of being directed to material that they are unable to see or use.

For this reason, as well as the provisional nature of the translations themselves, the site can make no claim to be an authoritative resource; however, I hope that it will prove to be of some use, particularly to readers with little or no Greek—at least, until something better comes along.

Site structure and navigation

The structure of the site is partly visible on the navigation panel at the left; to avoid unnecessary clutter, not all sub-pages are shown in the navigation text itself. At the moment, the emphasis is on content, so most of the pages are in the form of rather visually unexciting text and lists. The focus is on getting up as much material as possible, so fine-tuning such as the provision of internal hyperlinks for cross-references will lag behind.

The Paradoxographorum Reliquiae blog

While this site will be the major repository of my project, the blog will provide a place for more dynamic updating of content and for occasional ephemeral comments related to paradoxography.

Credits and acknowledgements

All sources used will be credited; if you feel that any of the material used has been insufficiently acknowledged, please let me know via the comments section and I will make any necessary amendments.

While I don't want to make invidious distinctions, some resources have been been so central to this project that it would scarcely have got off the ground at all without them: within the world of classical studies, there is Perseus, of course, but also the Pleiades project, and LacusCurtius; while outside, there is the Internet Archive—and, of course, Google who provide the platform on which it is built. (I am concerned here only with free open-access resources; various commercially available publications and tools have naturally also been essential.)

Copyright and licensing

It would have been impossible to create this site without drawing on material made publicly available by its creators. In a similar spirit, whatever you find on this site is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons 'Free Culture' Attribution-ShareAlike licence. This means that you can use and re-purpose original material on this site in any way you wish, on condition only that you acknowledge me and this site as source and, if you are using it for commercial purposes, that access to content taken from this site remains free and accessible to all.

n.b. Please note that more restrictive conditions may apply to featured non-public domain open-access sources drawn on in creating the site: always check the original permissions if in doubt.