Warsaw Studies in Classical Literature and Culture 4

Julia Doroszewska

The Monstrous World

Corporeal Discourses in Phlegon
of Tralles’ Mirabilia
Warsaw Studies in Classical Literature and Culture 4

Julia Doroszewska

The Monstrous World

Revenants, oracular heads, hermaphrodites, sex-changers, human-animal children,
multiple pregnancies, births, body features … This is just a sample of subjects that
Phlegon of Tralles explored in the 2nd century AD in his Mirabilia. This study identifies
the common motifs of Phlegon’s text and determines his criterion of selection: using the
cultural category of monster, it argues that Phlegon exclusively collected stories of either
hybrid creatures or human “record-breakers“ with respect to scale, size and multiplicity of
their corporeal features. In this light, the Mirabilia appear to be a book on monsters and
the monstrous that corresponds with a general fondness for marvels and oddities during
the Roman imperial period.

The Author
Julia Doroszewska is Assistant Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Silesia,
Poland. Her field of interest is the literature of the Roman Empire and more particularly the
writings of Phlegon of Tralles.

www.peterlang.com
The Monstrous World
Warsaw Studies in Classical Literature and Culture
Edited by Mikołaj Szymański and Mariusz Zagórski

Volume 4
 Julia Doroszewska

The Monstrous World

Corporeal Discourses in Phlegon
of Tralles’ Mirabilia
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doroszewska, Julia, 1981-
The monstrous world : corporeal discourses in Phlegon of Tralles' Mirabilia /
Julia Doroszewska.
pages cm. – (Warsaw studies in classical literature and culture ; Volume 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-631-65626-6 (alk. paper) – ISBN 978-3-653-04870-4 (e-Book)
1. Phlegon, of Tralles. Book of marvels. 2. Curiosities and wonders–Early works to
1900. 3. Monsters–Folklore. I. Title.
PA4273.P3B6634 2015
398.20938–dc23
2015017509
This publication was financially supported by
the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of Warsaw.

ISSN 2196-9779
ISBN 978-3-631-65626-6 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-04870-4 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-69579-1 (EPUB)
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DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-04870-4
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments..................................................................................................7

I. Introduction......................................................................................................9
I.1 Aims..............................................................................................................10
I.2 Method. Monster as the Key and the Key to the Monster.....................12
I.3 The Author and the Work. A Few Facts and
Even Fewer Pieces of Gossip......................................................................15
I.4 Survey of scholarly literature.....................................................................20

II. Phlegon’s Monstrous World......................................................................23

II.1 Monsters.......................................................................................................23
II.1.1 Neither Dead Nor Alive.................................................................... 24
II.1.1.1 Revenants or Walking Corpses......................................... 24
Philinnion: The Story of a Proto-Vampire...................................... 30
Speaking in Riddles: The Plot of the Story...................................... 31
“Farewell!” The Epistolary Form of the Narrative.......................... 33
Peeking through the Keyhole: Philinnion from the Folktale........ 35
“Neither properly dead, nor properly alive”.
Why do the dead return?.................................................................. 41
Was Philinnion a Demon?................................................................ 48
Monstrous Identity, Monstrous Desires.......................................... 56
The Revenant Anthropophagous vs. the Oracular Head:
The Story of Polycritus...................................................................... 57
When Locrian Women Gave Birth to Monsters............................ 59
“Unharmed by the Stones”................................................................ 62
Revenant, Red Wolf and More Oracles: Buplagus and His Story......67
Not Haunting, Just Warning............................................................. 71
Monstrous Corpses............................................................................ 73
II.1.1.2 The Oracular Head............................................................. 74
Among Monstrous Divine Mouthpieces: Conclusions................. 78
5
 II.1.2 Neither a Woman nor a Man............................................................ 79
II.1.2.1 Hermaphrodites. The God vs. the Monsters.................... 81
The Monster. The Child of Polycritus and Others......................... 81
The God............................................................................................... 92
II.1.2.2 Sex-changers........................................................................ 93
Women who became Monsters. Conclusions ............................. 110
II.1.2.3 The World Reversed: Births from Males........................ 111
II.1.3 Neither Human Nor Animal.......................................................... 115
II.1.3.1 Monstrous Births.............................................................. 115
II.1.3.3 Hippocentaurs: Humanoids?........................................... 122
II.2 The Monstrous ......................................................................................... 128
Monstrously Old, Monstrously Big: Giant Bones.................................... 129
Two Heads, Four Heads: Monstrous Redundancy.................................. 138
Monstrous Multiples................................................................................... 140
Monstrously Productive Couples.............................................................. 142
Juvenile Mothers and Young Old Men: Monstrously Fast Maturation..... 144
Monstrous Longevity: Phlegon’s Macrobii............................................... 146
Phlegon’s Monstrous World. Conclusions................................................ 146

III. Phlegon and the Monsters in Context.............................................. 155

The Emperor as a Patron of Monsters............................................................ 156
Monsters for Sale, Monsters on Display: Deformed Slaves......................... 162
Monstrous Literature: Paradoxographers and Others.................................. 167
Conclusions....................................................................................................... 170

IV. Bibliography................................................................................................. 173

Abbreviations..................................................................................................... 173
Books and Articles............................................................................................ 173
Editions of Phlegon’s Mirabilia........................................................................ 186
Translations without the Greek Text.............................................................. 187
Editions of ancient authors.............................................................................. 187

6
Acknowledgments

I am especially indebted to and thank Professor William Hansen, whose fas-

cinating book on the Mirabilia was my source of inspiration and guide in my
adventure with Phlegon of Tralles, and whose support and aid I enjoyed dur-
ing my research stay at Indiana University of Bloomington. I am also happy
to express my gratitude to Professor Gościwit Malinowski for all of his critical
remarks which contributed to improving this book. Last but not least, I would
like to thank my husband Filip for his love and understanding during the best
and worst moments of my work.

7
I. Introduction

Revenants, oracular heads, hermaphrodites, sex-changers, child-bearing males,

human-animal children, giant bones, amazing fertility, multiple births, multiple
body features… This is just a sample of the themes explored by Phlegon of Tralles
in his compilation of odd stories, On Marvels.
This unusual and strange work, originally titled Περὶ θαυμασίων in Greek, and
better known today under the Latin title of Mirabilia, will be the object of the
present study. The author, Phlegon of Tralles, who lived in the 2nd century AD, as
well as his writings, have for many years garnered limited attention of scholars
and still remain quite little known even among the classicists; this is largely due
to the fact that Phlegon was regarded as a rather mediocre writer, and his output
was considered derivative and secondary. It seems that his contemporaries also
did not attach importance to his literary production since – although it may only
be accidental – very few references to his works have survived from antiquity to
our times.
However, Phlegon of Tralles definitely deserves attention as he left behind
one of the most peculiar works of ancient literature. The Mirabilia is a collec-
tion of stories about various extraordinary phenomena that Phlegon compiled
from earlier sources. Despite the fact that the author did not title the chapters of
his work, its composition is clear and cogent; the guiding themes by which he
grouped all thirty-five stories that comprise the collection can be easily distin-
guished. The thematic order that the compiler applied inspired the modern edi-
tors and translators of the Mirabilia who used to divide the work into parts and
title them on the basis of the main themes.
According to such a classification, the Mirabilia raise the following issues: rev-
enants, hermaphrodites and sex-changers, the discovery of giant bones, mon-
strous newborns, births from males, unusual multiple pregnancies, amazing
fertility, abnormally rapid development, and the discovery of live centaurs. To
complete this overview, another important theme should be added, i.e. that of the
oracular head, which is missing from the list above because it does not appear
independently but does appear twice in the stories about apparitions.
The Mirabilia is a fascinating text and by all means one that requires com-
ment, since so far it has not been examined in its entirety. The lack of a com-
prehensive study which would discuss its specificity may likely result from the
fact that, besides Phlegon of Tralles’ “bad reputation”, the compilation is quite
heterogeneous, i.e. the collected stories drastically vary in content, style, and size;

9
thus, only selected issues were separately examined by scholars, yet no attempt
has been made to approach the text as a comprehensive whole.

I.1 Aims
There is no doubt that the Mirabilia constitutes subject matter that still requires
an in-depth study. So far there has been one notable exception: William Hansen’s
work titled Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels (Exeter 1996). This is the first
English translation of the text that is provided with an exhaustive commentary
which also briefly presents the compilation within its literary genre, i.e. paradox-
ography.
The term paradoxography1 is not ancient; it is derived from the Greek word
παραδοξογράφοι, which was attested already in Tzetzes (Chil. 2.35.154), who
used it, although inconsistently, to describe authors writing on paradoxical and
unusual phenomena. The first to introduce the term as the name of the genre was
the modern German scholar Anton Westermann (1839), who applied it to works
which listed accounts of facts or alleged facts considered as marvels by ancient
authors. Callimachus is said to have been the inventor of this kind of literary pro-
duction, as he authored the first paradoxographical treatise (which is now lost).
His work had many followers, particularly in Hellenistic times, but also in subse-
quent ages; collections of wonders were popular in the Roman Empire, although
they often did not constitute autonomous compositions but were included as
parts of works devoted to natural history or ethnography, such as Pliny’s Natural
History. Phlegon is the only extant author from the times of the Roman Empire
whose work is sensu stricto a paradoxographical compilation.
While classifying Phlegon’s text as paradoxographical writing, Hansen (1996):
2ff. stresses its originality. He points out that other works of this kind usually
collect reports of various unusual phenomena of either an animate or inanimate
nature, such as the extraordinary properties of rivers, rocks, plants, animals, etc.,
whereas Phlegon’s compilation is focused exclusively on human oddities, and
this is the feature which distinguishes the text from other works of this literary
genre. In his reflection upon the specificity of the Mirabilia William Hansen does
not go any further; meanwhile, the most interesting question is why Phlegon,
when composing his Mirabilia, did not follow his predecessors’ lead? Why did
he give up the wonders of the natural world to focus instead on those which

1 On paradoxography, see Wenskus (2007); Ziegler (1949); Giannini (1963); Giannini

(1964); Jacob (1983); on Phlegon and paradoxography, see Frank (1941); Rodríguez
Blanco (1994); Hansen (1996); Schepens, Delcroix (1996).

10
concerned humans in their most abnormal form? These questions deserve an
answer, but in order to do so the originality of the Mirabilia needs to be exam-
ined more thoroughly.
Since the simple statetment that a focus on human oddities makes the com-
pilation exceptional among paradoxographical writings is far from satisfactory,
this leitmotif of Phlegon’s text has to be disccussed in a more extensive manner so
that it will help to reveal the meaning of the Mirabilia. And this is the aim of the
present study – to determine if there is a common pattern of all thirty-five stories
on human oddities collected in the Mirabilia, and to apply a category by which
the overall compilation could be examined and interpreted (see Method below).
Furthermore, the element of the bizarre and grotesque that is strongly pre-
sent in the Mirabilia led Hansen to compare it to modern British and American
tabloids which are based on bizarre human-interest stories. The scholar is both a
folklorist and a classicist, so his view is broader and certainly more comparatively
oriented. However, his approach, although very interesting, locates the problem
elsewhere and takes the ancient text out of its cultural context. Obviously, apply-
ing modern categories to past phenomena is always a valuable and fascinating
experience, but it seems to me that in such an approach the question that Hansen
answers positively, i.e. the question of whether both the content and interest of
the Mirabilia resemble the content and interest of modern tabloids, should be
preceded by another question. That very question is whether the Mirabilia and
similar works could have played such a role in their times as the tabloid press
now plays in modern times. Getting slightly ahead of my story I would say that,
in my opinion, the answer to this question is yes and no. But, as a matter of fact,
in order to answer this question, the Mirabilia must be examined in the context
of their times, and this is what I aim to do in the second section of this study.
For, in the times of the early Roman Empire, i.e. from the reign of Augustus
(27 BC – AD 14) onward, an evident fondness for unusual phenomena, especially
for diverse human and animal curiosities, is to be observed. This tendency mani-
fests itself, for instance, in the appearance of human monstrosities collections at
the imperial court, or in the fad for deformed slaves in the households of well-
to-do Romans, as well as in the inclination for preserving and displaying to
the public anatomical rarities, or, last but not least, reports of people exhibiting
extreme malformations in the oral tradition. This is also the context in which we
need to set the Mirabilia – a work that is entirely devoted to human monstrosities –
by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian and a well-educated
member of his entourage. The monster motif in the Mirabilia corresponds to
the increasing popularity of the monstrous in Phlegon’s times, and with no

11
doubt ought to be regarded as another manifestation of this tendency. Thus, in
my opinion, an examination of this cultural background is highly important to
understanding the text. Therefore, in the second part of this study I will discuss
selected issues related to the monstrous in Phlegon’s times as parallels to the ele-
ments of the monstrous in the Mirabilia.

I.2  Method. Monster as the Key and the Key to the Monster
At first glance, the Mirabilia is quite a heterogeneous piece that is composed of
various threads and motifs. There is, however, a common pattern to be observed
in all of the stories: an exclusive interest in human oddities with no regard for
other types of marvels. The corporeal aspect of the marvels and the focus solely
on the human body distinguishes the collection from other works of this kind.
As Phlegon seems to scarcely have edited the collected material, neither does he
provide his reader with an introduction to his compilation; this feature ought to
be considered as the author’s selection criterion for the compiled material. This
criterion, in turn, may be seen as the most important and valuable trace of his
literary activity and his work on the Mirabilia.
I am therefore going to focus on that criterion of selection to define it more
precisely by answering the following questions: what types of human oddities
were of greatest interest to the compiler, what characteristics do these marvels
have in common, and what was their cultural significance? In my view, there
is one category which for several reasons appears to be particularly useful and
appropriate in order to define Phlegon’s criterion of selection in the most com-
prehensive way: the monster. For I think that all of the motifs of the Mirabilia
fall into this category or, in fact, into one of its subcategories as derived from
the term monster, such as monstrosity or monstrous. By using this wide-ranging
category, I hope to gain deeper insight into Phlegon’s work and, finally, to gain
a better understanding of its significance. Now I am going to explain why the
‘monster’ is the category to be applied to an examination and interpretation of
the Mirabilia.
“The monster is more than an odious creature of the imagination; it is a kind
of cultural category, employed in domains as diverse as religion, biology, litera-
ture and politics”.2 Being so broad and ambiguous, the category of monster is
used by scholars of many fields: anthropologists, literary critics, sociologists,

2 Asma (2009): 13.

12
psychologists, historians and others.3 In its double, i.e. both literal and meta-
phorical meaning, the term ‘monster’ is applied to describe anatomical abnor-
malities as well as different cultural and literary phenomena. Thus it may refer to
fictional beings – be it supernatural, mythical or magical products of the human
imagination – and also to actual physical deformities and anomalies. Regard-
less of their type and origin, monsters (taken in the broad sense) always have
some unchangeable common points. In general, they are distinguished by their
horrendous, terrible and loathsome appearance. Most often they are hybrid crea-
tures, combinations of two or more different animal species or of animal and hu-
man features which are shocking due to their odd, bizarre, and unnatural form.
Since they stand on the threshold between two or more different worlds they
in fact belong to neither of them and, consequently, remain liminal beings that
destroy the standards of order, harmony and basics of human knowledge about
the world, transgressing the boundaries of the normal. Monsters are dangerous
because they are unclassifiable.
Such a formal, commonly accepted and interdisciplinary definition of ‘mon-
ster’ is adequate and useful in the study of Phlegon of Tralles’ Mirabilia since the
compilation contains stories constantly pretending to be true and presented as
such which talk about such monsters as revenants or centaurs; it also records
cases of deformity and abnormality, such as hermaphrodites, sex-changers and
other human oddities. Many of these creatures are hybrids combined with the
features of two different species or orders, such as human-animal, male-female,
or dead-alive.
Moreover, there is also another important reason, i.e. the etymological one, to
apply the category of monster to the Mirabilia. The English word ‘monster’ de-
rives from the Latin word monstrum, which signifies an omen or a prodigy, and
stems from the root monere, ‘to warn’, related to monstrare – ‘to show’. Hence to be
a monster means to be an omen – a warning sign – usually of a divine disfavor –
and a portent of the future. In antiquity, almost all kinds of human and ani-
mal anomalies had the chance of being considered portents. In the Mirabilia, in
several cases we encounter monsters that are regarded as omens, whereas other

3 Cf. ‘Monster’ in: OED; Mühlemann (1999); McCulloch (1913). Cf. Andriano (1999);
Asma (2009); Campbell (1968); Campbell, Moyers (1988); Cohen (1970); Cohen
(1982); Cohen (1996); Douglas (1966); Fernandez (1986); Gilmore (2003); Gould
(1886); Holiday (1973); Heuvelmans (1990); Williams (1996), and many others.

13
unnatural phenomena are not said to be of divine origin, which is likely due to
the fact that the stories come from different times and places.4
The adjective ‘monstrous’, in turn, will be applied as a term to describe those
phenomena in Phlegon’s writing which constitute anomalies due to their record-
beating size or scale, such as extraordinarily multiple births, abnormally rapid
development, incredible fertility, or extremely large body dimensions.
Concluding, when we speak about monsters we are technically using an an-
cient term, and this enables us to slightly approach the ancient idea of monstros-
ity. Furthermore, the category of monster and the monstrous and, in general,
monstrosity, is useful and appropriate when defining the specificity of the Mira-
bilia, since the monster is the common pattern in all of these so different stories.
Phlegon’s particular interest in monstrous creatures seems to reflect the ambi-
ence of those times when monsters were the object of a particular fascination.
The aim of my study is to prove that the compiler deliberately selected extreme
cases of human oddities which transgressed the boundaries of the normal con-
cerning the human body and raised questions about the condition of the human
species. Phlegon’s collection of monstrosities may be viewed as his creation of a
“monstrous world” which reciprocally seems to reflect the world in which the
author lived. Therefore, the monster as a leitmotif distinguishes Phlegon’s work
within paradoxography but, on the other hand, it makes it emblematic of its time,
which delivers a sample of second-century aesthetic tastes.
The book is divided into three parts; the first part is the Introduction, the other
two are chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1 discusses the origins and cultural meaning
of monster motifs in the Mirabilia; this section includes two parts: The Monster
(devoted to hybrid monsters) and The Monstrous (on human record-breakers).
The part titled Monster categorizes monster motifs into the three following
groups: 1) Neither Alive nor Dead, which deals with revenants; 2) Neither a
Woman nor a Man, which deals with hermaphrodites, sex-changers, and males
who gave birth; and 3) Neither Human nor Animal, which concerns accounts of
human-animal children and hippocentaurs. The part titled The Monstrous con-
siders cases of abnormal rapid development, monstrous fertility, extremely large
body dimensions, extraordinary multiple births as well as multiple body features.

4 Phlegon used the Greek word for ‘monster’ – τέρας, which is, however, useless for the
study on the compilation; the word τέρας (from which the modern term ‘teratology’
derives) does not exist in English nor in any other modern European language, and it
does not constitute nowadays – unlike the monster – any cultural category either, thus,
in consequence, it is inappropriate for application to fictional beings such as ghosts or
centaurs.

14
In the last part of chapter 1, a reflection on the specificity of Phlegon’s work is
provided. Chapter 2 is concerned with selected issues regarding the popularity
of monsters during the times of the early Roman Empire which help set the Mi-
rabilia in their cultural context.

I.3 The Author and the Work. A Few Facts

and Even Fewer Pieces of Gossip
Information about Phlegon of Tralles as obtained from antiquity is very scarce.
He was originally from the city of Tralles in the region of Karia in Asia Minor
and is known as a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian (reigned AD 117–138), but
his role at the imperial court remains unclear; however, he is suggested to have
been Hadrian’s secretary and to have administered the emperor’s itinerary.5 Un-
fortunately, nothing is known about his birth, life, family, or education; AD 137 is
the terminus post quem of his death.6
A few facts about Tralles are delivered by Phlegon himself, as well as by some
ancient sources such as the so-called Historia Augusta, Photius’ Bibliotheca and
the Liber Suda.
The two former sources claim him to have been Hadrian’s freedman.7 The Suda
calls him Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Augustus or Hadrian,8
the historian. As Wilhelm Weber pointed out, the variant on his being a freed-
man of Augustus seems to reflect a passage from book I of the Chronicle of Euse-
bius of Caesarea, preserved only in Armenian. This passage speaks of Phlegon as
a freedman of “Caesar”, without mentioning the emperor’s name.9 Nowadays the
version regarding Augustus is unanimously considered to be a mistake.10
As a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian, coming from the Aelius family and
the son of Publius Aelius Afer, Phlegon must have obtained the name of Publius

5 Fein (1994): 193–199; Birley (1997): 151.

6 On Phlegon’s biography, see Frank (1941): passim; Fein (1994): 193–199; Hansen
(1996): 1 ff.
7 Phot. Bibl., cod. 97, p. 83b (= FGH 257 T 3): ἀνεγνώσθη Φλέγοντος Τραλλιανοῦ,
ἀπελευθέρου τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος Ἀδριανοῦ, Ὀλυμπιονικῶν καὶ χρονικῶν συναγωγή;
HA, Quadr. tyr. 7.6: Hadriani epistolam promam ex libris Flegontis liberti eius proditam.
8 Suda, s.v. Φλέγων Τραλλιανός: ἀπελεύθερος τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ Καίσαρος (οἱ δὲ Ἀδριανοῦ
φασίν)· ἱστορικός.
9 Eus. Chron. 1, p. 265 (Schoene-Petermann).
10 After Weber (1907): 94; cf. Schmidt (2000).

15
Aelius, according to Roman naming conventions.11 As evidence we have a pas-
sage from the HA which mentions a certain Aelius Maurus, a freedman of Phl-
egon, who is quoted as the source of an anecdote about the Emperor Septimius
Severus.12 The name of Aelius Maurus, however, not attested elsewhere, is consid-
ered as a source almost certainly forged by the author of the HA.13 Nonetheless, if
the author attempted to give credence to his words he could have fabricated his
source and given him a historical person as a protector; this is only a hypothesis.
The fact that Phlegon was Hadrian’s freedman is also attested in the single
manuscript that preserved his work – a tenth-century manuscript labeled Palati-
nus Graecus 398 and deposited in the Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg.14
None of the testimonies that claim Phlegon to have been Hadrian’s freedman
specifies his role at the imperial court. Phlegon himself proves his connection to
the court in two short remarks: in chapter 95 of the Macrobii he mentions that a
certain Faustus, of Sabinian origin, an imperial slave, lived 136 years – Phlegon
asserts to have seen that man when he was brought before the Emperor Hadrian
as an oddity; in chapter 35 of the Mirabilia he describes an embalmed hippocen-
taur which “is kept” (ἀπόκειται) in the emperor’s storehouse. The present tense
that is used by Phlegon as well as a detailed description of the creature seems to
testify to the author’s presence at the court at that time and to his familiarity with
the imperial palace. Although the emperor’s name is not mentioned, one may
assume that again this was Hadrian, Phlegon’s patron.
Photius also states that Phlegon dedicated his work titled Olympiads (of
which the last two books, 15 and 16, were devoted to Hadrian’s reign) to a certain
Publius Aelius Alcibiades, a member of the emperor’s guard who, inferring from
his name, must have been Hadrian’s freedman as well; such a person is not men-
tioned in any literary evidence, but is epigraphically attested to be a cubiculo, i.e.

11 Frank (1941): 261. Adopted as a son by the Emperor Trajan, Hadrian did not take
Trajan’s nomen gentile – Ulpius – which explains the fact that Hadrian’s freedmen as
well as new citizens obtained the name of Publius Aelius, cf. Eck (1998). Birley (1997):
75 suggests that Phlegon accompanied Hadrian already in AD 116, one year before the
latter’s adoption by Trajan, since he claims to have seen with his own eyes a woman
changing sex at the Syrian town of Laodicea ad Mare.
12 HA, Sev. 20.1: legisse me apud Aelium Maurum Phlegontis Hadriani libertum memini.
Baldwin (1996): 201. Cf. PIR 2 A 220; HRR, vol. 2, p. 120.
13 Syme (1971): 73–76; Syme (1983): 103–105.
14 On the details of the manuscript, see Stramaglia’s edition, pp. V ff.

16
the emperor’s chamberlain.15 He was associated with the city of Nyssa in Karia,16
which was situated c. 15 km from Tralles (now Aydın in Turkey), which was
Phlegon’s hometown. It cannot be ruled out that Phlegon and Alcibiades had met
each other before they came to Rome, nor even that they were friends because
they were compatriots.
Phlegon wrote several works, none of which has survived except for the
Mirabilia, which is also incomplete. The codex Palatinus Graecus 398, the one
that preserved Phlegon’s fragmentary output, contains the following works by
him: the Mirabilia (Περὶ θαυμασίων), the beginning of which is mutilated, sev-
eral fragments of On Longevity (Περὶ μακροβίων, Macrobii), as well as Olym-
piads (Ὀλυμπιάδες) – his opus maximum, which was a historical chronicle of
the Olympic Games from their founding in 776 BC until the 229th Olympiad
(AD 137–140), when Hadrian died. Olympiads, according to the Suda (s.v.
Φλέγων Τραλλιανός), consisted of sixteen books (Ὀλυμπιάδες ἐν βιβλίοις ιϛʹ)
and also existed in an abbreviated version of eight books (τὰ δὲ αὐτὰ ἐν βιβλίοις
ηʹ) as well as in an epitomized version (Ἐπιτομὴ Ὀλυμπιονικῶν ἐν βιβλίοις βʹ).
The Suda lists, instead, titles of Phlegon’s other works that have not been pre-
served, among which are: A Description of Sicily (Ἔκφρασις Σικελίας); The Festi-
vals of the Romans (Περὶ τῶν παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἑορτῶν), and A Topography of Rome
(Περὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τόπων καὶ ὧν ἐπικέκληνται ὀνομάτων). He is also said, in the
Suda, to have written some other books (καὶ ἄλλα) whose titles, regrettably, were
not mentioned.17
The question of the relationship between the Mirabilia and the Macrobii is
problematic; their handy, traditionally used Latin titles suggest that they were
separate works, and they are usually treated as such in scholarly compendia and
companions (e.g. RE). However, this is not so clear. The Suda gives the Greek title
of the former as Περὶ μακροβίων καὶ θαυμασίων. The codex Palatinus Graecus
398 first quotes the text of the Mirabilia, then that of the Macrobii, under which
it reads: Φλέγοντος Τραλλιανοῦ ἀπελευθέρου Καίσαρος Περὶ θαυμασίων καὶ
μακροβίων; although the order is reversed, both versions may suggest that both
works are somehow related. On the other hand, Diogenes Laertius mentions
the title of Περὶ μακροβίων by Phlegon (Diog. Laert. 1.111: ὥς φησι Φλέγων ἐν
τῷ Περὶ μακροβίων), which may indicate it was a separate work.18 I believe that

15 Baldwin (1996): 201; Birley (1997): 151.

16 Ibid.: 222.
17 Translation of the Greek titles by Hansen (1996): 17.
18 The work by Pseudo-Lucian under the same title of the Macrobii (Περὶ μακροβίων)
refers to the source that was used by Phlegon (Frank (1941): 262).

17
they indeed constituted two different works; such a conclusion can be made by
the fact that Phlegon’s idea of literary production seems to be the compiling of
“linearly-organized collections of information on different themes”, as Hansen
rightly observes.19 It is therefore imaginable that both works appeared indepen-
dently, with one concerning various human phenomena and the other focused
exclusively on extremely long-lived persons.
However, it is not these compilations but Olympiads that seems to be Phlegon’s
most successful production and to which many references are to be found (e.g.
Stephanus of Byzantium). It was especially renowned among Christian authors,
such as Origenes (Contra Celsum 2.33), as it contained a description of a great
eclipse of the sun connected with earthquakes in Bitynia and Nicaea during the
reign of Tiberius that was to have accompanied Jesus’ death on the cross. Euse-
bius calls him “the distinguished calculator of Olympiads” and Hieron includes
him in his list of “very educated men” (FGH 257 F 16a and 24b).
There are no more facts about Phlegon; everything else are just rumors.
A curious piece of gossip links Phlegon with the Emperor Hadrian: a passage in
the Life of Hadrian in the HA states:
So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biog-
raphy; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their
own names. For indeed, Phlegon’s writings, it is said, are Hadrian’s in reality (transl. D.
Magie).20

This short and obscure passage caused many problems for scholars since it
vaguely imputes to Hadrian publication of his own autobiography as a biogra-
phy under the names of his freedmen, among whom Phlegon is mentioned.21
Certainly, nowadays this accusation is regarded as highly suspicious since, above
all, we have no information about any imperial biography under the name of
Phlegon.22 Due to the unfavorable character regarding the Emperor in this para-
graph, Eva Frank claims it to have been the malicious gossip that circulated at the

19 Hansen (1996): 17.

20 HA, Hadr. 16.1: famae celebris Hadrianus tam cupidus fuit, ut libros vitae suae scriptos
a se libertis suis litteratis dederit iubens, ut eos suis nominibus publicarent. nam et
Phlegontis libri Hadriani esse dicuntur.
21 For a discussion on Hadrian’s biography and its relation to, e.g. Phlegon, see: Winterfeld
(1902): 549–558; Frank (1941): 263–264; Hartke (1951): 274–275; André (1993): pas-
sim; Lewis (1993): 657–658; Chastagnol (1994): 10; Baldwin (1996): 202–203; Birley
(1997): 151, Birley (2003): passim.
22 Frank (1941): 263; Chastagnol (1994): 10.

18
court.23 Nevertheless, as Hansen observes, “the gossip suggests that among liter-
ary freedmen attached to the emperor, Phlegon’s name came readily to mind”.24
While remaining in the circle of mischievous accusations and comments, we
can quote William Hansen’s suggestion that a passage of Juvenal may concern,
among others, Phlegon personally.25 The Roman satirist wrote:
Ah, Quirinus, that supposed rustic of yours is putting on his chaussures grecques and
wearing his médaillons grecs on his neck parfumé à la grecque. They come – this one
leaving the heights of Sicyon, this other from Amydon, this one from Andros, that one
from Samos, this one from Tralles or Alabanda – heading for the Esquiline and the hill
named from the willow, to become the innards and the masters of our great houses.
They have quicksilver wit, shameless presumption, words at the ready, more gushing
than Isaeus. Say what you want him to be. In his own person he has brought anyone you
like: school teacher, rhetorician, geometrician, painter, masseur, prophet, funambulist,
physician, magician – your hungry Greekling has every talent. Tell him to go to heaven
and he will.26

If Tralles stands here for Phlegon, he was, at least in the eyes of Juvenal, one of the
careerists that was ready for anything. This suggestion cannot be ruled out, but
the chronology does not seem to support the reference in the poem to Phlegon
in person. Although the terminus post quem for the publication of the 1st book of
the Saturae is dated at AD 107 at the earliest, Satire 3 as well as 2 and 5 most likely
appeared before AD 100; only the subsequent books were published already dur-
ing the reign of Hadrian (AD 117–138). Thus, if Phlegon’s career was associated
with Hadrian’s reign, the passage from the work that was published several years
before could not have referred to him.27
Phlegon of Tralles remains a mysterious personage; all we can say about him
is but a handful of speculations, except for the fact that he seems to have been
a keen collector of marvels and a compiler by avocation. Thus, all we have is his

23 Frank (1941): 264, following Kornemann (1905): 59.

24 Hansen (1996): 1.
25 Ibid.: 1–2.
26 Iuv. 3.67–78: rusticus ille tuus sumit trechedipna, Quirine, / et ceromatico fert niceteria
collo. / hic alta Sicyone, ast hic Amydone relicta, / hic Andro, ille Samo, hic Trallibus
aut Alabandis, / Esquilias dictumque petunt a vimine collem, / viscera magnarum
domuum dominique futuri. / ingenium velox, audacia perdita, sermo / promptus et
Isaeo torrentior. ede quid illlum / esse putes. quemvis hominem secum attulit ad nos: /
grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, / augur, schoenobates, medicus, magus.
omnia novit / Graeculus esuriens: in caelum, iusseris, ibit; transl. S. M. Braund.
27 A detailed analysis of biographical sources on Juvenal is to be found in: Friedländer
(1969): 1–35; Courtney (1980): 1–11.

19
best preserved and, as it seems, most unique work, namely the Mirabilia, that
may tell us some more about this unique author.

I.4  Survey of scholarly literature

The monster as a literary and cultural phenomenon is currently gaining increas-
ing popularity among scholars. In the last two decades many books have been
published on this subject; they usually examine the issue in an insightful man-
ner, also with regard to ancient Greek and Roman culture. Interesting studies of
authors such as Carlin A. Barton (1993), David Williams (1996), Joseph Nigg
(1999), David D. Gilmore (2003), or Stephen T. Asma (2009) may be mentioned
here; however, none of them refers to Phlegon’s Mirabilia.
The most comprehensive biographical study on Phlegon so far is Eva Frank’s
(1941) article in the RE; in the same encyclopedia one may also find a briefer
note on Phlegon by Konrad Ziegler (1949). In Neue Pauly a short note on Phl-
egon was also drawn by Peter L. Schmidt (2000).
For the lack of a monographic approach the starting point for research on
Phlegon is the excellent work of an American scholar, William F. Hansen (1996),
which contains an English translation of the Mirabilia and the other surviving
fragments of Phlegon’s works and which is preceded by a brief, diligent introduc-
tion followed by an extensive commentary. In 2002 a German translation was
published by Kai Brodersen; his commentary focuses on the reception of the
Mirabilia in subsequent centuries, with references mostly regarding the story of
Philinnion in Phlegon’s Mir. 1, from Proclus, through the Renaissance authors of
treatises on magic and demonology, and up to Goethe and the Romantic writers.
Another monographic approach but solely based on Mir. 10 (which contains
two fragments of the Sibylline Books), is a study by the Italian researcher Lu-
isa Breglia Pulci Doria (1983). This subject is also discussed by Herman Diels
(1890), Willem den Boer (1979) and Bruce MacBain (1982).
There are also papers by Alessandro Giannini (1964), María Eugenia Rod-
ríguez Blanco (1994), Irene Pajón Leyra (2009), or Guido Schepens and Kris Del-
croix (1996) which classify Phlegon’s work as a paradoxographical writing and
examine it within this literary genre.
The first three narratives of the Mirabilia, which are of the best literary quality
as compared to the other parts of the compilation, always drew the most atten-
tion: there are several articles containing reflections on their origin, authorship,
style, language, and subject matter. A discussion on these problems was raised
already in the second half of the nineteenth century by German scholars: Ar-
thur Ludwig (1886) and Erwin Rohde (1914 (1st ed. 1876); 1877), and went on

20
throughout the twentieeth century. Before World War II, Paul Wendland (1911a),
Josef Mesk (1925), and Willy Morel (1934) dealt with the compilation. Research
was also continued after the war, and dealt mostly with Phlegon’s sources: studies
by Jan Janda (1966); Jörg-Dieter Gauger (1980); Fabio Martelli (1982); Aurelio
Peretti (1983); William Hansen (1989) should also be mentioned here; there are
also articles in the RE by Felix Jacoby (1913), Karl Scherling (1952), and Otto
Höfer (1886).
Since revenants are the common motif in the first three narratives in the
Mirabilia, the text was examined in the broader context of ancient ghost stories by
many scholars: Paul Wendland (1911b), Lacy Collison-Morley (1912), and John
Cuthbert Lawson (1926); and more recently by: Debbie Felton (1999), Sarah Iles
Johnston (1999), and Antonio Stramaglia (1995a, 1995b, 1999, 2000), as well as
Daniel Ogden (2008) and John R. Morgan (2013).
These motifs were also used as material for comparative studies on Indo-
European folktales by Jan-Öjvind Swahn (1955), William F. Hansen (1980 and
1989), and Joan N. Radner (1989).
Other topics of interest in the Mirabilia, such as hermaphrodites and vari-
ous human monstrosities, were discussed by French scholars: Marie Delcourt
(1938; 1961), Luc Brisson (1978; 1997), and Annie Allély (2003), as well as by
an American scholar, Robert Garland (1995), a Hungarian researcher, Dora
Pataricza, in her doctoral dissertation (2010a), as well as by Julia Doroszewska
(2013a and b)
Moreover, the motif of the oracular head was examined by Waldemar Deonna
(1925), Joseph F. Nagy (1990), and Daniel Ogden (2001). Numerous oracles pre-
served in Phlegon’s work were discussed by Herbert W. Parke and Donald E. W.
Wormell (1956), and by Joseph E. Fontenrose (1978).
The motif of sex-changers (especially the myth of Teiresias) was studied
by Alexander H. Krappe (1928), Luc Brisson (1976), Paul M. C. Forbes Irving
(1990), and Timothy Gantz (1993).
Several scholars worked on Phlegon’s other work – De Macrobiis: e.g. Wil-
helm Kubitschek (1899), Claude Nicolet (1980), Josef Klein (1878), or Wilhelm
Schulze (1966).
Research on fragments of Phlegon’s Olympiads was conducted by Carl Wachs-
muth (1895), Wilhelm Weber (1907), Felix Jacoby (FGH, Comment. 2: 838–845),
and Barry Baldwin (1996).
The discoveries of giant bones as quoted in the Mirabilia were examined by
Adrienne Mayor (2001).

21
 Finally, a number of scholars attempted to establish the text of the Mirabilia,
among these were: Tiberius Hemsterhuis (1733), Giacomo Leopardi (1835;
1969), Adolf Emperius (1847); Carel Gabriel Cobet (1858), Augustus Meineke
(1859), Augustus Nauck (1872), and Rudolf Hercher (1876); Arthur Ludwig
(1886), Maurice Holleaux (1930), Willy Morel (1934), and Emil Orth (1935);
Antonio Stramaglia (1995a and his edition of Phlegon); Carlo M. Lucarini (2003).

22
II.  Phlegon’s Monstrous World

II.1 Monsters
– How to approach monsters?
– Carefully.
(Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters)

In the Introduction I explained my idea as to why and how the category of mon-
ster will be used in this study as the key to approaching Phlegon of Tralles’ Mi-
rabilia; it will serve in my attempt to explore and reveal the meaning of all the
threads that appear in the text and thereafter to build on the interpretation of its
cultural significance.
What is and what is the monster like? To develop a better understanding of
this phenomenon I first need to conduct a brief survey of the definitions and
models employed in examining the issue of the monster. In literary and cultural
studies, monsters are most often described as hybrid creatures, combinations of
animal and human features or a mixture of animal species. According to Wil-
liam Hansen’s brief definition, monsters are “fabulous and usually frightening
beings that typically are unnaturally large in size and/or composed of elements
proper to more than one natural being”.28 Especially in ancient mythology, where
monsters are so well represented, nearly all of them “can be generated by three or
fewer rules, namely, increase the size of a naturally occurring creature, multiply
a body part, and/or combine body parts from two or more creatures. In short:
magnification, multiplication, and mixing”.29
Monsters, particularly those which are combinations of the elements of two
opposing worlds, escape easy categorization: “This refusal to participate in the
classificatory ‘order of things’ is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing
hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in
any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspend-
ed between forms that threatens to smash distinctions”.30
In this part of the book I am going to examine these monsters in Phlegon’s
work which, in my view, may be read as hybrids in both the literal and figura-
tive sense. I will explore their origin and possible cultural significance in order

28 Hansen (2005): 228.

29 Ibid.
30 Cohen’s introduction to Cohen (1996): 6.

23
to shed some light on their meaning and function in the Mirabilia. As hybrid
monsters I understand the ambiguous creatures which cross borders between
opposing realms, such as that of the living and that of the dead, or the male and
the female, or the human and the animal. In Phlegon, beings that are so hardly
classifiable are: revenants and talking heads deprived of the body, which hardly
belong to either the world of the living or to that of the dead; these will be dis-
cussed in the section Neither Alive nor Dead. Then hermaphrodites, sex-changers,
and males who gave births and whose actual sex is open to question, so this will
be taken under consideration in the section Neither Male nor Female. And last
but not least, narratives of beings which transgress the boundaries of species,
namely of children displaying animal features as well as of hippocentaurs, will be
examined in the section Neither Human nor Animal. I hope that thanks to this
categorization the hybrid nature of Phlegon’s monsters will emerge more clearly,
thus disclosing the deeper meaning of the Mirabilia.

II.1.1  Neither Dead Nor Alive

II.1.1.1  Revenants or Walking Corpses
This section is devoted to the three stories of revenants found in Phlegon. My
aim is to show to what extent and in what respect they differ from other stories of
this kind in ancient literature. Before I proceed to examine Phlegon’s revenants,
I will confront both the ancient and the modern terminological problems con-
nected with this ghostly matter; I am also going to look through other Greek
and Roman stories of revenants in order to contextualize the ones by Phlegon.
By these means I hope to better explain Phlegon’s narratives’ specifity and to get
their overall meaning in the Mirabilia.
May a returning dead entity, or a ghost, be considered dead indeed? Their
restless activity indicates that they are not dead at all; on the other hand, they can
hardly be described as alive. They are liminal beings who remain on the thresh-
old between two opposing worlds – the one of the living and that of the dead, and
at the same time they do not belong to any.
Since Phlegon’s first three chapters contain narratives of people who died and
then returned to life, or, rather, as was noted by William Hansen, to “quasi-life”,31
modern editors and translators of the Mirabilia used to title this part of Phl-
egon’s work “Ghosts”. This term, although commonly used to describe the return-
ing dead in both Greek and Roman literature, is a little vague, especially in the

31 Hansen (1996): 65.

24
case of Phlegon’s text, in which all apparitions are embodied ghosts (cautiously
speaking, two out of three, with the third one being a little ambiguous) whose
corporeality plays an important role in the course of action and, in my opinion,
is of great significance to our understanding of the Mirabilia. And although these
three stories essentially differ from one another, they all share a common char-
acteristic: all of the apparitions are of a substantial, corporeal nature and hardly
fit the definition of a ghost.
According to The Oxford English Dictionary, a ghost is an incorporeal being,
an immaterial part or a spirit of a person (OED, s.v. ‘ghost’). In general, when
using the term ‘ghost’ we usually think of “a disembodied figure believed to be
the spirit of a living being who has died”, as is defined briefly by Jack Sullivan.32
Meanwhile, all of the apparitions reported by Phlegon in chapters 1–3 are (or
seem to be) corporeal beings in the literal sense, for they appear in the physical
body they had when they were alive. Therefore, a more proper name for the dead
who retain their bodies is revenant – “a person who returns from the dead; a
reanimated corpse; a ghost” (OED, s.v. ‘revenant’). The corporeality of revenants
influences their essentially different, i.e. than in the case of disembodied ghosts,
interactions with the living. As we shall see in due course, the revenants’ substan-
tial nature implies that they are potentially able to function “normally” in the
upperworld in some respects and remain unrecognized: sometimes their appear-
ance might be delusive to such an extent that they could be regarded as alive and
even get into a very intimate relationship with a living person.
But for the moment I will make do with the statement that in all three stories
in the Mirabilia we are dealing only with revenants – embodied ghosts who are
essentially a different phenomenon than the disembodied ones. The difference,
however, is not that clearly noticeable in Phlegon either, nor in the ancient tradi-
tion in general, at least in terms of terminology. It seems that the Greeks did not
distinguish insubstantial apparitions from substantial ones: for instance, to de-
scribe these phenomena Phlegon himself uses the Greek terms ϕάσμα or δαίμων,
which are rather ambiguous and may not necessarily refer to ghosts or revenants
in our modern understanding but also to many different kinds of supernatural
beings, including gods, all sorts of semi-divine apparitions or demons;33 neither

32 Sullivan (1986): 168.

33 Johnston (1999): 162 ff. Notice the difference between the Greek word δαίμων and
its contemporary English version ‘demon’ (as well its cognates in other European lan-
guages, such as ‘démon’ in French, ‘demone’ in Italian, ‘demonio’ in Spanish, etc.): the
former may be used for either beneficent or maleficent entities, whereas ‘demons’ are
almost exclusively maleficent; see ibid.

25
term determines the nature of the apparitions. People in antiquity neither dis-
tinguished supernatural phenomena the way we do nor was the development of
such beliefs reflected in the language. The lack of a distinct vocabulary in Greek
as well as in Latin makes it difficult to grasp these phantoms’ specificity;34 the dif-
ferentiation between embodied ghosts and disembodied ones needs to be con-
cluded from the other evidence given in the text. Therefore, in cases when the
physical existence of these beings is not depicted explicitly, the reader may search
for clues about how such beings function, e.g. whether their actions show they
are of the corporeal kind or not.
A more specific classification of ghost stories, based on the main motifs when
applied to ancient literature, reveals a variety of types which are also known
from modern folklore and literature, such as tales of necromancy, spirit posses-
sion, trips to the underworld, witchcraft, stories of warning apparitions, stories
of haunting, of places and of dreams, etc. Ghost stories are to be found in the
works of epics from Homer onwards, and of the tragedians, comedians, histori-
ans and others. Interestingly, a survey of ancient sources shows that embodied
apparitions, such as revenants, seem to be less frequently represented, whereas
insubstantial, shadow-like ghosts are more common.35 Descriptions of ghosts
depicting them as smoke (καπνός), a shadow (σκιά) or dream-shapes (ὄνειρος)
are to be found frequently throughout both Greek and Latin literature;36 these
comparisons and epithets explicitly indicate the ghosts’ immaterial status. The
most memorable examples of insubstantial ghosts appear in the Homeric po-
ems. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus is visiting the realm of the dead and tries
to embrace the ghost of his mother, three times she flies from his arms “like a
shadow or a dream”.37 Similarly, in the Iliad Achilles tries to embrace the ghost
of Patroclus but fails, and the ghost goes underground “like smoke”.38 The Greek
and Roman stories of “proper ghosts” – insubstantial apparitions – are in their
mass too numerous to be quoted here; instead, I will focus on stories which speak
(or seem to) of revenants and the like. But first I will briefly summarize Phlegon’s
narratives in which we encounter the following revenants: Philinnion (Mir. 1) – a

34 Felton (1999): XII.

35 Ibid.: 16.
36 Winkler (1980): 163.
37 Hom. Od. 11.204–208: ὣς ἔφατ’, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γ’ ἔθελον φρεσὶ μερμηρίξας / μητρὸς ἐμῆς
ψυχὴν ἑλέειν κατατεθνηυίης. / τρὶς μὲν ἐφωρμήθην, ἑλέειν τέ με θυμὸς ἀνώγει, / τρὶς
δέ μοι ἐκ χειρῶν σκιῇ εἴκελον ἢ καὶ ὀνείρῳ / ἔπτατ’.
38 Hom. Il. 23.99–101: ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ὠρέξατο χερσὶ φίλῃσιν / οὐδ’ ἔλαβε· ψυχὴ δὲ
κατὰ χθονὸς ἠΰτε καπνὸς / ᾤχετο τετριγυῖα.

26
girl that returned to life and came to her parents’ house in order to have sexual
intercourse with a young lodger; Polycritus (Mir. 2) – an eminent citizen who
appeared after death at the assembly, tore into pieces and then devoured the flesh
of his own hermaphroditic baby; and Buplagus (Mir. 3) – a Syrian cavalry com-
mander who rose from the dead in the battlefield and proclaimed a prophecy to
the Romans (these stories will be examined in more detail in the next section).
Other instances of apparitions known from ancient tradition which display
some features of corporeality may be grouped into the following categories:
1) dead heroes; 2) people revived on their funeral pyre; and 3) corpses reani-
mated by withchcraft.
Dead heroes in general must have constituted a separate category of the de-
ceased. They were often able to interact physically with the living – being ac-
tive within the boundaries of their graves, their native lands or the sites of their
cults.39 Traces of the idea that some of the dead of special standing could affect
the living are to be found already in Homer. In the Iliad (2.546–551) it is said that
the Athenians worshipped their dead king Erechtheus in the temple of Athena,
bringing him yearly sacrifices of bulls and lambs. This is the earliest testimony
of a practice that resembles a hero cult and a ritual of propitiation.40 It would
indicate that some of the very special dead entities were much more powerful
than others, whom we see to be quite incapable and powerless in the nekuia of
the Odyssey 11.41
This type of the dead is found in Pausanias’ story of the Hero of Temesa
(6.6.7–11, also in Strabo, 6.1.5). According to Pausanias, Odysseus and his crew
were once forced ashore at Temesa by a storm. There, one of the sailors became
drunk and raped a local girl, and in return the people of Temesa stoned him to
death. Odysseus then simply sailed away, but the ghost (δαίμων) of the killed
man began attacking and killing the inhabitants of Temesa. They consulted the
Pythia, who ordered them to propitiate the demon by devoting a sanctuary to
him and by sacrificing to him the most beautiful maiden in the town every year.
One day the famous boxer Euthymus came to Temesa exactly during the cer-
emony of expiation. He saw the girl and immediately fell in love with her. She
swore to marry him if he saved her life. So the boxer waited for the ghost and
won a fight with him, thus driving him out of the land. The ghost disappeared,
sinking into the sea, and Euthymus married the girl.

39 Felton (1999): 27; Rohde (1925): 134.

40 Johnston (1999): 11.
41 Ibid.

27
 Apparently, the ghost depicted in this story must have been embodied and a
substantial one, and stronger than a mortal if it could have killed so many people
and remained undefeated until Euthymus overcame it.
Another example that would prove that heroes constituted a special class of
the dead which retained much of their vitality and power after their death or be-
came even stronger than before – is the story of the hero-ghost of Orchomenus,
found again in Pausanias (9.38.5). The hero, Actaeon, was ravaging the land, so
the inhabitants of Orchomenus sent a query to Delphi asking what to do about
this. The oracle bade them to make a bronze statue of Actaeon and to fasten it to
a rock with iron. When they did this the ghost ceased the destruction.
Apparently a typical situation when dead heroes appear in the world of the
living is the battlefield. They manifest themselves physically to participate in the
fight on one side in order to kill enemy soldiers. Evidence of this is borne here
by Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch and others. Herodotus says that the Delphians
in their fight against the Persians were aided by two armed men of stature great-
er than that of humans – these were the native heroes Phylacus and Autonous,
whose precincts were near the temple.42 Plutarch relates that “many of those who
fought at Marathon against the Medes thought they saw an apparition of Theseus
in arms rushing on in front of them against the Barbarians”.43 Pausanias (1.15.3)
in his description of the Stoa Poikile at Athens states that in a part of it, besides
the hero Marathon, there was also a depiction of Theseus rising from the dead in
order to support the Athenians in the battle.44
Interestingly, there are also stories of dead heroes who came to life not to fight
but to procreate. One such narrative is found in Herodotus (6.69), who reports
that a dead hero, Astrabacus, secretly visited the wife of Ariston in the form of
her husband and made her the mother of Demaratus of Sparta. The case came
to light when during their third night the phantom had put a wreath on the
head of his mistress. Then Ariston came and asked where she had gotten the
wreath from. She replied that he himself had given it to her. He denied, but she
swore it was true. Ariston understood that this was a divine matter. The wreath
was discovered to have come from the shrine of the hero Astrabacus that was at

42 Hdt. 8.38–39: δύο γὰρ ὁπλίτας μεζόνως ἢ κατὰ ἀνθρώπων φύσιν ἔχοντας ἕπεσθαί
σφι κτείνοντας καὶ διώκοντας. τούτους δὲ τοὺς δύο Δελφοὶ λέγουσι εἶναι ἐπιχωρίους
ἥρωας, Φύλακόν τε καὶ Αὐτόνοον, τῶν τὰ τεμένεά ἐστι περὶ τὸ ἱρόν.
43 Plut. Thes. 35.8: καὶ τῶν ἐν Μαραθῶνι πρὸς Μήδους μαχομένων ἔδοξαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι
φάσμα Θησέως ἐν ὅπλοις καθορᾶν πρὸ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους φερόμενον; transl.
B. Perrin.
44 More examples are provided by Rohde (1925): 136–137.

28
the entrance to the courtyard. The seers confirmed that the hero had visited the
woman and had begot a son with her. This hero, as we shall see, is similar to the
ghost of Phlegon’s Philinnion more than the other heroes since he returns to life
driven by an alleged physical desire.
Another story of interest is the myth of Protesilaus and Laodamia, preserved
in the works of many Greek and Roman authors.45 Protesilaus was the first Greek
to die at Troy – he was killed as he stepped off the ship onto the shore. He died
after spending only one night with his new bride – Laodamia, the daughter of
Acastus and Astydameia. The gods of the underworld allowed Protesilaus to re-
turn to his wife to spend a short period of time with her, variously given as three
hours or a single day. The story then develops interestingly – after the definitive
loss of her husband, Laodamia got a life-sized effigy of Protesilaus, made from
wax or from wood, which she kept in her bedroom and which she slept with. Ac-
cording to Hyginus (104), her father Acastus learned of this and, intending to put
an end to her grief, burned the statue on a pyre. But Laodamia committed suicide
by throwing herself into the flames and was burned to death.
Dead heroes constitute quite a large and diverse group within the tradition.
Other types of the returning dead are more modestly represented; among them
there is a group of stories which resemble modern reports of cases of clinical
death or coma and which basically speak of people who returned to life shortly
after their death. Two examples are quoted by Pliny the Elder, who reports, after
Varro, that a person who was being carried out for burial came to life and re-
turned home on foot (HN 7.176). Pliny also mentions a man who came to life in
his funeral pyre, but the flames were already too hot and nobody could rescue
him, so he died again (HN 7.173). In this group we also find stories about people
who were just not lucky enough to be resurrected, but they become messengers
from the underworld entrusted by supernatural powers with a mission to reveal
a mystery of the afterlife. Here we have the famous eschatological legend from
Plato’s Republic (10.614b–621d), namely the myth of Er, the son of Armenius,
who, according to Plato, was killed in a battle, returned to life on his funeral pyre
and brought to the living an account of the universe and the afterlife. Proclus in
his commentary to this passage in Plato (in Rem publ. 2.115–116 Kroll) quotes

45 Cypria fr. 22 West ap. Paus. 4.2.7; Catull. 68.73–130; Prop. 1.19.7–10; Ov. Her. 13; Apol-
lod. Epit. 3.29a–30a; Lucian. Dial. mort. 27–28; Hyg. Fab. 103–104, Serv. in .Aen. 6.447;
Schol.in Ael. Aristid., p. 671–672 Dindorf; Tzetz. Chil. 2.52 Leone. The surviving accounts
of the story probably all derive from Euripides’ lost tragedy Protesilaus – however, the
actual extant fragments of the play (F647–657 TrGF) do not bring anything of interest;
see Ogden (2008): 156, and note 18, pp. 194–195.

29
four other cases of such revenants. One of them was a certain Rufus of Philippi
in Macedonia, a chief priest in Thessalonica who had died and returned to life
on the third day after his death and said that he had been sent by the chthonic
gods to refer to the people what he had experienced in the underworld. Another
one was a man by the name of Eurynous of Nicopolis who came to life on the
fifteenth day after his burial and said that he had seen and heard many marvelous
things beneath the earth but he had been forbidden to reveal them. Both cases
are thus similar to the case of Plato’s Er. The remaining two, reported briefly by
Proclus, are shorter versions of the stories known from the 1st and 2nd chapter of
Phlegon’s Mirabilia.
There is also a Roman story of a corpse revived by witchcraft. Socrates, a per-
sonage of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (1.13–19), was murdered by two witches
who then reanimated his corpse by stanching his bleeding wound with a sponge
and putting a spell on it. Socrates woke up the next morning as if nothing had
happened, but when he tried to cross a stream, the spell was broken and he fell
dead. The same author mentions in his Florida (19) another case of the resurrec-
tion of a dead man, supposedly made by the Greek physician Asclepiades who,
using his medical art, managed to reanimate a man that was already lying on his
funeral pyre.
Although all of the stories quoted above speak of people who died and then
returned to life in corporeal form, their classification as revenants seems prob-
lematic in most cases. Dead heroes, as Debbie Felton aptly points out, can make
physical contact with humans – they can either kill or procreate – and they gen-
erally disappear suddenly without leaving their bodies behind, unlike revenants
in our modern understanding do. Other instances, in turn, such as people re-
vived on their funeral pyre, do not haunt the living nor harass them in any way.46
The time has come to look at Phlegon’s undead in order to examine what type
of dead they were and whether they fulfilled conditions to be considered and
included among the revenants.

Philinnion: The Story of a Proto-Vampire

Phlegon’s first ghost story seems to be one of the longest – and most complex –
that have survived from antiquity; therefore, it needs to be examined cautiously
in the following order: first, after briefly referring the plot of the story and dis-
cussing its literary form, I will attempt to solve the mystery of the identity of the
main character – that of a girl by the name of Philinnion; in my view this figure

46 Felton (1999): 28.

30
needs to be located within a specific category of the restless dead: namely, the
prematurely dead (ἄωροι). This distinct type of the dead, as is inferred from
numerous ancient literary and non-literary sources, was believed to be espe-
cially prone to interaction with the living and, what is particularly interesting,
to be tightly connected with female demons such as Lamia or Mormo. Since
Philinnion seems to share some characteristics with these demons and with no
doubt may be considered as the prematurely dead, locating her in these contexts
is promising for my attempt to reveal the meaning and to give the interpretation
of Phlegon’s story. By using these means I am going to achieve my main aim, i.e.
to prove Philinnion’s affiliation with monster-lore and to explain her raison d’être
in the Mirabilia.

Speaking in Riddles: The Plot of the Story

Due to the fact that the Mirabilia have survived to our times in a single manu-
script, the Palatinus Graecus 398, which is corrupted, the first part of the narrative
has been lost: today it begins, literally, in medias res – it opens in mid-sentence,
of which we learn that…:
…. [the nurse] went to the door of the guest room, and in the light of the burning lamp
she saw the girl sitting beside Machates. Because of the extraordinary nature of the sight,
she did not wait there any longer but ran to the girl’s mother screaming, ‘Charito! Dem-
ostratos!’ She said they should get up and come with her to their daughter, who was alive
and by some divine will was with the guest in the guest room.47

Because of the text’s incompleteness, the identity of the protagonists remains

unknown to the modern reader. Fortunately, and quite unexpectedly, the lost
fragment can be supplied from Proclus (in Rem publ. 2.116 Kroll), who provides
a version, although much shorter, of the same story. Proclus, in turn, quotes as
his authority a certain Naumachius of Epirus, a personality not known from else-
where who has been located by scholars in the fourth century of our era, since
Proclus in the fifth century dates him as being of his grandfathers’ generation.
Phlegon and Naumachius most likely used the same source for their accounts.

47 Phlegon, Mir. 1: <***> εἰς τὸν ξενῶνα προσπορεύεται ταῖς θύραις, καὶ καιομένου τοῦ
λύχνου καθημένην <ε>ἶδεν τὴν ἄνθρωπον παρὰ τῷ Μαχάτῃ. οὐκ ἔτι δὲ καρτερήσασα
πλείονα χρόνον διὰ τὸ θαυμαστὸν τῆς φαντασίας τρέχει πρὸς τὴν μητέρα, καὶ βοήσασα
μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ “Χαριτοῖ” καὶ “Δημόστρατε” ᾤετο δεῖν ἀναστάντας ἐπὶ τὴν θυγατέρα
αὐτοὺς μετ’ αὐτῆς πορεύεσθαι· πεφηνέναι γὰρ ζῶσαν εἶναί τε μετὰ τοῦ ξένου διά τινα
θείαν βούλησιν ἐν τῷ ξενῶνι; transl. Hansen. All English quotations from the Mirabilia,
if not stated differently, are taken from his translation.

31
 After patching the two versions together48 – the one by Phlegon and that by
Proclus – we obtain the following tale: in the Greek city of Amphipolis a couple,
i.e. Demostratus and Charito, marry their daughter Philinnion to a certain Cra-
terus. The girl dies shortly after the wedding and is buried in the family tomb.
Six months later a young man, Machates, comes from Pella and visits the girl’s
parents’ house. He resides in the guest room. Machates receives a nocturnal visit
from a girl by the name of Philinnion. Apparently, he is not aware of the fact
that she is the hosts’ recently deceased daughter. The young man and woman
spend the night together and exchange love-tokens – she gives him a golden ring
and he gives her an iron one and a gilded wine cup. The girl leaves unnoticed
before daybreak. During the second night the nurse discovers her presence in
the guest room and reports this fact to the girl’s mother, Charito. On the third
night Charito and Demostratus, the girl’s father, having been informed discreetly
about her arrival by Machates, interrupt their meeting and find their daughter
who died half a year earlier. Philinnion accuses her parents of meddling in her
affairs, ones that should remain undisclosed to them since her return came by
divine will. After saying these words, she drops dead again. The despaired par-
ents and the entire house begin their mourning anew. Rumor of what happened
quickly spreads throughout the city and comes to the ears of the governor. He
keeps the crowds, attracted by the news, who come to Philinnion’s parents’ house,
in check. The next day a great crowd gathers at the theater where the matter is
then discussed. It is decided to open up Philinnion’s tomb to see whether her
body lies on its bier. On entering the chamber, the governor and his men find
the bones or the bodies of all of Philinnion’s dead ancestors in place, but her own
bier is empty, beside it lie the iron ring and the golden cup that Machates had
given her on the first night. Astonished and terrified, they proceed to Philinnion’s
house again, where they find her body stretched out on the floor. An assembly
is called during which the matter is discussed again. A certain Hyllus, regarded
as a wise man and excellent augur, bids to bury the girl’s body outside the city’s
boundaries and to propitiate the Chthonic Hermes and the Eumenides. He also
tells the governor in private that he should inform his king about the prophetic
implications of the episode and that a sacrifice should be made to Hermes, Zeus
Xenios and Ares. His instructions are carefully carried out. But Machates kills
himself in despondency.

48 Erwin Rohde (1877): 329–339 was the first to collate the text by Phlegon with that by
Proclus.

32
“Farewell!” The Epistolary Form of the Narrative
Here this beautiful, novella-like narrative ends. Surprisingly enough, the story is
cast as a letter. We learn this from the closing formula, ἔρρωσο (farewell), which
suddenly appears at the end of the story; such a formula was common in Greek
letters. The end of the letter also contains suggestions implying that its alleged
author was an eyewitness to the episode, i.e. a local official, most likely the gover-
nor of the city, and his addressee, a higher official in the royal court who, in turn,
could have decided to report the incredible matter to the king.
Furthermore, in the final part of the letter the narration changes from third-
person to first-person, and only from this point does the modern reader realize
that the document is not an impersonal, omniscient narration but an alleged
eyewitness account by a local participant. The original beginning of the text, now
lost, must have had an opening formula with greetings and, presumably, a kind
of explanation as to why the letter was written.
Proclus, in his shorter version of the story, informs us that the supposed au-
thor of the letter was Hipparchus and its addressee was Arrhidaeus, and that the
king was Philip.49 Yet the action must have been set in Amphipolis since Proclus
describes Philinnion’s parents as “Amphipolitans”. As was proven already by Er-
win Rohde, the king to whom Phlegon refers and who is called Philip by Proclus
was very likely Philip II of Macedon (359–336): the Greek city of Amphipolis on
the river Strymon was captured by Philip II of Macedon in 357 BC, after which it
was under Macedonian rule.50 Therefore the events must have happened within
the twenty-year period of 356–336 BC.
Even more interesting is the identity of the epistolographer as well as its ad-
dressee. Although the extraordinary episode is presented as an actual event, its
historical framework is very dubious. Rohde in his study of Phlegon’s first nar-
rative pointed out that the author gave a Macedonian flavor to the text by using
Macedonian or Macedonian-sounding names which vaguely alluded to histori-
cal persons connected with King Philip;51 William Hansen, following Rohde’s
examination, discovered a few other possible connections.52 Thus, according to

49 Procl. in Rem publ. 2.116 Kroll: καὶ ταῦτα δηλοῦν ἐπιστολὰς τὰς μὲν παρὰ Ἱππάρχου,
τὰς δὲ παρὰ Ἀρριδαίου γραφείσας τοῦ τὰ πράγματα τῆς Ἀμφιπόλεως ἐγκεχειρισμένου
πρὸς Φίλιππον: “The events are described in a number of letters, some written by Hip-
parchos and some written by Arrhidaios (who was in charge of Amphipolis) to Philip”;
transl. Hansen (1996): 200.
50 Rohde (1877): 330.
51 See below, notes 53, 56 and 57.
52 Hansen (1996): 72.

33
these scholars, Craterus – the supposed husband of Philinnion – resembles the
prominent Macedonian military commander Craterus (c. 370–321 BC);53 Philin-
nion is suggestive of Philinna of Larissa – one of the wives of Philip II54 – as well
as of his other wife named Phila – a sister of Derdas and Machatas (the latter’s
name, in turn, resembles that of Philinnion’s lover Machates55). Phila was also the
name of the second wife of the historical Craterus,56 who married her in 322 BC
and had a son, Craterus, with her. The addressee of the letter, Arrhidaeus, may at
least allude to three personages, i.e. either to Arrhidaeus – a half-brother of King
Philip II, slain in 348 BC;57 to the half-brother of Alexander the Great, the men-
tally handicapped Philip Arrhidaeus, the Macedonian king (323–317 BC); or to
one of Alexander’s officers named Arrhidaeus.58 These puzzles, however, form
no coherent whole – they are only a medley of authentic Macedonian names
suggesting some historical persons mixed together with other names of Greek
provenience, such as Charito, Demostratus, Hipparchus or Hyllus. A reconstruc-
tion of any real historical background of the story is not possible. And this fact
seems significant since, on the one hand, it is evident that the author, referring
vaguely to historical persons, put much effort into making the narrative appear
to be a historical document; on the other hand, however, the fraud can very easily
be exposed by a reader wishing to check the historical details in order to learn
more about the matter. Therefore, it seems to me that the author’s intention was
to make the fraud obvious and clear. The text invites the reader to explore the
boundaries of reliability and credibility in fiction: the text pretends to be an of-
ficial document providing necessary “historical” data built on a sensational and
incredible story; the reader pretends to believe that the document is “historical”
and thereafter can delight in the taste of sensation and incredibility without the
risk of being accused of credulity. Thus the “letter” demands a bilateral agree-
ment on fictitiousness and credibility between the author and the reader.59

53 Rohde (1877): 333.

54 Hansen (1996): 72.
55 Ibid.
56 Rohde (1877): 333.
57 Ibid.: 330.
58 Hansen (1996): 72.
59 On epistolary narratives, see: Hodkinson, Rosenmeyer, Bracke (2013); on fictitious and
forged letters, see Stirewalt (1993): 20–42; for ancient epistolary fiction, see Rosenmeyer
(1994) and Holzberg (1994).

34
 The narrative composition may be put in the following schema:

[lacuna…………] – opening formula (?); first-person narration (?)

(reconstructed from Procl. in Rem publ. 2.116 Kroll)
third-person narration, omniscient narrator
+ Macedonian flavor
= pseudo-historical document
first-person narration
closing formula: ἔρρωσο

Peeking through the Keyhole: Philinnion from the Folktale

From the schema provided above one may easily conclude that in Philinnion’s
story we are dealing with an enveloping structure where third-person narration
is inserted into the first-person narrated part of the letter. William Hansen was
the first to prove that the third-person narrated part of the text is based on a
traditional oral story, with the first-person narrated part being pseudo-literary
historical fiction.60 The central episodes of Phlegon’s narrative closely resemble
the central action of a folktale that is well attested in modern Irish-Gaelic oral
tradition, with the exception of the genders which are reversed, i.e. in Phlegon
the ghost is a female and its lover – a male, whereas in the modern tale this is the
opposite.
Since I cannot produce the original source I may but quote the summary of
the mother folktale as made by Hansen on the basis of a number of versions col-
lected in the first half of the twentieth century:
“A young woman enters service in a household and lodges there. One day she
encounters the son of the household, who informs her he died and was damned.
He instructs her to lodge in his old room, where he secretly visits her at night,
and she bears him a child. One day when she does not arise from bed, the mis-
tress sends a maidservant to check on her. Peeking through the keyhole the serv-
ant sees the woman with a baby in her arms and a man sitting at her bedside. She
runs to inform her mistress, who recognizes the man as her late son. Pretending
that it is necessary to store some things in the lodger’s room, the mistress has
herself bundled up in some clothing and carried into the room. That night when
she sees her son arrive and sit beside the bed, she throws off her disguise and
catches hold of him. But the son complains that if his mother had only waited

60 Hansen (1980); Hansen (1996): 79–85; Hansen (2002): 392–397.

35
a while longer, she would have had him forever, but as it is he must spend seven
years in hell.
The youth’s mother and father each offer to go in his place, but they fail be-
cause of the heat. When the heroine also volunteers, the youth instructs her not
to eat anything there, giving her a ring that will produce food and drink for her.
She succeeds in reaching the place and staying the requisite number of years or
even longer, carrying away many souls as the wages of her work there. Upon her
return many years later the father of her child is about to wed, but by means of
the ring she brings about her recognition, and they marry”.61
The folktale is classified by folklorists as AT 425J – Service in Hell to Release
Enchanted Husband, and is a subtype of AT 425 – The Search for the Lost Hus-
band, which is the broader term for several groups of similar and closely related
international folktales.62 Their common plot can be characterized by the follow-
ing elements: “the arrival of a human being at a house of a supernatural being;
their entry into a marriage-like relationship; the breaking of a taboo; the loss of
the supernatural lover, the heroic effort made by the human lover to regain the
supernatural lover; and their eventual reunion”.63 Another subtype of AT 425 is
the tale of Cupid and Psyche, known from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 4–6, clas-
sified as AT 425 B – The Disenchanted Husband: the Witch’s Tasks. The story of
Philinnion, however, is our earliest evidence for a tale of this type, for Phlegon
was the elder contemporary of Apuleius (born c. AD 123) and, although the ter-
minus post quem for Phlegon’s Mirabilia is AD 116, the compiler very probably
drew upon the story from a Hellenistic collection of marvels.64
Phlegon’s report has much in common with the traditional Irish folktale.
Hansen draws all the parallels: in the folktale the heroine (commonly named
Máire = Mary) marries, the marriage in unhappy, she thus leaves her husband
and sets off on a route. After a long walk she arrives at a farmhouse, where she
stays as a lodger/servant and meets the dead man she will have the affair with. In
Phlegon’s story Philinnion marries Craterus and dies shortly after the marriage.
Six months later Machates arrives at her parents’ house, where he enters into a
relation with the dead girl. In both of the narratives there is a parallel structure:
(1) marriage, (2) termination of marriage and (3) the person’s arrival at the house
of the dead son/daughter where he/she stays as a lodger. Then the dead person
begins visiting the living person secretly at night (4) and they become lovers (5).

61 Ibid.: 392.
62 Ibid.: 396.
63 Ibid.
64 Stramaglia’s edition, Praefatio, p. VII.

36
 Then the central episodes exhibit even closer similarity: one day a servant (6)
when looking into the guest room sees the couple and (7) runs to inform her
mistress, who (8) comes to peek into the guest room herself. She conspires to be
informed of the next visit (9). In the evening the dead person arrives (10), the
mother, full of emotion, tries to catch and embrace him/her (11) but the dead
child criticizes her (or the parents’) behavior, saying that if she/they had only
waited a limited period of time (two hours more/a year and a day/three days)
and had not disturbed her/his secret visits, she/he would have regained her/his
life, but as it is he/she must return to death.65
As Hansen observes, there is also parallelism on a more abstract level in the
final parts of the narratives: “at this point in the ancient story (12) the people delib-
erate in assembly about what course of action to take, while in the folktale the fam-
ily deliberates about what to do; (13) the people next make their way to the tomb,
while in the folktale the heroine now makes her way to hell, and subsequently
(14) the people return from the tomb to the family home. In short, what the death
realm is to the latter part of the folktale, the tomb is to the latter part of the letter.
Finally, in a scene of verification, (15) the people verify that Philinnion’s corpse is
found in her house, or the youth verifies the identity of the long-absent heroine”.66
The scholar finds two other correspondences: first, in both narratives, i.e. the
ancient and the modern one, rings appear; second, there is a final union of the
lovers, however, in Phlegon’s version it is a union in death.67 And, last but not
least, there is another striking similarity which should be added here, namely,
the element of peeking through the keyhole by the nurse/servant, which is re-
peated in the modern folktales: in Phlegon the nurse peeps at the lovers either
through the keyhole or through a crack in the door; the ancient text does not
say this explicitly but informs us that the nurse approached the door of the guest
room and saw Philinnion and Machates in the light of the lamp. The element
of peeping is present in both the modern and the ancient tale and, actually, it
introduces a great deal of mystery, also subtly evoking associations with vo-
yeuristic practices. For it seems significant that the crucial scene – Philinnion
visiting Machates – is set at night in a closed room, in hiding. The nurse peeking
through the keyhole or through the crack in the door is a beholder who breaks
a taboo; she also uncovers the mystery to the other personages, such as to the
girl’s mother and father who, in consequence, violate the taboo even more by

65 Hansen (1996): 81.

66 Hansen (2002): 396; cf. Hansen (1996): 82.
67 Ibid.

37
rudely interrupting the youngsters’ rendezvous. The taboo character of Philin-
nion’s return may be inferred from her own words as addressed to her parents:
“Mother and father, how unfairly you have grudged my being with the guest for
three days in my father’s house, since I have caused no one any pain. For this
reason, on account of your meddling, you shall grieve all over again, and I shall
return to the place appointed for me. For it was not without divine will that I
came here.”68 The girl claims to be sent by a divinity in secret for some mysteri-
ous aims that should remain so. Therefore, the parents, driven by “curiosity”
(πολυπραγμοσύνη) are, according to Philinnion’s own words, busybodies pry-
ing into affairs which are forbidden to them. This very term – πολυπραγμοσύνη
– which may be considered a key word in order to understand this scene, carries
connotations of “the transgressive, invasive impulse for knowledge”, to use Tim
Whitmarsh’s definition,69 and, as it seems, especially knowledge of things that
should not be revealed and displayed in public. Πολυπραγμοσύνη, as well as its
Latin equivalent curiositas, a complex idea which among other things indicates
curiosity70 with a negative connotation, seems to also be strongly connected with
other negative emotions such as envy and malice of a sort, as it may be inferred
from both Greek and Roman sources. Plautus says: “No one is curious who is
not also malevolent.”71 Later in the imperial period the curious (polypragmones
or curiosi) were regarded as driven by insatiable and frustrated longings for see-
ing and hearing the rarest and the most forbidden, the hidden scandals of others
and the secrets of gods.72 Plutarch describes them: “So these over-busy people,
neglecting such obvious and common things into which any man may enquire
and talk of without offence, cannot be satisfied unless they rake into the private
and concealed evils of every family in the neighborhood”.73 Philinnion’s parents
can hardly be suspected of feeling malice towards their own daughter – they are

68 Mir. 1.11: ὦ μῆτερ καὶ πάτερ, ὡς ἀδίκως ἐφθονήσατέ μοι μετὰ τοῦ ξένου ἐπὶ τρεῖς
ἡμέρας γενέσθαι ἐν τῇ πατρῴᾳ οἰκίᾳ λυποῦσαν οὐδέν. τοιγαροῦν ὑμεῖς μὲν πενθήσετε
ἐξ ἀρχῆς διὰ τὴν πολυπραγμοσύνην, ἐγὼ δὲ ἄπειμι πάλιν εἰς τὸν διατεταγμένον τόπον·
οὐ γὰρ ἄνευ θείας βουλήσεως ἦλθον εἰς ταῦτα.
69 Whitmarsh (2011): 190.
70 There is no single equivalent for this complex term in English though; on this topic,
see esp. Barton (1993): 107–145; Whitmarsh (2011): 185–191 and Leigh (2013).
71 Plaut. Stich. 208: nam curiosus nemo est quin sit malevolus.
72 Barton (1993): 89.
73 Plut. De curiositate, Mor. 516 d: παραπλησίως οἱ πολυπράγμονες, ὑπερβάντες
τοὺς ἐν μέσῳ λόγους καὶ ἱστορίας καὶ ἃ μηδεὶς κωλύει πυνθάνεσθαι μηδ᾽ ἄχθεται
πυνθανομένοις, τὰ κρυπτόμενα καὶ λανθάνοντα κακὰ πάσης οἰκίας ἐκλέγουσι, transl.
W. C. Helmbold.

38
rather longing for their lost child; they are, however, apparently guilty of their
curiosity and desire for forbidden things. They must have understood that their
dead daughter’s nocturnal return to the living must have occurred by divine
powers that most likely did not wish this secret to be revealed to a third party,
yet they did not hesitate to meddle in and spy on the mysteries of the dead. The
scene with the nurse/servant discovering the mystery (which is present in the
ancient as well as in the modern version of the tale) begins the whole chain of
extraordinary events; its power and charm derives from the voyeuristic aspect
of peeping and spying on prohibited things.
At this point it seems indubitable that the story of Philinnion in Phlegon’s
Mirabilia originates in the oral tradition. However, considering the close resem-
blance of its ancient and modern version, Hansen finds it extremely improbable
that the Irish tradition borrowed the story directly from Phlegon’s text, for he is
not a popular classical author and was relatively inaccessible and, besides, the
beginning of the text has been lost. Nevertheless, he does not exclude the pos-
sibility that the oral tale might be very old and had been in circulation in antiq-
uity until a Hellenistic author adapted it to his own literary purposes.74 Hence
its ancient version, as found in Phlegon’s Mirabilia, which closely resembles the
modern one, must have been reworked in antiquity by an unknown author into
the pseudo-historical document we now have.
The story’s schema will now look as follows:

Letter
[lacuna…………] – first-person narration (?)
(reconstructed from Procl. in Rem publ. 2.116 Kroll)
Folktale
third-person narration, the omniscient narrator
(a parallel with a modern Irish folktale)
+ Macedonian flavor
= pseudo-historical document
first-person narration
Closing formula: ἔρρωσο

I agree with Hansen who remarks that an unknown Hellenistic author must have
reworked an oral ghost story and created a piece of fiction by fabricating an

74 Hansen (1996): 82–83.

39
alleged historical document into epistolary form. His purposes remain unclear,
although, in fact, the production of fictitious letters, usually as school exercises,
was a common practice in the late Hellenistic period.75 John Morgan supposes
that the letter containing Philinnion’s story formed only a part of an imaginary
official archive which might have included further correspondence and even the
witnesses’ testimonies; according to the scholar, the recommendation to the let-
ter’s addressee, i.e. the higher official, on referring the case to the king may sug-
gest that the letter opened a whole documentary chain and the author of which
may have wished to pose as an editor publishing documentation of interesting
facts that he had discovered.76 This theory seems plausible; all the more that Pro-
clus asserts that “the events are described in a number of letters, some written by
Hipparchus and some written by Arrhidaeus (who was in charge of Amphipolis)
to Philip”.77 However, the question is why Phlegon did not quote the entire
documentary material in his compilation. Perhaps the other letters, if they ever
existed, did not contain such an interesting narration as that about Philinnion;
but in such a case what did they inform about? About the king’s reaction? About
other instructions and the further action that was? If so, they likely did not offer
an equally attractive story that would induce Phlegon to put it into his marvels
collection. Since, if these letters contained other sensational details on the matter,
Phlegon would rather have not hesitated to copy them in his book. Therefore, it is
highly probable that even if the other letters did exist, just a single one contained
such interesting narration that it attracted the compiler’s attention: only Philin-
nion’s story, based on an imaginative folktale, had enough appeal and mystery to
find its place in the Mirabilia.
Basically, truncating stories and limiting them to the most sensational and
bizarre episodes seems to be a practice that is characteristic of Phlegon in his lit-
erary production. Traces of this will also be seen further, but at this point the fact
that Phlegon used excerpts of only the most sensational stories or just parts of
stories would support Morgan’s supposition that the other letters, as mentioned
by Proclus, truly did exist; it seems to me, in such a case, that this simply meant
that for Phlegon they were not interesting enough; all the more that Proclus, al-
though he mentions them and is in his summary of Philinnion’s story most likely
basing merely on the same letter which is quoted by Phlegon, is as if he were not
interested in the content of the “others” either.

75 Ibid.: 67 and 84.

76 Morgan (2013): 305.
77 Procl. in Rem publ. 2.116 (Kroll), see above, note 49.

40
 Now that we know that Philinnion is a figure from a folktale we can consider
the question what her rationale is for returning to the upper world; Philinnion’s
folk origin may shed some light on her functioning as a revenant and help to
better explain her motivation for contacting the living since these are the key
problems that are encountered by the reader of the story. I am attempting to
solve them by means of a thorough examination of the narrative’s main episodes
as well as by locating Philinnion within the category of the prematurely dead.

“Neither properly dead, nor properly alive”. Why do the dead return?
Regarding the question of Philinnion’s rationale for her return, one may intui-
tively work out that, in general, it was love that pushed her to come back; however,
the problem arises regarding a dead person’s capacity to feel emotions and de-
sires. Therefore, Philinnion’s particular case needs to be examined in the broader
context of popular religion and ideas about the afterlife. However, depicting such
a context in ancient Greek and Roman culture appears to be a truly difficult task
since in antiquity there was no single coherent conception regarding existence
after death: we are dealing with a true mix of different – sometimes even conflict-
ing – ideas that were preserved mainly in literary sources. The inconsistences are
well enumerated by the English author Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) in his
work Hydriotaphia. I quote his words following Felton:
The departed spirits know things past and to come, yet are ignorant of things present.
Agamemnon foretels what should happen unto Ulysses, yet ignorantly enquires what is
become of his own Son. The Ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer, yet Sibylla tels Aeneas
in Virgil, the thin habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapon. The spirits put off their
malice with their bodies, and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latine Hell, yet Ajax in Hom-
er endures not a conference with Ulysses: And Deiphobus appears all mangled in Virgils
Ghosts, yet we meet with perfect shadows among the wounded ghosts of Homer.78

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Lacy Collison-Morley pointed to the

ancients’ confusion when it came to their picturing the afterlife. What we get
from the sources is, actually, according to the scholar, a combination of elaborate
Greek mythology with the primitive beliefs of Italy, and of Greece also, in the
spirits of the dead that live in the tomb with the body. Along with cremation
gradually superseding a burial the idea of the possible independent existence
of the soul appeared.79 Briefly, according to Keith Hopkins’ words, Greek and

78 Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, or A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes

Lately Found in Norfolk, London 1658, ch. 4. The original spelling has been retained.
79 Collison-Morley (1912): 1.

41
Roman beliefs “ranged from the completely nihilistic denial of afterlife, through
a vague sense of souls’ existence, to a concept of the individual soul’s survival and
of personal survival in a recognizable form”.80
It seems, however, that some fixed ideas about why some of the dead were
restless existed. “In many cultures – says Sarah I. Johnston – both ancient and
modern, three types of dead are almost always presumed to be dangerously rest-
less: those who have not received funeral rites (ἄταφοι), the untimely or pre-
maturely dead (ἄωροι), and those who have died violently (βι(αι)οθάνατοι)”.81
From explicit or implicit mentions in many ancient sources as various as those
in Homer, Virgil, Plato, Apuleius, Pausanias, Tertullian or Suidas, we infer that
these categories of the restless dead also functioned in ancient Greece and
Rome; however, it would be difficult to state to what point such a classification
was developed:
1. ἄταφοι: ‘those deprived of a burial’;
2. βιαιοθάνατοι: ‘those who died by violence’;
3. ἄωροι: ‘those who met an untimely death’;
4. ἄγαμοι: ‘those who died before marriage’ – this category can, however, be con-
sidered a subtype of (3).
A brief survey of some of these beliefs may help to reveal the meaning of Philin-
nion’s story.
Herbert J. Rose aptly points out that: “Indeed, the whole horror of vampires,
ἄωροι, βιαιοθάνατοι, and such uncanny spooks, is that they are not properly
dead at all. The living one is used to; the real dead are all very well in their way;
[…] but the others are, in Bram Stoker’s expressive phrase, ‘Undead’”.82
The first category – the ἄταφοι – is highly represented in the sources. The
dead’s rationale for returning is here the need for a burial. The earliest evidence of
this type of the deceased is to be found already in the Iliad – the ghost of Patroclus
comes to Achilles to demand a proper burial in order to achieve rest and to no
longer haunt the living. He says: “Thou sleepest, and hast forgotten me, Achilles.
Not in my life wast thou unmindful of me, but now in my death! Bury me with all
speed, that I pass within the gates of Hades. Afar do the spirits keep me aloof, the
phantoms of men that have done with toils, neither suffer they me to join myself
to them beyond the River, but vainly I wander through the wide-gated house of

80 Hopkins (1983): 227.

81 Johnston (1999): 127.
82 Rose (1925): 149.

42
Hades”.83 In the Odyssey (11.60–78), Elpenor entreats Odysseus to bury his body.
As we remember from the story of the Hero of Temesa in Pausanias (6.6.7–11)
and Strabo (6.1.5), not all ghosts requested their burial so kindly; some of them
were dangerous and aggressive towards the living. Moreover, as Franz Cumont
(1922: 64) observes, the burial itself was not sufficient for the restless – they need-
ed to be buried properly, according to all traditional rites.84 This is confirmed by
the Christian author Tertullian (c. AD 200): “It was held that the unburied were
not accepted into the underworld until they had received the due rites. We learn
this from Homer’s Patroclus, who demands burial from Achilles in his dreams,
since he could not otherwise approach the entrance to the underworld, as the
shades of the buried were keeping him far away from it. We recognize, howev-
er, that Homer’s creativity here exceeds poetic license”. – And further Tertullian
makes an interesting comment on Homer’s poetic exaggeration: “His concern for
the due burial of the dead was equaled by his censure of the delay in accomplish-
ment, which is so harmful to souls”.85
The existence of the category of ἄταφοι is proven by many other literary refer-
ences that come from sources so different as comedy (e.g. Plautus’ Mostellaria),
epistolography (Pliny the Younger’s famous letter to his friend Sura in which
he quotes the story of a haunted house;86 a ghost story similar to Pliny’s is to be
found in Lucian’s Philopseudeis87), historiography (e.g. the story of the ghost of
Melissa, the tyrant Periander’s wife, found in Herodotus, 5.92η), and others. The

83 Hom. Il. 23.69–76: εὕδεις, αὐτὰρ ἐμεῖο λελασμένος ἔπλευ, Ἀχιλλεῦ. / οὐ μέν μευ
ζώοντος ἀκήδεις, ἀλλὰ θανόντος· / θάπτέ με ὅττι τάχιστα πύλας Ἀΐδαο περήσω. / τῆλέ
με εἴργουσι ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα καμόντων, / οὐδέ μέ πω μίσγεσθαι ὑπὲρ ποταμοῖο ἐῶσιν, /
ἀλλ’ αὔτως ἀλάλημαι ἀν’ εὐρυπυλὲς Ἄϊδος δῶ. / καί μοι δὸς τὴν χεῖρ’· ὀλοφύρομαι, οὐ
γὰρ ἔτ’ αὖτις / νίσομαι ἐξ Ἀΐδαο, ἐπήν με πυρὸς λελάχητε, transl. A. T. Murray.
84 Cumont (1922): 64.
85 Tert. Anim. 56, 1–2: occurrit disceptatio, an hoc ab excessu statim fiat, an quasdam ani-
mas aliqua ratio detineat hic interim, an etiam receptas liceat postea ab inferis ex arbi-
trio vel ex imperio intervenire. nec harum enim opinionum suasoriae desunt. creditum
est insepultos non ad inferos redigi quam iusta perceperint, secundum Homericum
Patroclum funus in somniis de Achille flagitantem, quod non alias adire portas inferum
posset arcentibus eum longe animabus sepultorum. novimus autem praeter poeticae
iura pietatis quoque Homericae industriam. tanto magis enim curam sepulturae col-
locavit, quanto etiam moram eius iniuriosam animabus incusavit, simul et ne quis
defunctum domi detinens ipse amplius cum illo maceretur enormitate solacii dolore
nutriti; transl. Ogden (2002): 149.
86 Plin. Epist. 7.27.
87 Lucian. Philops. 30–31.

43
belief in the ἄταφοι is also reflected in the myth of Sisyphus who used a trick in
order to return to the upper world after his death. Before he died, he instructed
his wife not to bury his body, so as he entered Hades, he complained to Perse-
phone that his presence in Hades was against the rules and persuaded her to send
him back to the upper world again in order to request a proper funeral. Once
he reached the world of the living, he refused to return to the Underworld, but
eventually his spirit was forcibly dragged back to Hades by Hermes.88
As for the other restless dead – the βιαιοθάνατοι and the ἄωροι – quite a
precise definition of these categories is presented again in Tertullian (De Anima,
56–7), who says: “And they say that souls that experience death before their time
wander about until they complete the remainder of the period for which they
would have lived if they had not died early. […] Either it is excellent to be kept
here with the ‘untimely dead’ [ahori = ἄωροι] or it is awful to be kept here with
the ‘dead-by-violence’ [biaeothanati = βιαιοθάνατοι], to employ the terms now
voiced by the source of such beliefs, namely magic – Ostanes, Typhon, Darda-
nus, Damigeron, Nectabis, and Berenice. A famous text promises to evocate even
souls that have been laid to rest at their proper age, even souls separated from
their bodies by a just death, and even souls dispatched with prompt burial”.89
Although the “famous text” about evocations that Tertullian alludes to remains
unidentifiable,90 the author demonstrates that the categorization of the restless
dead was allegedly developed by pagan sorcerers, such as Ostanes and others, for
use in magical ghost-manipulation practices; apparently the prematurely dead
and the violently dead, distinguished by these special terms, were believed to be
particularly useful and susceptible to manipulation.
There is also other evidence for the βιαιοθάνατοι and the ἄωροι, be it literary
or nonliterary. The former, found mostly in dramatic sources such as the Athenian
tragedies and the Tetralogies of Antiphon and which, despite their “imaginative
exaggeration”, as Robert Parker says, “sets before us the fundamental structure of

88 Cf. Thgn.702–711; Alc. fr. 38a Lobel and Page.

89 Tert. Anim. 56.4–57.2: aiunt et immatura morte praeventas eo usque vagari istic, donec
reliquatio compleatur aetatum, quacum pervixissent, si non intempestive obissent. […]
aut optimum est hic retineri secundum ahoros aut pessimum secundum biaeothanatos,
ut ipsis iam vocabulis utar quibus auctrix opinionum istarum magia sonat, Ostanes et
Typhon et Dardanus et Damigeron et Nectabis et Berenice. publica iam litteratura est
quae animas etiam iusta aetate sopitas, etiam proba morte disiunctas, etiam prompta
humatione dispunctas evocaturam se ab inferum incolatu pollicetur; transl. Ogden
(2002): 149.
90 Ibid.: 151.

44
popular belief ”,91 ought to be taken into consideration with caution.92 The latter
are κατάδεσμοι – lead tablets with written curses that were deposited in or near
graves and were requests sent by the living to the deceased in order to receive
their help in important matters or, to formulate it more safely, to use them as
messengers to carry the words of the tablets to the underworld deities.93 The bulk
of such tablets was discovered in the graves of the untimely dead, i.e. as far as we
can determine the age of the deceased from the skeletal remains or grave goods.94
The remedies for the βιαιοθάνατοι and the ἄωροι were not as simple as in the
case of the ἄταφοι, who just needed proper burial rites. The motivation for the
return of these two types of the dead seems to be more complex as well. In gen-
eral, they were considered to be potentially angry ghosts who had not completed
their lives and which in fact remained unfinished, so they lingered between states
and were unable to pass into proper death. Tertullian refers to them as wan-
dering souls trying to complete the missing period of their lifetime. However,
the βιαιοθάνατοι return primarily to seek vengeance specifically on those from
whom they suffered a violent death; as for the ἄωροι, in the process of such com-
pletion of their lifetime the souls of the prematurely dead were believed to be
particularly dangerous to a wider group of the living.
From this point on I will put aside the ἄταφοι and the βιαιοθάνατοι since
Philinnion’s case is not the need for funeral rites – her burial in the family tomb
is mentioned explicitly in the narrative – nor is anything known about her hav-
ing had a violent death. I will focus on the prematurely dead because this is very
likely the category of the dead she falls within; locating her in this group of the
restless seems more promising for my attempt to solve the riddle of Philinnion’s
rationale for her return.
Inferring from many ancient sources, the majority of the prematurely dead
were female ghosts (called in the late ancient sources ἄωραι95) who were thought
to be driven by envy and desire to deprive the living of what they themselves had
been deprived of – of childbearing; therefore they attacked and killed women of
reproductive age and their babies.96 For women, the primary function in the fam-
ily and in society was to bear and successfully nurture children: their goal in life
was to be a mother, hence women who had died prematurely were automatically

91 Parker (1983): 108.

92 Johnston (1999): 128.
93 Ibid.: 72.
94 Ibid.: 71.
95 Cf. ibid.: 164.
96 Ibid.: 161–162.

45
perceived as such who had failed to fulfill the fundamental duty they were to per-
form for society and, consequently, they broke the social order, or at least did not
form the most important part of its structure, namely the family.97 The ghosts of
such unsuccessful women who had died “in transition” were presumed to return
and cause problems to the living, especially by attacking women and their babies.
Many types of malicious demons fall within the category of the ἄωροι. Some of
them were mythic characters such as Gello, Lamia or Mormo, to whom specific
stories have been ascribed.98 Their names, used in the plural – such as λάμιαι or
μορμόνες – referred to other aggressive female ghosts. The stories about Mormo,
Gello or Lamia present them as originally mortal women who had failed to bear
or successfully nurture children, although not all of them are described explic-
itly as being prematurely dead in our sources.99 They must have been, however,
commonly equated, as we can conclude from the passage of the scholiast to The-
ocritus, for whom Mormo is another name for Lamia and Gello,100 and from the
scholiast to Aristides, who notes the similarity between Mormo’s and Lamia’s
story and seems to describe Mormo as a kind of λαμία.101 Apollonius of Tyana
describes the demon who seduced the young Menippus as one of the ἔμπουσαι,
considered by others as λαμίαι or μορμολυκίαι.102
As former humans they seemed to retain their body to some extent since they
were capable of attacking women and strangling their babies. The most famous
one, Lamia, exposed by Apollonius of Tyana, was able to have sexual intercourse
with a man,103 which makes her resemble Philinnion in this respect. The form
of a beautiful woman was not the only one that such demons had, since their
common significant feature was their talent in shape-shifting. The best known
description of Empusa’s metamorphoses is to be found in Aristophanes’ Frogs

97 Ibid.: 169–175.
98 Zenob. 3.3 = Sapph. fr. 178 Lobel and Page; Hsch., s.v. Γελλώ 307 and 308; Leo Allatius
De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus epistola, Coloniae Agrippinae 1643,
ch. 3, pp. 116–118; Cyranides, a collection of magical lore, includes special spells to
avert Gello: Cyr. 2.31 and 2.40. Cf. Johnston (1999): 164–167.
99 Zenobius explicitly calls Gello “a virgin […] prematurely dead” (παρθένος… ἀώρως
ἐτελεύτησε).
100 Schol. in Theocr. 15.40c: Μορμώ: Λάμια βασίλισσα Λαιστρυγόνων ἡ καὶ Γελλὼ
λεγομένη […].
101 Schol. in Ael. Aristid., p. 41 Dindorf: ἃ δὲ τοὺς παῖδας φοβεῖ καὶ ἐκπλήττει οἷον Λαμίας
καὶ τὰ τοιοῦτα φάσματα. λέγει δὲ τὴν Μορμὼ, ἣν ἀκούοντα ὀρρωδεῖ τὰ παιδία.
102 Philostr. Vit. Apoll. 4.25: ἡ χρηστὴ νύμφη μία τῶν ἐμπουσῶν ἐστιν, ἃς λαμίας τε καὶ
μορμολυκίας οἱ πολλοὶ ἡγοῦνται.
103 Ibid.

46
(288–295), when Xanthias and Dionysus encounter her in Hades: first she takes
the shape of a bull, then of a mule, then of a lovely woman, then of a dog and,
finally, she shows her real face that burns like fire, with one of her legs being of
bronze and the other of cow dung. This description is significant since it perfectly
shows the hybrid character of a demon such as Empusa, which confirms its sta-
tus of a liminal being situated between two (or more) categories. Shape-shifting,
as Sarah I. Johnston says, is “a diachronic rather than synchronic form of hy-
bridism: the demon does not necessarily display traits of two or more categories
simultaneously, as the werewolf does, but its ability to change from human to
horse to fire to tiger nonetheless prevents its secure categorization and thus is
frightening”.104
In the 7th century AD, John Damascenus, in his brief treatise on female
demons,105 says that some people “claim to have seen or heard of how στρύγγαι
enter houses despite locked doors with body or with spirit alone”;106 from which
it can be inferred that they were believed to be corporeal beings with the capac-
ity to separate their souls from their flesh. Johnston interprets this passage107 in
the way that “the γελοῦδες and στρύγγαι were believed to retain some, but not
all, of their corporeality”, which for her means that “they were neither fully fresh
so as to enjoy life, not fully free of flesh constraints as were normal residents of
the Underworld”;108 this seems to be a slight overinterpretation. Nevertheless, for

104 Johnston (1999): 171.

105 Titled Περὶ στρυγγῶν (= Peri stryngon, PG 94.1604); the name στρύγγες as used by
John Damascene comes from the Latin word strix that denotes a screech-owl which,
according to the belief of the ancients, sucked the blood of young children, cf. Plaut.
Ps. 819–820; Tib. 1.5.52; Prop. 3.6.29; 4.5.17; Ov. Fast. 6.131–140; Ov. Met. 7.269; Petr.
63.8; 134.1; Plin. NH 11.232; the Latin term was most likely adapted to Greek in late
antiquity. John Damascene also gives γελοῦδες as another name for these demons:
γυναῖκές εἰσι στρύγγαι, αἳ καὶ γελοῦδες λεγόμεναι. According to Lawson (1910):
179, in modern Greek folklore, στρίγλες are essentially different beings than λαμίαι
and γελλοῦδες; the latter are demons while the former are simply women with the
capacity to transform themselves into birds of prey or other animals; there is only
the taste for blood that the στρίγλες share with the demons.
106 John Damascene (PG 94.1604): καὶ ταῦτα μὲν διαβεβαιοῦνται, οἱ μὲν εἰδεῖν, οἱ δὲ
ἀκοῦσαι, πῶς εἰσέρχεται εἰς τὰ οἰκίας κεκλεισμένων τῶν θυρῶν μετὰ σώματος, ἢ
γυμνῇ τῇ ψυχῇ.
107 Or another passage from the treatise, since Johnston does not quote the exact part
of the text she discusses.
108 Johnston (1999): 176.

47
some contemporaries of John Damascenus, the λαμίαι, ἔμπουσαι, μορμόνες and
other creatures of this kind were corporeal beings.

Was Philinnion a Demon?

Was Philinnion a malicious demon? Was she a demon at all? If not, then who was
she? This is the crucial problem that the reader of the story is confronted with:
the girl’s vague identity.
First, from the very beginning until the end Philinnion eludes even easy cat-
egorization either into the living or the dead. During the whole course of ac-
tion she is never explicitly named a ghost or dead, and a description of her is
not provided by the narrator. Certainly, however, she is not a disembodied spirit.
Conversely, the element that comes to the fore is Philinnion’s corporeality, which
renders any classification of her status impossible. This is the element that does
not make her resemble other ancient ghosts, but, on the other hand, makes her
resemble female demons. She also shares another characteristic with such crea-
tures: premature death.
At this point I will concentrate on Philinnion’s possible affiliation with the
ἄωροι; later, I will take up the question of her corporeality.
The idea underlying Philinnion’s return as depicted in the Mirabilia is the
belief in the restless dead. More precisely speaking, it is very likely a belief in
the premature dead, according to which one’s untimely death renders that dead
entity restless. Although we do not know the circumstances in which Philin-
nion died, her death was certainly untimely: she passed away as a young bride.
However, she does not seem to be a typical – or the most popular – ἄωρος, but a
quiet, peaceful ghost. As we shall see below, her motivation is neither anger nor
envy towards the living, who successfully experience what she herself has been
deprived of, but most likely desire. Although as a “regular” prematurely dead en-
tity she returns to complete what was incomplete in her life, in this case it is most
likely the sexual initiation that she lacks since, as we can suppose, she died before
the marriage had been consummated.
“It seems to me necessary to assume that she died still a virgin, and fairly
likely that in the original story Machates and Craterus were one and the same
person. However, this last point is not quite necessary; Machates, if not her actual
husband, was well fitted to represent him, being an outsider who declared him-
self such by sleeping in the guest-room. What makes me think that he was her
husband is that, according to Phlegon, he gave her an iron ring, which is surely

48
a gift rather suited to a bride than light-o’-love” – points out Rose109 and refers
here to the passage in Pliny’s Natural History, which relates that an iron ring is
sent to a bride.110
It is unclear whether Craterus and Machates were in fact one and the same
person, but if not, then Philinnion’s nocturnal visits to a stranger instead of to
her own husband appear even more intriguing. We read that she confessed to
Machates that her desire (ἐπιθυμία) was so strong that she came to him secretly,
without her parents knowing. Proclus says that she came to him driven by love/
desire (διὰ τὸν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔρωτα).111 Erwin Rohde suggested that Philinnion
and Machates had loved each other before, but that the girl had been forced to
marry another man – Craterus; she thus died of despair.112 Rohde’s supposition
is, however, illogical, since in Phlegon Machates did not recognize Philinnion as
his former beloved; apparently he did not know the girl at all. It seems obvious
that if the young man knew Philinnion the story would lose its mystery, thus
the author made his characters alien to each other for the sake of surprise and
sensation.
Another possibility is that Philinnion visits a stranger because her husband,
Craterus, has also died. That would easily explain her return as being motivated
by her need or desire for something that her husband was no longer able to pro-
vide her with: the sexual intercourse.
Therefore, if Philinnion died a virgin then by no means can she be considered
as the prematurely dead, which would definitely indicate she is not the properly
dead. Her situation is quite pitiable: she is a liminal being stuck between two op-
posing worlds: the upper and the underworld, as well as between the single and
the married state. Her return may be seen as an effort or rather a task to complete
le rite de passage113 by means of sexual initiation, i.e. the experience she had been
deprived of by her premature death, and which in ancient cultures is one of the
most important moments in a human individual’s life.
Philinnion’s mysterious words directed towards her parents would rather in-
dicate that her return was a task delegated by a divinity. Caught in flagranti with
Machates, she complains: “Mother and father, how unfairly you have grudged my

109 Rose (1925): 149.

110 NH 33.12: sponsae muneris vice ferreus anulus mittitur.
111 Procl. in Rem publ. 2.116 Kroll.
112 Rohde (1877): 333.
113 On the highly sacral nature of all thresholds, esp. of that between the two great stages
of life, namely childhood and puberty, or that of the single and married state, see the
monumental work by Arnold van Gennep (1909).

49
being with the guest for three days in my father’s house, since I have caused no
one any pain. For this reason, on account of your meddling, you shall grieve all
over again, and I shall return to the place appointed to me. For it was not without
divine will that I came here” (οὐ γὰρ ἄνευ θείας βουλήσεως ἦλθον εἰς ταῦτα).114
In my view, her complaint suggests that her parents’ interruption stopped her
on her way to completing the task delegated by a divinity: to achieve rest and
become the “properly dead” by means of completing what had not been com-
pleted in her short life. Equally mysterious is her statement: “I shall return to the
place appointed for me” (εἰς τὸν διατεταγμένον τόπον). “The place” may indi-
cate her tomb, meaning a place appointed for Philinnion by her parents after her
death, where she evidently returns after her meeting with Machates and where
she leaves the ring and the cup. “The place” may also refer to a place destined by
a deity especially for the ἄωροι, who were forbidden to enter Hades proper. The
actual meaning of this expression must remain Philinnion’s secret as it is too
vague and ambiguous to refer to anything specific.
Philinnion’s other words may be interpreted as a further hint of her mo-
tives for returning. She vaguely claims that her intentions are peaceful, saying
she came to her parents’ house with no wish to cause any trouble (λυποῦσαν
οὐδέν) – “absque ullo maleficio” – as Carl Müller translates this passage in his
edition of Phlegon’s Mirabilia.115 However, many modern editors of the Mirabilia
(e.g. Giannini), following Johann August Nauck’s conjecture,116 read in this pas-
sage λυποῦσαν οὐδένα – “causing no one any pain / any trouble”; this conjecture
seems to be justifiable since the verb λυπεῖν indicates “to grieve” or “to vex”, thus
the personal object οὐδένα, instead of the impersonal οὐδέν in the context of a
recent death, sounds plausible.117 Since in the works of historians the verb λυπεῖν
often indicates “to harass”, “to annoy” the enemy by constant attacks,118 Philin-
nion’s words can also have a double meaning – she may be emphasizing that
despite her premature death she is not a malicious demon like Λαμία, Ἔμπουσα
or another female evil spirit that comes to disturb people.
On the other hand, her motivation for interacting with the living is to some
extent similar as in the case of some of the female demons: she searches for a

114 Mir. 1.11.

115 Müller based his edition and translation on the very first edition of the Mirabilia by
Xylander.
116 J. A. Nauck in Keller’ edition (one of his emendations communicated to the editor).
117 All the more that the expression λυποῦσαν οὐδένα resembles the formula οὐδένα
(or μηδένα) λυπήσας (or -ασα), which is found in epitaphs, cf. IG II2 5673, V.2 491.
118 See LSJ s.v. λυπέω A.3.

50
young man who will satisfy her sexual desire, while λαμίαι and others seek young
men to drink their blood, as is explicitly explained by an empusa in The Life of
Apollonius of Tyana.119 And although Philinnion does not have such bloodthirsty
intentions, she is just as dangerous as the other types of ἄωροι in the way that she
leads, perhaps even unintentionally, her lover to death. We can only wonder what
would have happened to Machates if Philinnion had not been recognized by her
family. Would he stay alive, unaware that his lover was dead? This must remain
an open question.
However, Philinnion’s substantial nature is another feature that she shares
with female demons. Substantiality makes it difficult to solve the riddle of the
girl’s vague identity since it enables the author of the narrative to present her as
a normal human being. This fact is constantly proven at the language level by
the terms she is referred to in the story: mostly the term ἡ ἄνθρωπος (a familiar
term to denote a woman) appears; also, several times her name – Philinnion – is
used, and she is called a daughter (θυγάτηρ) by her parents and nanny; once, in
the scene when she “dies again”, she is described as dead (νεκρά) when her body
(σῶμα) drops on the floor. The latter term definitely settles the matter and con-
firms that Philinnion is corporeal. It is only in the final part of the story that her
ghostly identity is explicitly revealed. The reader learns that “Machates, the guest
whom the ghost (φάσμα) visited, became despondent and killed himself ”. For the
first and last time the word ‘ghost’ appears and, as a matter of fact, it is perversely
mentioned somewhat in passing, as if Philinnion’s real nature was evident from
the beginning. This is obviously for the sake of surprise and sensation. Until this
moment nothing signifies that she is anything else than a normal girl, at least at
the language level.
The girl’s being a ghost and at the same time being corporeal may sound para-
doxical to the modern reader. However, this fact simply indicates that such a
category of the dead must have existed in antiquity. Yet, as Debbie Felton aptly
observes, Greek terminology did not distinguish between insubstantial and sub-
stantial apparitions, for evidently Philinnion is an embodied ghost, namely – a
revenant.120 Of that we have much linguistic as well as non-lingustic proof, by
definition not explicit but deducible from the girl’s appearance and behavior in
the plot; and she is presented as looking and acting as if she were a real girl
to such an extent that it enables her to delude the young man, Machates, who
does not the least suspect that he is dealing with someone or something other

119 Philostr. Vit. Apoll. 4.25.

120 Felton (1999): 25.

51
than a living woman. First, her clothes play an important role and serve as proof
of Philinnion’s being alive; for she wears the usual clothes: Machates shows to
the girl’s mother her breast-band that she left behind as well as the golden ring
that he had received from her the night before. The clothes appear once again in
quite a strange context when Machates suspects the girl he has met is dressed in
dead Philinnion’s robe (since he apparently believes his mistress is someone else).
Such a morbid idea appears in his mind when he tries to explain to himself Phi-
linnion’s parents’ claim that his mysterious mistress is their dead daughter. His
explanation relies on the idea that some robbers opened Philinnion’s tomb, took
off her clothes and then sold them to the other girl’s father.
Yet Philinnion acts like a real girl: she uses her own body in the same way
the living do. She eats and drinks with Machates (δειπνούσης μετ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ
συμπινούσης) and, most importantly, she is able to have sexual intercourse with
him. The latter is stated explicitly, since we learn that Machates “did not believe
that he consorted / had sex with a dead girl” (οὐ πιστεύων εἰ νεκρᾷ πλησιάζοι);
although the verb πλησιάζειν is ambiguous, meaning ‘to consort with’ but also
‘to have sexual intercourse with’, thus we guess that the youngsters had begun
an intimate relationship and we can infer from Philinnion’s confession that she
came to Machates driven by desire/lust (ἐπιθυμία). Her ability to have such close
and intimate contact with Machates means that her body – her scent and tem-
perature – did not differ from the real body of a living person. Therefore, she was
a reanimated corpse but, so to say, a fresh and good-looking corpse: a seductive
revenant.
For John C. Lawson the story of Philinnion proves that in ancient Greece the
primitive belief in the resurrection of the body existed, which gave a founda-
tion for the belief in vampires (vrykolakes) that was so widespread in modern
Greece.121 He claims that there is a fundamental difference between the ancient
ghost stories and the stories of revenants, and asserts that “Philinnion acts as a
revenant and is treated as a revenant; the inspection of the vault in which her
body had been laid and the purpose of her nocturnal visits to Machates furnish
conclusive evidence of her corporeal resuscitation; and the method of dispos-
ing of her corpse is the method generally approved and employed in the case of
revenants – cremation”.122
Lawson, however, apparently was not aware of an important fact or simply
waved it aside: the cremation of Philinnion’s corpse (κατακαίειν) bidden by the

121 Lawson (1910): 412–416.

122 Ibid.: 416.

52
seer is a conjecture of the Dutch philologist Tiberius Hemsterhuys,123 whereas
in the manuscript we read about “enclosing” the girl outside the city borders
(κατακλείειν ἐκτὸς ὁρίων), since it was conceived as disadvantageous to bury
her in the ground within the city boundaries.124
The verb κατακλείειν, which primarily means ‘to close’, ‘to shut up’, is also used
in the context of burying the dead and signifies, for instance, enclosing a corpse in
the tomb125 or a mummy in a case.126 Nonetheless, it does not seem to encode any
special ritual practice that is connected with purification of pollution from the
dead. In Philinnion’s case it would then denote that her corpse had to somehow
be blocked in the tomb in order to prevent her potential return. Antonio Strama-
glia perceives this prescription as cathartic and prophylactic at the same time
and quotes a similar example found in Sophocles,127 when the Thebans decide
that the unclean Oedipus should be buried outside the borders of the country
in order to avoid pollution from his grave.128 However, Stramaglia is not entirely
convinced that the idea of “closure” of the tomb, suggested by κατακλείειν in
Phlegon, truly alludes to the use of a “lock” in the graves followed by appropriate
ceremonies and aimed at preventing the dead from returning among the living.
Hemsterhuys’ conjecture replacing κατακλείειν with κατακαίειν as referring
to the remedy for the revenant sounds so persuasive that modern translators
have adopted this version in their translations of the Mirabilia.129 The main argu-
ment for κατακαίειν is the passage in chapter 2 of the Mirabilia which recounts
a situation that is somewhat similar: in Aetolia a hermaphrodite is born, at the
assembly it is proposed that both the child and its mother should be taken away
beyond the boundaries and burned (κατακαῦσαι) (they are most likely both

123 Hemsterhuys (1733): 418.

124 Mir. 1.17: Ὕλλος […] ἐκέλευεν τὴν μὲν ἄνθρωπον κατακλείειν ἐκτὸς ὁρίων, οὐ γὰρ
συμφέρειν ἔτι ταύτην ἐντὸς ὁρίων τεθῆναι εἰς γῆν.
125 Esp. of Christ in the works of Christian authors, e.g. Ioan. Chrys. Sanct. Pasch. 35–36
Datema and Allen; Ioan. Damasc. Epist. de Trisag. 17; Procl. Laud. gen. Mar. 14.3.
126 Cf. Hdt. 2.86.
127 Soph. Oed. Col. 399–402.
128 Stramaglia (1999): 252, n. 41. For other examples, Stramaglia refers to Theoc. 24.88–102,
and Ael. VH 4.7.
129 Hansen: “He [the seer] said we should burn the girl outside the boundaries of the city,
since nothing would be gained by burying her in the ground within its boundaries…”;
Brodersen: “Er [the seer] erhob sich und sagte, daß wir das Mädchen außerhalb der
Grenzen unserer Stadt verbrennen sollten – es nütze nämlich nichts, es innerhalb
des Gebiets unter der Erde zu begraben…”.

53
dead, but this is not stated explicitly).130 It is truly difficult to state if Hemster-
huys’ conjecture should be followed. If so, then it may be inferred from this pas-
sage that the seer bade to burn the corpse of Philinnion; if the reading of the
manuscript is correct, it means the seer ordered to “lock” the dead in the grave.
In any case, the passage concerns pollution from unnatural death which requires
purification. The purificatory rites recommended by the seer are described in de-
tail: besides burying (burning?) Philinnion’s corpse outside the city boundaries,
it was prescribed to “perform an apotropaic sacrifice to Hermes Chthonios and
the Eumenides”; everyone was instructed to “purify himself completely, cleanse
the temples and perform all the customary rites to the chthonic deities”; the
governor was suggested in private to sacrifice to Hermes, Zeus Xenios and Ares
(Mir. 1.17).
For Lawson, another piece of evidence supporting his idea of the belief in
resuscitated corpses may be a vague passage from Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazousae:
“Are you an ape plastered with white lead, or the ghost of some old hag returned
from the dark borderlands of death?”,131 even though this evidence should be
taken under consideration with caution. According to the scholar, also the pas-
sage of Lucian’s Philopseudeis (26), in which one of the liars states he knows of a
man who rose from the dead twenty days after he was buried, may testify to the
same.
Lawson states that popular belief in antiquity was the same as popular belief
in modern times, but that literary propriety forbade more than a mere verbal ref-
erence to such a gross – as he says – superstition as bodily resuscitation. There-
fore, when an author wanted a dead person to re-appear in his literary work, he
portrayed him conventionally as a ghost, not as a walking corpse.132 Lawson finds
this convention “right and necessary”, arguing: “Could even Homer have reani-
mated the dead Patroclus, with this unearthly ghastliness added to his wounds
and to his mangling by the chariot, and have brought him to Achilles in the dark-
ness of the night, without exciting in his breast horror instead of pity and loath-
ing for love?”133 Furthermore, referring to Euripides’ prologue to Hecuba, where

130 Mir. 2.4: οἱ δὲ δεῖν ᾤοντο τὸ παιδίον καὶ τὴν μητέρα ἀπενέγκοντας εἰς τὴν ὑπερορίαν
κατακαῦσαι.
131 Ar. Ec. 1073–1074: πότερον πίθηκος ἀνάπλεως ψιμυθίου, / ἢ γραῦς ἀνεστηκυῖα παρὰ
τῶν πλειόνων; transl. F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart. Professor Gościwit Malinowski
drew my attention to the fact that the Greek word πίθηκος in this context most likely
means not an ape but a monkey, referring perhaps to a macaque.
132 Lawson (1910): 429.
133 Ibid.

54
the ghost of Polydorus appears in a disembodied form,134 the scholar concludes:
“Epic and dramatic propriety must have demanded some refinement of so gross-
ly material a conception. The canons of drama would not allow the enactment
of a murder on the stage before the eyes of the spectators; would it then have
been compatible with the restraint of Greek art to represent the murdered body
as a revenant? […] But those same canons did permit a verbal description of the
murder; and similarly the tragedians permitted themselves to refer, in impreca-
tions and suchlike, to the horror of bodily resuscitation”.135
Lawson’s theory that in literature revenants were portrayed as disembodied
ghosts for the sake of esthetic correctness, although controversial since based
only on the story of Philinnion and other very few ambiguous references, and
supported by comparison to the belief in vrykolakes as spread in modern Greece,
is still to be considered. The story of the revenant by the name of Philinnion,
preserved only in Phlegon and briefly summarized by Proclus, and so far un-
paralleled, indicates that the belief in bodily resuscitation must have existed in
Greco-Roman antiquity. For the motif of a revenant in the Mirabilia could not
have just come out of nowhere; it is highly improbable that the author of the
story simply invented it. “It is quite difficult to invent a tale; even a new creation
inevitably will merge with a stream of tales heard before, and thus become a vari-
ant of what has already been around” – says Walter Burkert.136
Undoubtedly, the motif of a revenant originates from the folk tradition; the
close resemblance between Phlegon’s story and the modern Irish folktale has
already been discussed above. “It must be accepted that the literary tradition and
the folk tradition have interacted, and folk tradition became containable only
through writing”137 – these words perfectly describe the case found in Phlegon,
who preserves a scrap of tradition unavailable from elsewhere. This literary re-
telling of the folktale enables the revenants’ coming-out in literature. Figuratively
speaking, through the door opened only a crack by Philinnion’s old nurse the
corporeal ghosts slipped into the literary tradition.

134 Eur. Hec. 1–58.

135 Lawson (1910): 429.
136 Burkert (1996): 70. Burkert polemicizes with the proposition of Detlev Fehling (1977)
that the tale of Amor and Psyche was invented by Apuleius himself and that all the
known variants of the story depend on the literary text of Apuleius and not on the
folk tradition.
137 Burkert (1996): 70.

55
Monstrous Identity, Monstrous Desires
Who is Philinnion? Bram Stoker would call her “undead”, locating her in this
category which is broad and vague enough to include all sorts of beings neither
properly dead nor properly living. It would be, however, a rather non-committal
and ambiguous answer but proportional to Philinnion’s ambiguous nature.
She uses her own young and attractive body she had when she was alive. Her
flesh seems to revive at night and return for the day to the family tomb. Thus a
corpse changes into a beautiful and seductive woman and maintains all the vital
functions and activities, such as drinking, eating, talking, having sex and sleep-
ing. She is something different than a ghost, although this is the term used to
describe her in the story; the Greek language turns out to be unexpectedly poor
when it comes to naming such suspicious creatures, so uncannily resembling the
living.
On the other hand, Philinnion also alarmingly resembles female demons, due
to her being prematurely dead and corporeal she is not referred to as such, nor
does she display envy and malice towards the living. Unfortunately, our knowl-
edge about the category she and the like fall under is very scanty. Through this
lack of terminology, we may but conventionally describe Philinnion by the mod-
ern term of ‘revenant’, the ‘returning dead’.
Therefore, this personage appears to be something different than the demons
from popular belief, particularly due to her ambiguous identity that is considered
multidimensionally: besides her vague “life status”, wavering between the dead
and the living, there is also the question of her character and intentions, which
are neither explicitly bad nor explicitly good. Indeed, Philinnion escapes any cat-
egorization, and this fact makes her so charming and her story so appealing.
Her ambiguous nature, however, allows us to call Philinnion a monster: a mys-
terious creature whose deceptive appearance of delusive beauty and resemblance
to the living creates an atmosphere of dread and sense of chaos.
Philinnion is a tragic heroine and her story is a tragic one. Desperately seeking
something she was deprived of and attempting to complete what was incomplete
in her life, she fails – a liminal being excluded from the society of the living and
forbidden to join the assembly of the dead, stuck in a transition between two
opposing realms, stopped in the process of becoming properly dead or, perhaps,
properly living. This is the tragic aspect of the narrative.
There is, however, also another aspect that is much more striking and rather
morbid: the revenant’s desire for (physical) love with the living, which may defi-
nitely be considered as monstrous. What we are dealing with here is in a way a
reversed necrophilia. The dead entity’s capacity to feel emotions and desires is

56
something unnatural, thus unsettling; it introduces an element of perversion –
which is repulsive and fascinating at the same time.
Monstrous cravings and a monstrous body: these elements come to the fore
in the narrative and are emphasized strongly but discretely. It is hardly surprising
that such a unique story attracted Phlegon’s attention and was incorporated into
his collection of physical monstrosities.
Philinnion’s story opens up a section devoted to embodied ghosts, including
three accounts in total.

The Revenant Anthropophagous vs. the Oracular Head: The Story

of Polycritus
Chapter 2 of the Mirabilia tells a ghost story which is far more complicated and
uncanny than that of Philinnion and may be regarded as one of the most aston-
ishing pieces of ancient literature. Although one may say that if once the rule of
credibility is suspended everything can happen, especially in fiction, still such
an accumulation of elements of the grotesque and bizarre, such as a revenant, a
hermaphrodite, a sparagmos, an anthropophagy and an oracular head, appearing
all together in one narrative makes it highly atypical, even for a ghost story.
All of these elements will be discussed in sequence in this section, but par-
ticular attention will be paid to the main character of the story, i.e. to the appari-
tion of a certain Polycritus and to the question of his vague material existence.
This is an interesting case of a ghost who seems to be one of the untimely dead
whose lack of either corporeality or insubstantiality cannot be unambiguously
confirmed; his affiliation with monster-lore, however, is rather undisputable.
Chapter 2 begins with a reference to Hieron of Alexandria or of Ephesus as
the source of the tale. Interestingly, Proclus (in Rem publ. 2.115 Kroll), who also
briefly summarizes this story, also mentions the name of Hieron the Ephesian
and comments that this author as well as other historians “witnessed these events
and wrote about them to King Antigonus and to other friends of theirs who were
elsewhere”.138 Apparently, just as the story of Philinnion, this text also originally
had an epistolary form, yet no traces of it have been preserved today.
The historian by the name of Hieron of Ephesus or of Alexandria remains
uncertain,139 but the mention of King Antigonus can be taken as a hint which al-
lows to connect the story with historical events attested in literary sources.

138 Transl. Hansen (1996): 199.

139 On this personage, see F. Jacoby (1913); cf. Brisson (1978): 98–101.

57
 It is a story of a prominent figure of Aetolia, a certain Polycritus who held
the position of Aetolarch. Again, a man by this name as well as the office are un-
known outside of the story,140 thus these details cannot help one date the events.
The title of Aetolarch, however, might have resembled the function of the Boeo-
tarch in Boeotia and would have indicated that Polycritus held a position of con-
siderable importance; this fact might have given weight to the events.141
Polycritus, voted Aetolarch for three years by the people of Aetolia who
deemed him worthy of the office due to his nobility as well as to that of his ances-
tors, took as his wife a Locrian woman and, after having spent three nights with
his bride he died suddenly on the fourth day. When her time came the woman
gave birth to a child with two sets of genitals. The upper part was male and hard,
while the lower part was female and softer. The child’s relatives became scared
and called an assembly at which the small hermaphrodite was displayed and ex-
amined by the diviners. The diviners deliberated about the miracle and proposed
two different interpretations of the sign. Some of them declared that a disagree-
ment would come between the Locrians and Aetolians, for the child had been
separated from its mother, a Locrian, and from its father, an Aetolian, whereas
others stated that the baby together with its mother should be taken beyond the
city boundaries and burned. Suddenly, the ghost of Polycritus appeared at the as-
sembly and encouraged people who were trying to run away in panic to stay and
not be afraid of his presence. When he had calmed the people down he began to
speak in a soft voice, persuading them to give him the child and warning them
against resorting to any violence in their actions. After a while, when he saw that
they were hesitant about what to do and did not seem to be fulfilling his demands
he caught the child, tore it limb from limb and devoured it. The terrified people
began shouting and throwing stones in order to drive Polycritus away, but the
ghost remained unharmed by the stones and, after he had consumed the child’s
entire body except for the head, he disappeared. Astonished and horrified, the
Aetolians decided to send a delegation to Delphi, but suddenly the child’s head,
which was lying on the ground, began to speak, foretelling the future in a long
hexametric oracle. In vague and threatening words, the head foretold a swift de-
struction if they did not escape and hide among the people of Athena. Following
these instructions, the Aetolians brought their wives and children and hid them
in places of safety, wherever they could. They themselves remained, waiting for

140 See the note above and cf. Scherling (1952).

141 Hansen (1996): 86.

58
what would come, and it happened that in the following year the Aetolians and
the Acarnanians met in a battle which brought great losses on both sides.

When Locrian Women Gave Birth to Monsters

At first glance, this strange story seems to be pure fiction with no claim for his-
torical truth. Besides the many bizarre elements it contains an inconsistency,
namely a certain type of confusion that appears after the Acarnanians become
somewhat unexpectedly involved in the action in the final part of the story. Luc
Brisson found this significant and proved in his brilliant study that some actual
historical events are likely to be reflected in the narrative.142
The scholar was striked by the fact that from the very beginning up until the
end the reader is led to believe that a schism is approaching in the relations be-
tween the two nations, i.e. the Locrians and the Aetolians; no slightest reference
is made to the Acarnanians. According to the rather vague interpretation of the
seers, the dual nature of the hermaphrodite is connected with the child’s mixed
Locrian-Aetolian origin: it signifies a breach between these two peoples, for it
is separated from its father – an Aetolian, and from its mother – a Locrian. This
explanation seems to be supported by the oracular head which also warns the
people against an upcoming war.
The verses of the oracle given by the head go as follows:
[…] On this day in the course of year
Death has been ordained for all, but by the will of Athena
The souls of Lokrians and Aitolians shall live mixed together.
Nor will there be a respite from evil, not even briefly,
For a bloody drizzle is poured on your heads,
Night keeps everything hidden, and a dark sky has spread over it,
At once night causes a darkness to move over the entire earth,
At home all the bereaved move their limbs at the threshold,
The woman will not leave off grieving, nor do the children
Leave off grieving for what they weep for in the halls, as they cling to their dear parents.
Such has been the wave that has crashed down upon everyone from above,
Alas, alas, without cease I bewail the terrible sufferings of my land
And my most dread mother, whom death eventually carried away.
All the gods will render inglorious the birth
Of whatever there remains of Aitolian and Lokrian seed,
Because death has not touched my head, nor has it done away
With all the indistinguishable limbs of my body but has left [me on] the earth
Come and expose my head to the rising dawn, and

142 Brisson (1978).

59
 Do not hide it below within the dusky earth.
As for you yourselves, abandon the land and
Go to another land, to a people of Athena,
If you choose an escape from death in accordance with fate.143

It is only at the very end of the narrative that the reader learns, with surprise, that
in the great battle the Aetolians did not meet the Locrians but the Acarnanians:
“When the Aitolians heard the oracle, they brought their wives, infant children and very
elderly to such places of safety as each man was able to arrange. They themselves re-
mained behind, awaiting what would occur and it happened in the following year that
the Aitolians and the Akarnanians joined battle, with great destruction on both sides”.144

Such a sudden appearance of the Acarnanians prompted Alessandro Giannini,

one of the editors of the Mirabilia, to replace in his Latin translation of the text
the Acarnanians with the Locrians in this passage. Brisson, however, proved this
incoherence to be ostensible: the verses of the oracle foretelling a misfortune

143 Mir. 2.11: ἤματι γὰρ τούτῳ περιτελλομένου ἐνιαυτοῦ

ὥρισται πᾶσιν θάνατος, ψυχαὶ δὲ βίονται
Λοκρῶν Αἰτωλῶν τ’ ἀναμὶξ βουλῇσιν Ἀθήνης.
οὐδ’ ἀναπαύλησις κακοῦ ἔσσεται οὐδ’ ἠβαιόν
ἤδη γὰρ ψακάδες φόνιαι κατὰ κρᾶτα κέχυνται,
νὺξ δ’ ἐπὶ πάντα κέκευθε, μέλας δ’ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴθρη.
αὐτίκα νῦν δ’ ἔρεβος πᾶσαν κατὰ γαῖαν ὄρωρεν,
χῆροι δ’ οἴκοι πάντες ἐπ’ οὔδεϊ γυῖα κλινοῦσιν,
οὐδὲ γυνὴ πένθος ποτὲ λείψεται, οὐδέ νυ παῖδες
ἃν μεγάροις γοόωσι, φίλους πατέρας περιφύντες·
τοῖον γὰρ τόδε κῦμα κατέδραμε πᾶσι κατ’ ἄκρης.
αἲ αἲ πατρίδ’ ἐμὴν αἰεὶ στένω αἰνὰ παθοῦσαν
μητέρα τ’ αἰνοτάτην, ἣν ὕστερον ἔκλυσεν αἰών.
νώνυμνόν τε θεοὶ γένεσιν θήσουσιν ἅπαντες
Λοκρῶν τ’ Αἰτωλῶν θ’ ὅ τί που καὶ σπέρμα λίποιτο,
οὕνεκ’ ἐμὴν κεφαλὴν λίπε αἰών, οὐδέ νυ πάντα
σώματος ἠφάνικεν μέλε’ ἄκριτα, λεῖπε δὲ γαίᾳ.
ἀλλ’ ἄγ’ ἐμὴν κεφαλὴν θέμεν’ ἠοῖ φαινομένῃφι,
μηδέ θ’ ὑπὸ ζοφερὴν γαῖαν κατακρυπτέμεν ἔνδον·
αὐτοὺς δὲ προλιπόντας ἑὸν χῶρον μετόπισθεν
στείχειν εἰς ἄλλον χῶρον καὶ λαὸν Ἀθήνης,
εἴ τινά που θανάτοιο λύσιν κατὰ μοῖραν ἕλησθε.
144 Mir. 2.12: ἀκούσαντες δὲ οἱ Αἰτωλοὶ τοῦ χρησμοῦ γυναῖκας μὲν καὶ τὰ νήπια τέκνα
τούς τε ὑπέργηρως ὑπεξέθεντο οὗ ἕκαστος ἐδύνατο, αὐτοὶ δὲ ἔμενον καραδοκοῦντες
τὸ ἀποβησόμενον. καὶ συνέβη τῷ ἑξῆς ἔτει Αἰτωλοῖς καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶσι συστῆναι πόλεμον
καὶ φθορὰν πολλὴν ἑκατέρων γενέσθαι.

60
that is shared by both the Aetolians and Locrians in fact does not refer to them
as enemies of war but as brothers in misery and allies. Such an interpretation al-
lows one to compare this incident with a passage in Diodor of Sicily (19.67.3–7)
which describes the events of 316 BC, when Cassander, one of the commanders
of Alexander the Great (Philinnion’s alleged husband in Mir. 1), assumed power
over Macedonia and decided to subdue the valiant Aetolians. In 313 BC Cas-
sander sent Philip, most likely his younger brother, with the army to attack Ae-
tolia with the help of the Acarnanians, who were his allies. The Aetolians, despite
the support of the Epirotes, suffered heavy losses.145
Thus, what the oracular head actually means is that it urges the Aetolians to
strengthen their relationship with the Locrians who, as Brisson shows, may be
“the people of Athena” mentioned in the oracle. The scholar assumes that the
reference to Athena in connection with the Locrians may allude to a practice at-
tested in literary sources and in one well-known inscription as well.146 According
to these sources, the Locrians were ordered by the Delphic oracle to send young
girls to the temple of Athena in Ilion in Troas who were to serve the goddess, as
a compensation for the crime committed by Ajax, the son of Oeleus, who tried
to rape Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, at the foot of a statue of Athena during the
sack of Troy.147 Later, after the war with Phocis, which ended in 347/346 BC,
the Locrians stopped sending the contribution. Aelian (fr. 47 Hercher) says that
when the substitutes were not sent any more, the Locrian women began to bear
monsters. The Locrians, oblivious to their previous contacts with Delphi, asked
the Delphic oracle for advice again. This time the oracle did not want to accept
them but eventually spoke with them and accused them of neglecting their pay-
ing the contribution. Since the Locrians could ignore the order no longer, they
turned the problem over to King Antigonus, who was to choose the city that
would send the girls; he ordered it to be decided by a draw.
The name of King Antigonus appears twice: in Aelian and in Proclus, who also
refers the story of Polycritus. A few candidates for this personage were proposed,
including Antigonus III Doson, king in 227–221 BC, Antigonus II Gonatas, who
reigned 283–239 BC, and Antigonus I Monophtalmus, king in 306–301 BC; the

145 Diod. 19.74.3–6.

146 Brisson (1978): 96–98. The so-called Lokrische Mädcheninschrift, published in IG
IX, 12 3, 706 (G. Klaffenbach) and in Schmitt (1969): 118–126, nr. 472. Cf. Lycophr.
Alex.1150-1164; Apollod. Epit. 5.22a; Ael. fr. 47 Hercher. See also Vidal-Naquet (1986);
Graf (1978).
147 For the rest of their lives or for a certain period of time: the sources do not agree on
this point. See Vidal Naquet (1986): 191 ff.

61
latter is considered to be the best option since this Macedonian king “was master
of the Troad and […] from before 306 BC, controlled even if he did not create
the federation of the cities of the Troad around the sanctuary of Athena Ilias”.148
Although chapter 2 of Phlegon’s Mirabilia refers neither to King Antigonus nor
to the contribution paid by the Locrians, it is very likely, as Brisson proved, a
retelling – or just an echo – of the story found in Aelian. In such a case, although
seemingly pure fiction, Phlegon’s story vaguely alludes to the events which were
to occur in the times of Antigonus’ rule, i.e. 306–301 BC, or, if the title of the king
would be taken retroactively, the date could be moved to slightly earlier.

“Unharmed by the Stones”

Regardless of the question of whether Phlegon’s story was based on historical
events relating to the contribution paid by the Locrians and to the monsters
allegedly born by Locrian women, it contains other interesting elements which
prove the Mirabilia’s focus on monstrosity. They all concern human flesh: strik-
ingly, human flesh which is dismembered, disintegrated and destroyed in the
process of tearing and devouring. As if that were not enough, all of this is per-
formed by an apparition of uncertain origin and ambiguous intentions whose
actions seem irrational and resemble rather those of a malicious demon and
whose form of existence cannot easily be determined, i.e. whether it is substan-
tial or insubstantial.
Since information about the ghost of Polycritus is scanty and too vague
to prove either possibility: he appears all of a sudden (ἐξαίφνης φαίνεται ὁ
Πολύκριτος) at the assembly, wearing black clothing (ἔχων ἐσθῆτα μέλαιναν).149
Pure black, as well as pure white and smoke-like are the three most common
appearances of Greek ghosts,150 therefore Polycritus does not diverge from the
ghostly norm in this respect. An interesting detail is his manner of speaking, for
he does it “in a soft voice” (λεπτῇ τῇ φωνῇ),151 and utters prose with the use of
hexametric oracles.152 His soft voice is strongly contrasted with his further vio-
lent behavior – that of tearing apart the hermaphrodite’s body and devouring it.
The ability to perform the sparagmos and to consume the flesh can be taken as
proof of Polycritus’ substantiality, especially when we compare him to Homer’s

148 Ibid.: 194; cf. Brisson (1978): 89–101.

149 Mir. 2.5.
150 Winkler (1980): 161.
151 Mir. 2.6.
152 See above, note 141.

62
weak and powerless shadows of the dead. On the other hand, he is “unharmed by
the stones” (ἄπληκτος ὢν ὑπὸ τῶν λίθων) that are thrown by the people.153 The
Greek term ἄπληκτος means ‘unstricken’, ‘unwounded’, ‘uninjured’, generally in a
physical sense; therefore, it is most likely suggested in the text that Polycritus is
an embodied ghost that remains unstricken by the stones thanks to divine pro-
tection and not, as Brisson interprets it, due to his insubstantiality.154 In this case,
his sudden appearance may be considered, literally, as an act of materialization
as well as typically ghostly behavior that is introduced to the story for the sake of
sensation and pleasurable fear.
The place of the story within the compilation – in the sequence of accounts
Polycritus apparently concerning manifestations of embodied apparitions – also
argues for his corporeality. Since, although chapters 1–3 of the Mirabilia share
a few other elements, such as the talking head, the oracles and the σπαραγμός
(tearing the human body to pieces), the ghost is the main point in all of them.
This is confirmed at the beginning of the story of Polycritus: “Hieron of Alex-
andria or of Ephesus relates that a ghost also appeared in Aitolia”.155 The corpo-
reality of Philinnion (Mir. 1), as well as that of Buplagus (Mir. 3), both explicitly
represented as reanimated corpses, cannot be questioned. Therefore, Polycritus
belongs to the same type of apparitions: to the revenants. His actions, however,
seem much more irrational than those of Philinnion or Buplagus: any logical
explanation for the sparagmos perfomed by this ghost can hardly be provided.
The reader must accept that the rules of the supernatural world are not con-
gruent with those of the world of the living, especially in folklore. In the oral
tradition, some interesting evidence of the σπαραγμός can be found, although it
appears out of the Bacchic context which it was usually connected with. A piece
of evidence from the ancient tradition which may serve as a parallel to the story
of Polycritus was noticed by William Hansen.156 In his Heroicus, Philostratus tells
of several heroes who were active after the Trojan War as embodied ghosts and
quotes the strange story of Achilles. The hero is said to have lived on Leuke, the
White Island, on the Black Sea, with Helen as his wife. One day a merchant vis-
ited the island and Achilles appeared to him and hosted him kindly. At last he
asked the merchant a favor, which was to bring for him a certain maiden from
Troy. When the merchant, surprised, asked him for the reason for such a strange

153 Mir. 2.10.

154 Brisson (1978): 107.
155 Mir. 2.1: ἱστορεῖ δὲ καὶ Ἱέρων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεὺς ἢ Ἐφέσιος καὶ ἐν Αἰτωλίᾳ φάσμα
γενέσθαι.
156 Hansen (1996): 98–99.

63
request, Achilles answered evasively that the girl was born in the same place in
which Hector and his ancestors were born and was of the same blood as Priam.
The merchant, supposing that the hero was in love with the maiden, purchased
her and brought her back to the island. Achilles thanked him, rewarded him gen-
erously and asked him to leave the maiden on the beach. The merchant did so
and sailed away. When he was departing he heard the girl’s screams as Achilles
tore her apart, limb from limb.157 Hansen proves that both stories, i.e. the one in
Philostratus and in Phlegon, are reworkings of a traditional oral story, since in
both cases the plot sequence may be summarized as: (1) appearance, (2) request,
(3) procurement, (4) dismemberment and (5) witness. However, these differ sig-
nificantly on the surface, and one of them is not to be a direct reworking of the
other (and in any case the document preserved by Philostratus, which is later,
could not be an inspiration for that of Phlegon), as both likely drew indepen-
dently from the oral or written sources that ultimately went back to a traditional
ghost story.158
Hansen is correct in saying that the central strategy of the stories is to create
a sense of surprise and shock.159 A comprehensive examination of the story of
Polycritus shows, however, that the irrational actions of the dead may have an
explanation: they result in the occurrence of the oracular head. And the oracles,
those uttered by the head as well as those by the revenant him or herself, play an
important role in the story and can reveal its actual meaning, as I have attempted
to show above. The entire plot is built up of oracles and signs: they take up 56 of
Teubner’s verses out of 124 in total; a great portion of these is delivered by the
ghost himself: his prophetic words make 29 verses in total, which gives one quar-
ter of the story; the rest is delivered by the oracular head.

157 Philostr. Her. 56.6–10.

158 Hansen (1996): 99–100. Another piece of evidence of such bizarre ghostly activity
as tearing the body into pieces without a reasonable explanation can be found in the
folk tradition, although in a different context: there is a French ballad about a girl
who grieves for her dead mother and wishes to see her again. She is advised to go to
the church three nights in a row and to each time take an apron for her mother. The
mother tears the apron into 9, 6 and 3 pieces, successively. Then the mother tells her
daughter that she (the daughter) was lucky that she (the mother) did not tear her
into pieces as she did the aprons, explaining that the daughter’s grieving increases the
mother’s pain. The ballad is quoted partially by Child (1894–1898): 303b; classified
by Thompson (1955–1958) as motif E.222.1. ‘Mother’s ghost tries to tear daughter
to pieces’ (a type of E.220 – ‘Dead Relative’s malevolent return’).
159 Hansen (1996): 99.

64
 Apparently, Polycritus’ role in the narrative is to prophesy. In order to interpret
this figure, we need to examine his speech as well as the situation in which he
gives it.
He appears in a public space at the assembly and during a moment of cri-
sis when the birth of the hermaphrodite is being discussed and explained as an
omen, thus it is considered to be an event of public importance. The appearance
of the ghost at this very moment proves that the sign concerns public matters;
Polycritus underlines that he came for his fellow citizens’ benefit, claiming he
knows what decision should be made by them and warning them against taking
the wrong course of action. He refers to his former position he had when he was
alive, declaring his good intentions then and now:
“Citizens, my body is dead, but in the goodwill and kindness I feel towards you I am
alive. I am here with you now for your benefit, having appealed to those who are masters
of things beneath the earth. And so I call on you now, since you are fellow citizens, not to
be frightened or repulsed by the unexpected presence of a ghost. I beg all of you, praying
by the salvation of each one of you, to hand over to me the child I begot, in order that no
violence take place as a result of your reaching some other decision and that your hostil-
ity towards me not be the beginning of difficult and harsh troubles. For it is not permit-
ted me to let the child be burnt by you, just because of the madness of the seers who have
made proclamations to you. Now, I excuse you because as you behold so strange a sight
you are at a loss as to what is the right course of action for you to take. If, moreover, you
will obey me without fear, you will be released from your present fear as well as the im-
pending catastrophe. But if you come to some other opinion, I fear that because of your
distrust of me you will fall into an irremedial calamity. Now because of the goodwill
I had when I was alive, I have also now in this my present unexpected appearance fore-
told what is beneficial to you. So I ask you not to put me off any longer but to deliberate
correctly and, obeying what I have said, to give me the child in auspicious manner. For it
is not permitted to me to linger long on account of those who rule beneath the earth”.160

160 Mir. 2.6: ἐγώ, ἄνδρες πολῖται, τῷ μὲν σώματι τέθνηκα, τῇ δὲ εὐνοίᾳ καὶ τῇ χάριτι <τῇ>
πρὸς ὑμᾶς ζῶ. καὶ νῦν πάρειμι <ὑμῖν> παραιτησάμενος τοὺς κυριεύοντας τῶν κατὰ
γῆν ἐπὶ τῷ συμφέροντι τῷ ὑμετέρῳ. παρακαλῶ τοίνυν ὑμᾶς πολίτας ὄντας ἐμαυτοῦ
μὴ ταράττεσθαι μηδὲ δυσχεραίνειν ἐπὶ τῷ παραδόξῳ γεγονότι φάσματι. δέομαι δὲ
ὑμῶν ἁπάντων, κατευχόμενος πρὸς τῆς ἑκάστου σωτηρίας, ἀποδοῦναί μοι τὸ παιδίον
τὸ ἐξ ἐμοῦ γεγεννημένον, ὅπως μηδὲν βίαιον γένηται ἄλλο τι βουλευσαμένων ὑμῶν,
μηδ’ ἀρχὴ πραγμάτων δυσχερῶν καὶ χαλεπῶν διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἐμὲ φιλονεικίαν ὑμῖν
γένηται. οὐ γὰρ ἐνδέχεταί μοι περιιδεῖν κατακαυθὲν τὸ παιδίον ὑφ’ ὑμῶν διὰ τὴν
τῶν ἐξαγγελλόντων ὑμῖν μάντεων ἀποπληξίαν. συγγνώμην μὲν οὖν ὑμῖν ἔχω, ὅτι
τοιαύτην ὄψιν ἀπροσδόκητον ἑωρακότες ἀπορεῖτε πῶς ποτε τοῖς παροῦσι πράγμασιν
ὀρθῶς χρήσεσθε. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἐμοὶ πεισθήσεσθε ἀδεῶς, τῶν παρόντων φόβων καὶ τῶν
ἐπερχομένων κακῶν ἔσεσθε ἀπηλλαγμένοι. εἰ δὲ ἄλλως πως τῇ γνώμῃ προσπεσεῖσθε,

65
Polycritus then asserts that he is a friendly ghost and a messenger of the divine
powers who appears at a critical moment in order to warn his fellow citizens
against the use of violence towards the hermaphrodite, which would lead to a ca-
tastrophe. It seems his role in the world came down just to this, i.e. besides mar-
rying a foreign girl and begetting a portentous child. He may thus be considered
as belonging to another special category of the dead: to the so-called warning ap-
paritions. Ancient tradition knows few examples of such ghosts.161 Felton defines
this category as phantoms appearing in order to utter a prophecy or a warning to
the percipient.162 The scholar also notices several characteristics shared by appa-
ritions of this kind, such as that they are of unusually large stature; they warn by
direct speech or figurative action; most of them are female; they appear during a
time of war, a military campaign or other politically critical situations, and they
are accompanied by a portentous occurrence (an earthquake, etc.).163 Although
the “typical” warning apparition is a gigantic woman endowed with a gift of
prophecy,164 Polycritus may also fall under this category since he appears during
a critical situation and gives warning of an impending catastrophe, just after a
portentous event has occurred. Eventually, he may also represent another group
of ghosts, distinguished by Debbie Felton as “crisis apparitions”. These beings are
similar to the “warning apparitions” but display a few different characteristics.
They are usually the phantoms of friends or relatives which appear just as these
are undergoing some great trauma or death and they prophesize about their own
fate,165 as opposed to the warning apparitions which are mainly less personal,
semi-divine beings that appear in order to focus on the fate of the percipient.166
Polycritus actually falls between these two conventional categories: he is a phan-
tom of the dead – both a relative of the hermaphroditic child and a fellow citizen;

φοβοῦμαι περὶ ὑμῶν μήποτε εἰς ἀνηκέστους συμφορὰς ἀπειθοῦντες ἡμῖν ἐμπέσητε.
ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν διὰ τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν εὔνοιαν ὅτ’ ἔζων καὶ νῦν ἀπροσδοκήτως παρὼν
προείρηκα τὸ συμφέρον ὑμῖν. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀξιῶ μὴ πλείω με χρόνον παρέλκειν,
ἀλλὰ βουλευσαμένους ὀρθῶς καὶ πεισθέντας τοῖς εἰρημένοις ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ δοῦναί μοι
μετ’ εὐφημίας τὸ παιδίον. οὐ γὰρ ἐνδέχεταί μοι πλείονα μηκύνειν χρόνον διὰ τοὺς
κατὰ γῆν ὑπάρχοντας δεσπότας.
161 Collison-Morley (1912): 47–51; Felton (1999): 29–34.
162 Ibid.: 30.
163 Ibid.: 31.
164 Such a figure frequently appears in ancient literature, cf.: Hdt. 8.84; Tac. Ann. 11.21;
Plin. Epist. 7.27.2–3; Suet. Claud. 1.2; Lucian. Philops. 22; Dio Cass. 55.1.3–4.
165 Examples of such apparitions are to be found in Verg. Aen. 2.771–791; Ov. Fast.
2.503–509; Apul. Met. 9.31.
166 Felton (1999): 29–33.

66
he does not appear immediately after his death though but some time later, and
claims to have been triggered by the need of his recipients, namely the people of
Aetolia; nevertheless, Polycritus belongs to a prophetic ghost in nature.
In this context also his death could be, perhaps, considered as meaningful, as
well as the symbolic number of nights (three) that he spent with his bride, but
these facts remain inexplicable. Also, the ghost’s irrationally aggressive behav-
ior needs comment: in fact, the ghost is paradoxically violent for one that first
warned against using violence towards the hermaphrodite. Polycritus tears the
child’s body into pieces and devours all of them except for the head; he thus acts
as if in a bacchic frenzy, committing the sparagmos. The outcome of this action is
the appearance of the oracular head, which begins to utter other prophecies; this
scene resembles a version of the myth of Orpheus as preserved in Philostratus’
Heroicus (28.9–11).167 It seems as there was no other reason for the sparagmos
than to make the oracular head exist and the oracles be given. Hence Polycritus
should rather not be considered a malicious demon, even though he died pre-
maturely, in the prime of his life, since shortly before he had been elected to the
office of Aetolarch and had only just got married. Death took him suddenly and
unexpectedly, after he had spent three nights with his Locrian bride and impreg-
nated her (Mir. 2.2–3). He returns from death nine months later, after his wife has
just given birth to their child (Mir. 2.5–6), and rather not to wander and haunt
but seeking to complete what he left incomplete in his life. His return is most
likely a one-time event, not recurring, as if he only came back to fulfill his divine
mission; nothing is said whether his departure was permanent and whether he
eventually rested in peace.
Nonetheless, Polycritus remains a personage that is mysterious and hardly
classifiable even among the dead. Nor is there any certainty that he was an em-
bodied ghost, although the evidence for the other two corporeal apparitions in
the Mirabilia – that of Philinnion and that of Buplagus – seems to imply also his
corporeality. There can be no doubt, however, that Polycritus displays monstrous
features: leaving his anthropophagy aside, no one can determine whether he is
good or evil, whether alive or dead. Suspended between categories, Polycritus is
a paradoxical creature, a monster par excellence.

Revenant, Red Wolf and More Oracles: Buplagus and His Story
In this section I will pause at chapter 3 of the Mirabilia, as this is likely “the
most known and the most ridiculous in Phlegon’s collection”, to quote Maurice

167 See the section The Oracular Head, below.

67
Holleaux.168 Again, we are dealing with an accumulation of elements of the bi-
zarre and grotesque: another revenant, another oracular head, more oracles and
more sensation. Also, structurally the story bears a more than slight resemblance
to the previous one – that of Polycritus. In this case, however, we can hardly speak
of a narrative, since the plot is composed of a sequence of rather loosely-linked
events dominated by oracular statements in prose and in verse, bonded together
with very modest action. Actually, as was noted by Hansen, the story may be di-
vided into three parts: the first is the introduction that gives the historical setting;
the second quotes the prophecies of a Syrian commander called Buplagus and
can therefore be titled the “Buplagus episode”, whereas the third forms the “Pub-
lius episode” since it consists of prophecies made by a Roman soldier, Publius.169
In this section I will focus on the figure of a revenant by the name of Buplagus,
as this is the last example of a monstrous walking corpse in the Mirabilia; the
oracular head of Publius will be examined in another section.
The action of the story is set after the Romans’ noble victory over the Seleu-
cid monarch Antiochus at Thermopylae.170 The place is the battlefield, where the
Romans are busy burying their dead and gathering the enemy’s arms. Suddenly,
a certain Buplagus, a Syrian cavalry commander who is said to be highly esti-
mated by King Antiochus, stands up from among the dead – he fell bravely in
the battle after having received twelve wounds.171 He goes to the Roman camp
and proclaims (in a soft voice – in the same manner as Polycritus did172) the fol-
lowing verses:
Stop despoiling an army gone to the land of Hades,
For already Zeus Kronides is angry beholding your ill deeds,
Wrothful at the slaughter of an army and at your doings, and
Will send a bold-hearted tribe against your land
That will put an end to your rule, and you will pay for what you have wrought.173

168 Holleaux (1930): 306. Discussed also more recently, cf. Gabba (1975), Gauger (1980),
Martelli (1982), Peretti (1983).
169 Hansen (1996): 101–102.
170 Actually, the battle between Rome and King Antiochus III of Syria occurred in 191
BC.
171 A person by this name is otherwise completely unknown; as Gauger (1980): 231
points out, Buplagus means ‘ox driver’; whether the name was chosen for a specific
reason, must remain an open question.
172 Mir. 3.4: λεπτῇ τῇ φωνῇ; cf. Mir. 2.6.
173 Mir. 3.4: παῦσαι σκυλεύων στρατὸν Ἄιδος εἰς χθόνα βάντα· / ἤδη γὰρ Κρονίδης
νεμεσᾷ Ζεὺς μέρμερα λεύσσων, / μηνίει δὲ φόνῳ στρατιᾶς καὶ σοῖσιν ἐπ’ ἔργοις, /

68
After proclaiming such an oracle, he immediately expires. The frightened Ro-
man generals decide to cremate and bury Buplagus, purify the camp, perform a
sacrifice to Zeus Apotropaios and send a delegation to Delphi to ask what else to
do. The Pythia confirms Buplagus’ oracle and bids them to restrain themselves
from war in order to avoid any war on their land, thus the Romans give up their
military plans in Europe. Here this part of the story ends and the “Publius epi-
sode” begins thereafter: when the Romans are involved in the sacrificing one of
the commanders, Publius, falls into a prophetic state and begins to utter oracles,
some in verse and some in prose, foretelling the fall and defeat of Rome in a
clash with a powerful army from Asia. He also predicts that he himself will be
devoured by a huge red wolf. The wolf appears thereafter and consumes him
except for his head. In the end the reader learns that the Romans returned home
after having erected a temple to Apollo and that everything predicted by Publius
was fulfilled.
Many scholars believed the text was a document of an unknown author,174
originally of anti-Rome propaganda dating from the 2nd century BC since it is
filled with criticism of the Roman expansion in the Greek-speaking world;175
the text, serving such a political purpose and set within the frame story of the
battle at Thermopylae in 191 BC is therefore of historical relevance. The text
displays, however, some incoherency, which proves it was combined with at
least three different parts, each one very likely coming from a different time
period. Gauger (1980: passim) distinguishes among these the: 1) historical
introduction, 2) “Buplagus-Delphi complex”, and 3) Publius oracle. The
“Buplagus-Delphi complex”, which is focused on oracles uttered by both the
Syrian commander and the Pythia, form a cohesive unit, as Buplagus’ prophecy
is confirmed by the Delphic one (although the former presents the upcoming
catastrophe as inevitable, whereas in the latter it is avoidable). An examination
of the gods involved here suggests, however, other possible divisions, also with-
in the “Buplagus-Delphi complex”, since in the Buplagus oracle Zeus is the god

καὶ πέμψει φῦλον θρασυκάρδιον εἰς χθόνα τὴν σήν, / οἵ σ’ ἀρχῆς παύσουσιν, ἀμείψῃ
δ’ οἷά γ’ ἔρεξας.
174 Phlegon’s text refers to “Antisthenes the Peripatetic philosopher”; the identity of such
an author has been much discussed but remains unclear. He is considered to be ficti-
tious (as Hieron of Mir. 2, by Rohde (1877), Mesk (1925)), or an otherwise unknown
author, either identified with Antisthenes, the Rhodian historian (FGH 508), or with
Antisthenes, the author of Φιλοσόφων διαδοχαί; cf. Janda (1966), Gauger (1980):
238–244, Peretti (1983).
175 Zeller (1883): 1067 ff.; Janda (1966): 343; Gauger (1980): passim.

69
of vengeance, while in the Delphic prophecy these are Athena and Ares; this
may indicate that the two oracles do not date from the same time.176 It seems
the story in its present form, as known from Phlegon’s Mir. 3, has a hybrid com-
position that is combined with pieces derived from different times and sources.
Possibly the oracles were composed as an expression of intellectual resistance
against Rome; they circulated independently and were embedded afterward in
a collection of oracles and, finally, inserted in the ghost story.177
Some resemblance between this story and that of Polycritus in Mir. 2 is easily
perceptible: not only similar elements but also a structural pattern recur in both
accounts as they are dominated by oracles spoken by various instances, including
a revenant as well as an oracular head and the Delphic oracle; in Mir. 3 a proph-
ecy is also uttered by a noble man in a state of divine possession.
A likeness between Buplagus and Polycritus cannot be doubted since it is
highlighted even by the way they both speak: strangely enough, they share a soft
voice (fine, delicate, Greek: λεπτὴ ἡ φωνή),178 which strongly contrasts with the
ominous words they utter; this detail might have been added later, perhaps by
an editor or compiler, including Phlegon himself, so that one revenant resembles
the other; but above all both of these figures perform a similar function in the
story, which is to warn against an impending catastrophe. The circumstances
somewhat differ in the case of Buplagus, since now it is wartime and a distinct
moment when the Romans are gaining a respite from the noise of the battle and
getting their prize, i.e. collecting the spoils. They are also occupied with burying
their fallen soldiers and gathering arms; one could say this is a normal military
routine, that is why they are all the more shocked by the appearance of Buplagus.
In the story of Polycritus, the moment of the ghost’s appearance bears greater
suspense since it occurs during the stormy debate over the hermaphrodite. Also,
the recipients of Buplagus’ prophecies are his enemies, whereas Polycritus warns
his fellow citizens; nonetheless, in both cases the ghosts return during a moment
of particular significance.
However, the death and revival of Buplagus as expressed in the sentence
ἀνέστη ὁ Βούπλαγος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν (Mir. 3.4) has been questioned by Gaug-
er who points out that although already Homer uses the verb ἀνίστημι (e.g. Il.
24.551) in the sens ‘to bring from death to life’, the very phrase ἀναστῆναι ἐκ
(τῶν) νεκρῶν, which recurs frequently in the New Testament and means ‘to rise

176 Ibid.: 294 ff.

177 Ibid.: 230.
178 See above, note 170.

70
from the dead’ (e.g. Mc 9:10), is in the pagan context attested only in this sin-
gle passage in Phlegon. Thus the scholar proposes that the sense be understood
literally: Buplagus emerged from the pile of corpses, obviously woken up from
unconsciousness after he had fallen to the ground. His prophecy would therefore
not be any particular form of prophecy of the dead, but just menacing words
spoken by a man on the verge of death.179
This explanation can hardly be maintained. Stramaglia plausibly argues that
Buplagus is said to have received twelve wounds, which seems difficult to rec-
oncile with Gauger’s idea that he had only lost his consciousness. The Italian
scholar emphasizes that, above all, in the phrase Βούπλαγος […] ἔπεσε καὶ αὐτὸς
γενναίως ἀγωνισάμενος (Mir. 3.4) the words καὶ αὐτός refer to ἔπεσε, not to
γενναίως ἀγωνισάμενος. Thus, this passage may be understood in two ways: ei-
ther that Buplagus “also” fell in the mass of corpses, which sounds improbable,
or that he “also” fell = died as many others, which seems obvious.180 Moreover,
if revenants appear in Mir. 1 and 2, there is no reason not to regard Buplagus as
a reanimated corpse too, last but not least in the sequence of the embodied ap-
paritions.

Not Haunting, Just Warning

Would Tertullian include Buplagus in his categories of the returning dead? Is he
an ἄωρος or a βιαιοθάνατος, since he died prematurely and violently? This does
not seem to be the case. The βιαιοθάνατοι, i.e. people who died due to violent
acts, and the ἄωροι, i.e. those who died prematurely, were believed to comprise a
group of seriously dangerous ghosts. However, as Sara I. Johnston observes, their
anger was likely due to the fact that they had died dishonorably; the violence was
less important: “Death in battle, although regrettable, meant that one had died
gloriously and thus, by definition, in such a way as to earn τιμή and κλέος (honor
and glory). To die at the hands of one’s treacherous wife – particularly while
naked in the bathtub, as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon – was a very different matter.
Such a soul would desire vengeance for its own sake, of course, but also for the
restoration of honor that vengeance would bring”.181
Thus the victims of murder, not soldiers killed in battle, were supposed to
become the restless and angry dead; their return was tightly connected with the
desire for revenge. A dishonorable death was not something Buplagus could

179 Gauger (1980): 232.

180 Stramaglia (1995a): 229.
181 Johnston (1999): 149.

71
complain about, for he had fought nobly and died gloriously; neither a violent
nor a premature death is therefore the cause of his revival.
Buplagus is the mouthpiece of the divine powers, sent to the Romans in order
to warn them. Taken out of context, his warning is, however, vague and hardly
explicable: as Hansen observes, there is no clear reason why Zeus takes such of-
fence at the Romans’ behavior, since despoiling dead enemies by the victorious
army is normal practice after a battle; there is also no reason why Zeus should
favor the Syrians instead of the Romans. The prophecy makes more sense when
contextualized as a piece of resistance literature: the wrath of Zeus is caused by
the unrestrained territorial expansion of Rome, which results from the Roman
hubris.182 Certainly, the oracular utterance warning the Romans against further
aggression on foreign territories had a much more persuasive power when spo-
ken by the enemy, especially by a noble and brave soldier of high rank; that is why
the warning apparition is recruited from the enemy forces.
It is no surprise that these means turn out to be effective: the Romans start
to panic upon the resurrection of Buplagus and decide to immediately cremate
and bury his corpse, to purify the camp and to perform a sacrifice to Zeus Apo-
tropaios (the averter of misfortune, in this case the god allegedly offended by the
Romans), and also to send a delegation to Delphi. The situation requires taking a
special course of action which resembles more or less the procedure used in the
case of the hermaphrodite and his mother in Mir. 2.
Buplagus fulfills the conditions to be classified as a revenant: there is no doubt
that he rises from among the dead with his own body, although his role as an
embodied ghost ends quickly since he expires immediately after having uttered
the oracle. Yet the scene in which he appears, although not explicitly, draws our
attention to corporeality: not depicted as such but imaginably Buplagus is a
frightening, pale, bloody, animated phantom – a real monster. The image of the
battlefield is also implied: the corpses, the blood, the wounds and the groans of
the dying all around. When the scene with general Publius being torn and de-
voured by the red wolf and the final scene with the prophecy being proclaimed
by the oracular head (this episode will be examined in the next section) are add-
ed, all of this together dazzles the reader with its violence, macabre and horror, as
well as with the odd and the bizarre. Elements which represent the human body
in a dreadful state play a great role in creating the effect of the uncanny, e.g. dead,
distorted, injured, fragmented, but – paradoxically – still vital and alive. The story
operates with the use of paradoxes, combining the dead with vitality and putting

182 Hansen (1996): 105.

72
strong emphasis on the corporeal collated with ugliness and deformation, which
enhances the impression of the displacement of things and confusion of orders.
Using modern terms, one could say the story is streaked with the grotesque, and
this is where its charm is derived from.

Monstrous Corpses
All of Phlegon’s ghosts can hardly be accused of haunting if it is understood as
regular and repetitive harassment: they appear once and then disappear forever.
Even Philinnion’s three nocturnal visits at her parents’ house make this altogeth-
er one incident.
Their corporeality allows one to place them in a special category of the restless
dead, i.e. among the revenants – embodied apparitions who return in the bodies
they had when they were alive. The male ghosts of Mir. 2 and 3 are much more
frightening and ugly than the female ghost in Mir. 1, who kept her charms quite
fresh even after death. Nevertheless, all of them represent much less sublime and,
so to say, less spiritual type of apparitions than the smoke-like ones depicted by
Homer and other authors; animated corpses by all means are not a very subtle
idea which reveals their strong relationship with folklore. Through the lack of
evidence, all of Phlegon’s revenants are an interesting and even unique mani-
festation of this motif in literature and a valuable source for studying ancient
traditional beliefs.
Superficially, it is easy to call them monsters in the literal sense, either due to
their repulsive physical appearance (Buplagus), repellent behavior (Polycritus),
or, conversely, due to their deceptively natural look (Philinnion).
Yet there is something important that all of them share and that makes them
monsters also figuratively: the paradox inherent in their existence. They are all
paradoxes – incarnated paradoxes – self-contradictory creatures which function
beyond the natural order since they do not belong to any order. Their return to
the world of the living makes the phenomenon inexplicable, breaking the rules
of nature. Their human-like behavior (walking, speaking and physical relations
with the living) might also be considered monstrous, with the emphasis put on
the “-like”, since the human-like, including the dead human, is no longer a human
proper and becomes an alien, the closer similarity it shows to humans, the more
frightening it is. Revenants are liminal beings stuck on the threshold between
two worlds: that of the living and that of the dead, but also on the border between
that which is “human” and that which is not, therefore “alien”. In the Mirabilia,
however, “the alien” in the form of the animated corpse is dangerously close and
similar to “the human”, and this makes it even more horrible and frightening.

73
II.1.1.2  The Oracular Head
“There is extensive evidence from all phases of human civilization that a fas-
cination with the head or skull detached from the body is virtually a universal
element in religion and folklore”.183 Within the Indo-European tradition, such a
bizarre phenomenon as a talking head is both a mythological and a non-myth-
ological motif; its ubiquity is perfectly revealed in Thompson’s Motif-Index,184
which has gathered tropes from antiquity to modern times, and from such di-
verse cultures as Irish, Icelandic, Indian, German or Jewish. Thompson distin-
guishes many types of talking severed heads, such as the “Speaking Head” (motif
D1610.5), the “Magic Head” (D992), the head as a magic object used in divina-
tion (D1311.8), or the “Vital Head” (E783), which will be discussed here. Never-
theless, I am also inclined to use synonimically a less technical but more precise
term of ‘oracular head’ since it well describes the specificity of that very head in
Phlegon. Such diversity of head motifs, proven by available archeological and
ethnographic data that indicates the existence of head cults and headhunting
among several peoples, including the Indo-Europeans, reveals that “vital heads in
narrative are an affirmation of a traditional perception of the head as the seat of
intelligence, life, potency, or status – qualities which, in sufficient amounts, can, at
least in the world of myth, keep the head alive without the body”.185
In the ancient Greek and Roman tradition, the most well-known realization
of the motif of the vital head (Thompson’s motif E783 as mentioned above) is
obviously the myth of Orpheus. The resemblance between the head of the mythi-
cal singer and other heads of the Indo-European tradition has been noted and
examined by many scholars,186 but for the present study of particular interest is
the similitude between Orpheus’ head and the heads in Mir. 2 and 3, which was
already suggested by Luc Brisson and William Hansen.187 This correspondence is
especially close due to the fact that both of Phlegon’s stories contain, except for
the speaking severed head, the element of tearing the human body into pieces
(σπαραγμός) which is also present in the case of Orpheus. More precisely, in
each case the speaking head is the result of an act of tearing apart the body. Ac-
cording to the most popular version of the myth, Orpheus was torn into pieces

183 Nagy (1990): 214.

184 Thompson (1955–1958).
185 Nagy (1990): 214.
186 Kittredge (1916): 147–192; Deonna (1925); Eliade (1964): 391; von Avanzin (1970);
Colledge, Marler (1981).
187 Brisson (1978): 117–120; Hansen (1996): 92–93.

74
by the angry Thracian women (possibly for introducing pederasty to Thrace;188
although a few different reasons as well as perpetrators are given depending on
the version). The narratives of Mir. 2 and 3 have a similar core: the head speaks
after it has been severed from the body by σπαραγμός.
In Mir. 2, however, the vital head appears as the effect of a bizarre and brutal
act committed by the ghost upon his own posthumously born hermaphroditic
child. In Mir. 3 a similar act is perpetrated by a huge red wolf. One could say
these are scenes of pure nonsense since the intervention of such bizarre agents as
the revenant or the red wolf seems to have no logical explanation – unlike in the
myth of Orpheus, who died at the hands of frantic women motivated by a desire
for revenge. Apparently, the ghost and the red beast as well as the scene in which
Publius climbs on the oak tree in order to utter a prophecy are elements that are
intentionally exaggerated and bizarre in order to make the story more attractive
and sensational.
The resemblance to the myth of Orpheus in Mir. 2 is even closer than just
the formal similarity of the elements since, as Brisson pointed out, some kind
of opposition to Apollo tends to be found in both cases. In the story the head
of the hermaphrodite forbids the people to consult the Delphic oracle after the
revenant’s manifestation and σπαραγμός, as these are supposedly polluted with
blood. Moreover, the head is depicted as an instance providing a proper inter-
pretation of the sign. The external consultation with the Delphic oracle – the
shrine of Apollo – is thus replaced by the internal prophesying entity that may be
interpreted as being opposed to the god.189
Similarly, in one version of the myth of Orpheus the head of the singer,
detached from the trunk and thrown into the river Hebrus, floated along to the
isle of Lesbos190 (and, according to other sources,191 due to this fact it gained its
wealth of poetic talent), where it eventually settled in a cleft and began to utter
the prophecies192 until Apollo turned his attention to it; the god realized that
people no longer flocked to Gryneion, nor to Clarus, nor to Delphi, for the sake
of oracles, but came to the Orpheus’ head as it was the only oracle. The wrathful
Apollo presented himself before the head and forbade it to meddle in his affairs

188 Cf. Phanocl. fr. 1.7–10 Powell; Verg. Georg. 4.520–522 with Servius’ commentary; Ov.
Met. 10.83–85; Paus. 9.30.5; see Kern (1922): 22–23, test. 77.
189 Brisson (1978): 119.
190 Ov. Met. 11.50–57.
191 Phanocl. fr. 1.15–22 Powell.
192 Philostr. Her. 28.9.

75
and to preach prophecies.193 In Mir. 2 some allusions to this version of Orpheus’
myth may be found.
On the other hand, the status and prestige of the hermaphrodite’s head are
problematic in comparison with Orpheus’ head: the hermaphrodite did not
manage to become someone significant, except for being sexually ambiguous
and coming from a noble family, whereas Orpheus made a great career in his life-
time: he was a famous singer who was endowed with a wonderful voice of almost
magical power. Such a talent, which existed even after his death, was located in
his head and enabled him to continue to lead the life of a prophet. There is no evi-
dent reason for Polycritus’ child to speak – this scene seems to be an intertextual
play with one of the versions of Orpheus’ myth. In the case of Publius in Mir. 3,
who, in turn, was as a highly respected Roman commander an important person
of unquestionable authority, the resemblance to Orpheus is closer.
Nevertheless, the motif of the talking head in both of Phlegon’s stories seems
to be a literary reworking of a motif borrowed from oral tradition which, when
used in such bizarre narratives, may be regarded as a literary play with either a
conventional or traditional depiction of the vital head of an important person, or
at least as an allusion to Orpheus’ myth.
Jörg-Dieter Gauger and William Hansen note a parallel to the story in Mir. 3:
Pliny (NH 7.178–179) reports an episode of the Sicilian War (38–36 BC) when
the forces of Sextus Pompey took captive a certain Gabienus and slit his throat,
almost severing his head. His body lay on the shore all day. In the evening a great
crowd gathered in that place since Gabienus’ head had begun to moan and beg
Pompey or one of his trusted men to come. Pompey sent a few friends, who were
told by the head that it itself had been ordered by the netherworld gods to an-
nounce that they liked Pompey’s acts and that everything he wished would come

193 Philostr. Vit. Apoll. 4.14. The archeological evidence for this episode is, however,
much earlier than the literary evidence of Philostratus, since most likely this scene
is depicted on a red-figure kylix of the fifth century BC, or on an Etruscan bronze
mirror found in a grave in Chiusi (Clusium), dated to the fourth century BC, cf.
Guthrie (1952): 35–39. As for the talking head in literature, the earliest evidence of
the motif in the Greco-Roman world is Aristotle (Part. an. 673a17–23), who relates
that in ancient Caria in Asia Minor the belief in talking heads (which he himself
considers as unlikely) was so deeply rooted that once a man had been judged by
a court after the priest of Zeus Hoplosmios had been murdered but the murderer
had not yet been found. Since many people asserted that they heard the head of the
victim repeatedly mention the name of Cercidas, a certain Cercidas was called forth
by the court and convicted.

76
true. To make the prophecy trustworthy, the head foretold its own death that
happened immediately thereafter.194
Hansen claims that the close resemblance between Phlegon’s story and that of
Pliny may be explained by the fact that both of them are probably versions of a
migratory legend which was composed of the following elements: “a) after a bat-
tle in which men die, (b) one of the slain enemy revives, (c) delivers a message
from the netherworld powers in a form of a prophecy, (d) and presently expires
again”.195 Interestingly, the scholar compares the story of Gabienus with that of
Buplagus, whereas, in fact, Phlegon’s entire story as composed of the two epi-
sodes – that of Buplagus and that of Publius – may be taken as a parallel to Pliny’s
version; the episode of Gabienus’ head (which was almost completely separated
from the body) may be considered as a realization of the motif of a vital head
(Thompson’s motif E783) and be equated with the head of Publius. In this case
in Phlegon’s version the element of the oracle, as distinguished by Hansen as c),
is doubled: once in the episode of Buplagus and then again in that of Publius.
Moreover, Publius, like Gabienus and unlike Buplagus, foretells his own fate. On
the other hand, Buplagus, like Gabienus is an enemy soldier, while Publius is a
fellow citizen to the Romans. However, for the oracular head to be an enemy
towards its recipients is not a condition sine qua non since the story of Polycritus
in Mir. 2, set in a civic setting instead of a military one, may also be regarded
as another realization of the legend, as Hansen suggests; yet the scholar points
out that Polycritus died young and unexpectedly, as if he had fallen in battle.196
Following Hansen, I would ascribe the same to Publius, who died suddenly and
prematurely in wartime although not exactly in a battle. Phlegon’s story in Mir. 3
may thus be considered as a more complex retelling of the migratory legend, in
which the function of the gods’ mouthpiece is shared by two instances.
The severed heads complete the picture of the monstrous and deformed body
in the first section of the Mirabilia. The oracular heads of Mir. 2 and 3 are other
examples proving that in the core of these stories is the mystery of the human
body’s “afterlife”: once again the corporeal and the deformed are strongly con-
nected and emphasized. The vital head, a living member of a dead body and
therefore an explicit paradox may, in accordance with the classification that was
proposed in this study, be put into the “neither alive nor dead” group, along with
the revenants.

194 Gauger (1980): 232; Hansen (1996): 104­.

195 Hansen (1996): 104–105.
196 Ibid.

77
Among Monstrous Divine Mouthpieces: Conclusions
The stories of Mir. 1, 2 and 3, abounding in marvelous occurrences, are closely re-
lated by several motifs: the revenant, the tearing apart of the human body, the or-
acles and the oracular heads. It would be too less to say that Phlegon chose these
narratives and included them in his collection of the Mirabilia only because of
their sensational plots; it seems the strong emphasis on the corporeal that was
present in the stories determined his choices. The walking corpses, the violent
act of tearing and devouring the hermaphrodite’s body, the detailed description
of the deformed androgynous genitals, the human head separated from the body
but still alive – all of this made for a unique blend of the bizarre and grotesque.
Significantly, from among the potentially many ghost stories that were avail-
able, Phlegon selected stories of revenants and ignored those on disembodied
apparitions since the former represent the human body in an unnatural state,
whereas the latter depict just disembodied apparitions. Phlegon was evidently
fascinated by corporeality at its most extreme: supernatural corporeal creatures
as well as deformed or detached limbs of the human body and the drastic scenes
depicting this body when being violated and dismembered were the elements
that had drawn his attention.
All of Phlegon’s revenants form a diverse group of supernatural beings since
their rationale for their return is different in each case. Philinnion who died
prematurely and most likely a virgin seeks for what she was deprived of in her
private life; however, she also refers to the netherworld powers whose will she
claims to be fulfilling. Polycritus’ and Buplagus’ appearance is connected with a
public matter at a moment of crisis and therefore they are “warning apparitions”
whose role is to announce the gods’ will.
All of these phantoms represent the restless dead, i.e. creatures from beyond
the natural order, and only this feature allows us to call them monsters. Their
monstrosity is, however, multidimensional. First, it can be examined spatially,
since the place the revenants belong to can hardly be determined; they balance
between the under- and upper-world, or simply are stuck on the threshold. Sec-
ond, their genre is problematic, as they are no longer humans nor dead; again,
their status is in-between and ambiguous. Third, their appearance is repulsive –
undoubtedly in the case of Buplagus, most likely in the case of Polycritus and
perversely in the case of Philinnion – all due to necrophiliac associations. All of
Phlegon’s revenants are, literally and figuratively, monstrous creatures. The same
may be said about the oracular heads, which also constitute a phenomenon that
is hardly classifiable, as they are paradoxically neither alive nor dead, incomplete

78
beings, and there is no place nor genre they could properly belong to and in ac-
cordance with the laws of nature.
Such are all the mouthpieces of the gods in the Mirabilia: unsettling, odd and
bizarre. More striking is the contrast between their strange appearance (Bupla-
gus, both of the heads) and incongruent actions (Publius climbing the oak tree)
or between their initially gentle behavior and later violent actions (Polycritus)
and the lofty prophecies they utter. What we have here is a confusing mix of
styles, from the high style of the oracles to the low style of the gruesome char-
acters from the folktales and oral tradition: this is the grotesque par excellence.
The stories operate with the grotesque, of which the dominant component is
the ambiguity of the phenomena that fluctuates around the oppositions of dead/
alive, complete/incomplete, human/non-human, but, importantly, also good/evil,
since all of these monstrous creatures escape easy categorization in this aspect
too. The overrepresented monstrosity and hybridity make Phlegon’s ghost stories
unsettlingly ambiguous.
Yet an interesting juggling of motifs is to be observed in these three narratives:
the walking corpses, the oracular phantoms, the oracular heads, and the sparag-
mos appear variably and are slightly modified each time. Every such motif would
individually serve as a basis for a separate plot. In the Mirabilia these elements
have been accumulated in just three stories; all of them, strongly marked by the
odd and the bizarre, aim to leave the reader stupefied. And effectively so.

II.1.2  Neither a Woman nor a Man

In this section I will pause upon another issue that Phlegon takes up in his Mira-
bilia: this time on sexual ambiguity and, more precisely, on sex-changers and her-
maphrodites, whose stories are related in chapters 2 and 4-10 of the compilation.
Interestingly, the compiler seems to consider these two phenomena to be the
same, or rather views the sex-changers as cases of “successive hermaphroditism”,
i.e. by using the same term of “hermaphrodite” (in Greek ἀνδρόγυνος) to denote
individuals born with two different sets of reproductive organs as well as those
whose sex changed spontaneously and suddenly, usually during the age of pu-
berty.
These two phenomena, however, need to be analyzed separately as they had
different social meaning and, consequently, caused different social reactions.
Authentic hermaphrodites were regarded as dangerous and maleficent portents,
whereas sex-changers usually did not arouse such fear – they were considered
mere oddities. This distinction between portents and oddities had, in antiquity
and as we shall see, quite serious consequences for these very “creatures” as well

79
as for their fellow citizens. Hermaphrodites were ritually killed; sex-changers’
lives were saved despite their mysterious sexual transformation.
At first I will briefly determine what we, modern people, and they, the an-
cients, mean by the term “hermaphrodite”, and if this phenomenon in its biologi-
cal aspect is understood in the same manner as it was before. I need therefore
to begin with some basic definitions. Today, terms such as “hermaphroditism”
or “androgynism” or, very seldom, “androgyny”, mainly belong to the terminol-
ogy of the medical and social sciences. Technically speaking, “hermaphroditism
is a state characterized by the presence of both male and female sex organs” in
humans and animals.197 Individuals equipped with two sets of genitals are nowa-
days usually called “intersexes” and, sporadically, “hermaphrodites” or “androgy-
nies”. Obviously, the latter two terms have been inherited from ancient times:
their roots both stem from the Greek terms ἀνδρόγυνος and Ἑρμαφρόδιτος,
which for a very long time referred to individuals of an ambiguous sexual status.
Thus, from the biological point of view, hermaphrodites then and now are more
or less the same.
There is, however, a slight difference between the modern and ancient under-
standing of the phenomenon: although now intersexes may encounter numerous
problems with their sexual identity and other related issues, several centuries BC
hermaphrodites were an endangered species since they, due to (and at the same
time despite) their anomalous anatomical structure, were regarded in religious,
not in biological, categories. They were believed to be divine signs bringing a
message from the gods; therefore, they rather did not constitute a task and chal-
lenge for medics but for qualified seers. This usually meant a death sentence for
them.
In the course of time the phenomenon of sexual ambiguity lost its religious
significance and became an issue of interest in the social and medical sciences.
Modern medicine recognizes hermaphroditism as a genetic defect of the repro-
ductive system.
There are at least two main types of disorders causing sexual ambiguity; one of
them is called “true hermaphroditism” and is designated today as “genetic defects
in the differentiation of the genital system”. The disorder happens very rarely
in nature: it occurs only in cases when an individual has two complete sets of
organs, not only external ones but also internal organs (ovarian and testicular
tissue) as well as, or at least, one complete set with some features of the other

197 Androutsos (2006): 214.

80
sex.198 The other type, the so-called “pseudo-hermaphroditism”,199 is character-
ized by ambiguity of the external organs, which look intermediate between typi-
cal female and typical male organs; this happens relatively often when compared
to true hermaphroditism.
Undoubtedly, the disorders are not just a modern problem and appeared in
the past; therefore, when ancient sources mention hermaphrodites they are most
likely describing one of these two types of disorders. However, regardless of its
true nature and cause, the ambiguous form of the external genitals was, for the
people of antiquity, not of interest as a medical curiosity per se but rather as a
meaningful sign and evidence for recognizing an individual so equipped as a
maleficent portent. Such an understanding of the phenomenon is reflected in the
work of Phlegon and in that of other ancient authors.

II.1.2.1  Hermaphrodites. The God vs. the Monsters

The Monster. The Child of Polycritus and Others
The first of the two hermaphrodites found in the Mirabilia appears in chapter 2
in the story of the revenant Polycritus, which was discussed in the previous sec-
tion. The narrative tells the story of a certain Polycritus from Aetolia who held a
high position in his state, took a Locrian woman as his wife and, after spending
three nights with the bride, died suddenly on the fourth day. When the time for
childbirth came the woman “delivered a child with two sets of genitals, male and
female, who differed amazingly in its nature.200 The upper portion of the geni-
tals was hard and manly, whereas the part around the thighs was womanish and

198 Harper (2007): 13.

199 Male pseudo-hermaphroditism and female pseudo-hermaphroditism are umbrella
terms; the former “manifests variously, but individuals are always genetically male
and have testes or a testis exclusively (although these tend to be softer than is typical).
Poor virilization results in variable degrees of feminization, with genitals ranging
from those appearing male to those appearing female and with a range of ambiguities
in between (including a microphallus, varied scrotal or labial fusion, and perineo-
scrotal hypospadias)” (Harper (2007): 14). The latter describes individuals who “are
genetic females, with almost completely female internal genitalia (that is, they most
often have ovaries, a uterus and other internal female structures). Their external
genitalia usually appear as male through clitoral enlargement but can range from
minimal clitoromegaly to apparently complete virilization of the genitalia” (ibid.).
200 Here I do not follow Hansen (1996): 29 who translates: “…male and female, which
differed amazingly in their nature”.

81
softer”. Such a description of androgynous genitals is quite unusual in ancient
literature; the original text reads as follows:
[ἡ ἄνθρωπος] τίκτει παιδίον αἰδοῖα ἔχον δύο, ἀνδρεῖόν τε καὶ γυναικεῖον, καὶ
τὴν φύσιν θαυμαστῶς διηλλαγμένον· τὰ μὲν ἄνω τοῦ αἰδοίου ὁλόκληρά τε καὶ
ἀνδρώδη ἦν, τὰ δὲ περὶ τοὺς μηροὺς γυναικεῖα καὶ ἁπαλώτερα.
Apparently, “two sets of genitals” (αἰδοῖα δύο) – male and female (ἀνδρεῖόν τε
καὶ γυναικεῖον) – means that the child is a hermaphrodite even if this is not stat-
ed explicitly. The characterization presented above is, however, nebulous, and due
to this fact many scholars have proposed conjectures for this fragment. The most
controversial is the term ὁλόκληρα, which refers to the upper and male part of
the genitals, meaning “complete”, “entire”, “perfect”, and, according to many opin-
ions, this does not provide an acceptable sense since the opposition between the
two sets of genitals – male and female – as suggested by this passage is inaccurate
and asymmetric: the male being “complete”/“perfect” as opposed to the female
organs which are “softer” (ἁπαλώτερα). Nauck’s conjecture, who gives ὅλω〈ς σ〉
κληρά = “wholly hard” instead of ὁλόκληρα, is therefore commonly accepted.201
This way we obtain the opposition between the male genitals – wholly hard – and
the female genitals – softer (as translated by Hansen, who based his translation
on the edition by Giannini, who, in turn, followed Nauck’s conjecture). In fact,
the conjecture sounds convincing from a formal point of view since the opposi-
tion between hard and soft seems logical. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say what
these epithets would mean in relation to the infant’s organs: how can a newborn’s
genitalia be “wholly hard”?
Thus, another editor of the Mirabilia, Antonio Stramaglia, in his earlier work
holds that the contrast based on the element of “hardness”, as suggested in the
conjecture, does not seem easy to imagine in the case of a newborn. The scholar
defends the original text and the opposition ὁλόκληρα – ἁπαλώτερα, arguing
that Phlegon’s text presupposes ὁλόκληρα as “integral” in the sense of “full health”,
“full force”, according to a use that was already documented in the Hellenistic age
and then spread, especially in the literary letters, from the end of the 2nd century
BC onwards. As for the epithet for the female part – ἁπαλός = “soft”, “delicate” –
Stramaglia proposes not to consider it negatively but rather to take it as a topical
feature of femininity, since already Hippocrates (Mul. 1.37) described a woman
as ἁπαλόσαρκος in opposition to a man and, from Sappho onwards, the adjective
ἁπαλός typically connotes feminine delicacy or effeminacy.202 Thus, “Phlegon’s

201 J. A. Nauck in Keller’ edition (one of his emendations communicated to the editor).
202 Stramaglia (1995b): 213–214. Cf. LSJ s.v. ἁπαλός I.

82
text sanctions in the hermaphrodite the polarization between the upper parts –
‘male and in full force’, and the lower parts – ‘soft and feminine’”.203 Stramaglia’s
explanation seems persuasive, all the more that ἁπαλός can also be used in the
negative sense – as ‘soft, weak, too delicate’; 204 it is imaginable that the adjective
in the comparative may suggest that the female parts of the genitals were weaker
and softer, i.e. imperfect, incomplete and underdeveloped in comparison to male
genitals, which were complete and perfect. In fact, the incompleteness of one of
the reproductive organs often occurs in the case of true hermaphrodites.205
There is also one curious fact about the hermaphrodite. After the passage nar-
rating the birth of the infant we learn that:
Struck with astonishment the child’s relatives took it to the agora where they called an
assembly, summoned sacrificers and diviners and deliberated about the child. Of these,
some declared that a breach would come about between the Aitolians and the Lokrians,
for the infant had been separated from its mother, who was Lokrian, and its father, an
Aitolian.206

Such an interpretation of the portent as constituted by the hermaphrodite, to-

gether with the description of androgynous genitals, very well fits the definition
of a monster by Aristotle, who employed the term in a biological context, saying:
“For even he who does not resemble his parents is already in a certain sense a
monstrosity (τέρας); for in these cases Nature has in a way departed from the
type”.207 Important evidence is also voiced in the oath which the Athenians alleg-
edly took before the battle of Plataeae in 479 and then used later. The text208 of
the oath reads as follows:
I keep true to what has been written in the oath […] and may the women bear children
like their parents; but if not, monsters (τέρατα; transl. Osborne–Rhodes).

203 Stramaglia (1995b): 214: In definitiva, il testo tràdito sancirà nell’androgino una polar-
izzazione – del tutto congrua – fra parti superiori “maschili e in pieno vigore”, e parti
inferiori “femminili e tutte delicate”.
204 Cf. LSJ s.v. ἁπαλός II.2 and Lucian. Dial. mort. 22.5.
205 Harper (2007): 14.
206 Mir. 2.4: ἐφ’ ᾧ καταπλαγέντες οἱ συγγενεῖς ἀπήνεγκαν εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν τὸ παιδίον
καὶ συναγαγόντες ἐκκλησίαν ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ αὐτοῦ, θύτας τε καὶ τερατοσκόπους
συγκαλέσαντες. τῶν δὲ οἱ μὲν ἀπεφήναντο διάστασίν τινα τῶν Αἰτωλῶν καὶ Λοκρῶν
ἔσεσθαι—κεχωρίσθαι γὰρ ἀπὸ μητρὸς οὔσης Λοκρίδος καὶ πατρὸς Αἰτωλοῦ.
207 Aristot. Gen. an. 767b5–7: καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὴ ἐοικὼς τοῖς γονεῦσιν ἤδη τρόπον τινὰ τέρας
ἐστίν. παρεκβέβηκε γὰρ ἡ φύσις ἐν τούτοις ἐκ τοῦ γένους τρόπον τινά; transl. A. Platt.
208 SEG 21.519 (= Osborne–Rhodes GHI 88; Tod GHI 204).

83
As Robert Garland observes, “since the oath constitutes part of a decree which
was passed by the Athenian assembly, it is safe to conclude that even in this sup-
posedly enlightened era a majority of citizens would have been deterred from
breaking it for fear of generating a monster”.209 By the way, the form of the pun-
ishment – humans begetting monsters – that is envisioned in the oath is a strik-
ing and rather sophisticated idea. It seems as if the Greeks of that time perceived
the human race as constantly being endangered by dehumanization, thus such
degeneration from humans to monstrous non-humans occurring against the
laws of nature was the most dreadful threat imaginable.
As it appears, even several centuries later the fear of human degeneration into
monsters was still vivid, since Garland also finds another expression of the same
belief in the imprecations at the Greek sepulchral monuments of the Roman
imperial period from Asia Minor which had a formula warning the potential
tomb-robbers that their wives would be at risk of giving birth “not in accord-
ance with Nature”,210 which the scholar aptly considers to be a euphemism for
congenital deformity.211
In the story of Polycritus the androgynous infant is explicitly termed τέρας
(Mir. 2.9) – the same name that is used by Aristotle – which means a sign, a
portent or, in a concrete sense, a monster. As Luc Brisson says, “The child of Poly-
critus, since it is a monster (τέρας in the strict sense), constitutes a portent (τέρας
in the large sense)”.212 From the Greek word τέρας the modern term ‘teratology’ is
derived. It refers to the study of abnormalities of physiological development. In
antiquity one of the Latin equivalents of the Greek term τέρας was ‘monstrum’ –
from which the English word ‘monster’ derives, stemming from the root ‘monere’ –
‘to warn’, and related with ‘monstrare’ – ‘to show’. Thus, to be a monster means to
be an omen – a warning sign, a display of the gods’ will, a portent of the future
and usually a harbinger of doom.
In ancient times any extraordinary phenomenon, particularly a deformed or
unnatural human or animal fetus, had the chance to be regarded as an omen. As
follows from many Greek and Roman accounts – historical, legendary and fic-
tional –hermaphrodites, being ambiguous creatures, were considered dangerous,
and because of this they were especially endangered since they were immediately

209 Garland (1995): 60.

210 E.g. SEG 18.561.7.
211 Garland (1995): 60.
212 Brisson (1978): 103.

84
removed. The usual method of the disposal of a monster was through drown-
ing213 or burning,214 or at least through abandoning it in a desolate place.215
For instance, Livy reports that around 200 BC, after the Second Punic War, in
Italy:
[…] monstrous births of animals were related to have occurred in many places: in the
country of the Sabines, an infant was born whose sex was doubtful; and another was
found, sixteen years old, of doubtful sex. At Frusino a lamb was born with a swine’s head;
at Sinuessa, a pig with a human head; and in Lucania, in the land belonging to the state,
a foal with five feet. All these were considered as horrid and abominable, and as if nature
were straying to strange productions. Above all, the people were particularly shocked
at the hermaphrodites, which were ordered to be immediately thrown into the sea, as
had been lately done with a production of the same monstrous kind, in the consulate of
Caius Claudius and Marcus Livius.216

Further, Livy describes the measures that were adopted in such cases:
Notwithstanding they ordered the decemvirs to inspect the books in regard of that
prodigy; and the decemvirs, from the books, directed the same religious ceremonies
which had been performed on an occasion of the same kind. They ordered, besides,
a hymn to be sung through the city by thrice nine virgins, and an offering to be made
to imperial Juno. The consul, Gaius Aurelius, took care that all these matters were per-
formed according to the direction of the decemvirs. The hymn was composed by Publius
Licinius Tegula, as a similar one had been, in the memory of their fathers, by Livius.217

213 Cf. Liv. 27.37.5–6 (see below, note 218); 31.12.6–8 (see below, note 216); Iul. Obs. 22,
27a, 32, 34, 47, 48, 50.
214 Cf. Diod. 32.12.2; Ps.-Callisth. Hist. Alex. Magn. 3.30. Hansen (1996): 87–88.
215 The ancient pieces of evidence refer here generally to monstrous and deformed chil-
dren, not to hermaphrodites explicitly; all of the cases are described by Delcourt 1938
(passim).
216 Liv. 31.12.6–8: iam animalium obsceni fetus pluribus locis nuntiabantur: in Sabinis
incertus infans natus, masculus an femina esset, alter sedecim iam annorum item
ambiguo sexu inventus; Frusinone agnus cum suillo capite, Sinuessae porcus cum
capite humano natus, in Lucanis in agro publico eculeus cum quinque pedibus. foeda
omnia et deformia errantis que in alienos fetus naturae visa: ante omnia abominati
semimares, iussi que in mare extemplo deportari, sicut proxime C. Claudio M. Livio
consulibus deportatus similis prodigii fetus erat; transl. C. R. Edmonds.
217 Liv. 31.12.9–10: nihilo minus decemviros adire libros de portento eo iusserunt.
decemviri ex libris res divinas easdem quae proxime secundum id prodigium factae
essent imperarunt. carmen praeterea ab ter novenis virginibus cani per urbem
iusserunt, donum que Iunoni reginae ferri. ea uti fierent C. Aurelius consul ex decem-
virorum responso curavit. carmen, sicut patrum memoria Livius, ita tum condidit
P. Licinius Tegula; transl. C. R. Edmonds.

85
In another passage Livy relates a similar occurrence:
After the people’s minds had been freed from superstitious fears, they were again dis-
turbed by intelligence that an infant had been born at Frusino as large as a child of four
years old, and not so much an object of wonder from its size, as that it was born without
any certain mark of distinction whether it was male or female, which was the case two
years before at Sinuessa. Aruspices, called in from Etruria, declared this to be indeed a
foul and ill-omened prodigy, which ought to be removed out of the Roman territory,
and, being kept far from coming in contact with the earth, to be plunged into the deep.
They shut it up alive in a chest, and carrying it away, threw it into the sea.218

Apparently, a popular method of removing hermaphrodites in Rome was by

drowning. The passage above perfectly shows how incidents such as an unnatu-
ral birth were terrifying to the people of antiquity, especially to the Romans, who
were known for being amazingly superstitious. Furthermore, a detailed ritual fol-
lowed; its description demonstrates that pro public bono very high importance
was attached to appeasing potentially angry gods. As Marie Delcourt points out,
abnormal infants were perceived as evil beings that needed to disappear as soon
as possible, but the employed method of removal – throwing the portents into
the water or exposing them in a desolate place – was purposely performed with-
out violence and bloodshed in order not to irritate them.219 The scholar empha-
sizes that this custom had religious origin.220
In Phlegon’s story, which is the extant Greek text telling of the birth of an an-
drogynous infant, the method of removal, i.e. burning the baby and its mother,
is even more drastic than the drowning as described by Livy. The child’s rela-
tives call the assembly and expose the hermaphrodite. Special diviners (θύται
and τερατοσκόποι) are summoned and deliberate about the meaning of the sign.
Some of them declare that a disagreement would come about between the Locri-
ans and Aetolians, for the child has been separated from its mother, a Locrian,
and its father, an Aetolian; while others claim there should be a disposal of the
baby and its mother by burning them beyond the city’s boundaries. Then, as we
know, the ghost of Polycritus appears and the action takes on a different course.

218 Liv. 27.37.5–6: liberatas religione mentes turbauit rursus nuntiatum Frusinone na-
tum esse infantem quadrimo parem nec magnitudine tam mirandum quam quod is
quoque, ut Sinuessae biennio ante, incertus mas an femina esset natus erat. id uero ha-
ruspices ex Etruria acciti foedum ac turpe prodigium dicere: extorrem agro Romano,
procul terrae contactu, alto mergendum. uiuum in arcam condidere prouectumque
in mare proiecerunt; transl. C. R. Edmonds.
219 Delcourt (1938): 36 ff.; Delcourt (1961): 67.
220 Delcourt (1938): 36.

86
There is also evidence in the text that, despite the ghost’s appearance and his
persuasion, the citizens still intended to dispose of the child. Phlegon relates that
just a moment before the revenant devoured the child they were still deliberating
on the disposal of the portent:
τοῦ δὲ ὄχλου συνδραμόντος καὶ περὶ τὴν ἄρσιν τοῦ τέρατος ἔχοντος…
When the crowd clustered together and was giving itself to removal of the portent […]221

Although the hermaphrodite was rescued from being burned, it perished in a

similarly drastic way, devoured by the ghost of its own father. Nevertheless, it is
not clear enough whether the baby, consumed by Polycritus, was still alive at that
time since, according to Phlegon, the child’s mother was to be burned as well,
but there was no reason to condemn the woman to such a cruel death. Inferring
from one verse of the prophecy as uttered by the head of the hermaphrodite, we
can suspect that she might have already been dead. The passage reads as follows:
Alas, alas, without cease I bewail the terrible sufferings of my land
And my most dread mother, whom death eventually carried away.222

Thus the head suggests that the woman is dead, and we may presume that she died
during childbirth. We still do not now, however, if the child was also dead before
it was devoured, and we cannot rule out that it was alive. Luc Brisson comments
that if the child was alive, burning as a method of removing the hermaphrodite
is aberrant since, according to many testimonies only, anomalous animals – also
regarded as maleficent signs – were burned, thus in this case the human being
is assimilated with a dreadful animal. For other scholars this type of purifica-
tion by fire must be seen as an exaggeration which is a supposed characteristic of

221 In the manuscript that contains Phlegon’s Mirabilia, in this passage there is a word,
ἔριν (‘a quarrel’, ‘a strife’), written over the word ἄρσιν, hence the text’s editors (e.g.
Giannini) included that word in the main text, and because of this operation the
text reads as follows: τοῦ δὲ ὄχλου συνδραμόντος καὶ ἔριν περὶ [τὴν ἄρσιν] τοῦ
τέρατος ἔχοντος = “the crowd clustered together and was arguing about the the
portent”. However, Stramaglia in the apparatus of his edition aptly notices that ἔριν
“est quidem varia lectio sed reicienda” and states in his earlier article (Stramaglia
(1995b): 217–218) that such an inclusion seems unnecessary since the basic text
makes satisfactory sense. On intransitive use of ἔχω with περί + accusative, see LSJ
s.v. ἔχω B.I.4.
222 Mir. 2.11: αἲ αἲ πατρίδ’ ἐμὴν αἰεὶ στένω αἰνὰ παθοῦσαν / μητέρα τ’ αἰνοτάτην, ἣν
ὕστερον ἔκλυσεν αἰών.

87
Phlegon’s literary style.223 However, as Brisson himself admits,224 there is one case
of burning a human hermaphrodite that took place in 91 BC and was related by
Diodor of Sicily, who stated that:
[…] at the outset of the Marsian War, at any rate, there was, so it is reported, an Italian
living not far from Rome who had married an hermaphrodite similar to those described
above; he laid information before the senate, which in an access of superstitious terror
and in obedience to the Etruscan diviners ordered the creature to be burned alive. Thus
did one whose nature was like ours and who was not, in reality, a monster, meet an
unsuitable end through misunderstanding of his malady. Shortly afterwards there was
another such case at Athens, and again through misunderstanding of the affliction the
person was burned alive.225

According to Brisson, this case of burning a human being is explained by the

fact that since the person was an adult, abandoning that person in a desolate
place would make no sense. Nevertheless, the removal of this individual by burn-
ing him/her alive is exceptionally drastic and performed with violence, and, evi-
dently, inferring from the relation of Diodor, it is reserved not only for ominous
animals, but also for human beings, even in such late times as the 1st century BC.
The events described by Phlegon and Diodor perfectly show how terrifying to
the people of antiquity – and not only the Romans who had a reputation for be-
ing particularly superstitious but also the Greeks – the appearance of a monster
could have been.
This is also confirmed in the other story of a hermaphrodite in Phlegon’s Mi-
rabilia – in chapter 10 which briefly mentions the birth of an androgynous in-
fant; its case, however, is not as drastic as the previous one. Its structure is also
fundamentally different since this time we are not dealing with a narrative but
rather with a brief historical note followed by two quite extensive fragments of
the Sibylline oracles. This is how the story begins:
A hermaphrodite was also begotten in Rome when Jason was archon in Athens and
Marcus Plautius Hypsaeus and Marcus Fulvius Flaccus were consuls in Rome.

223 Brisson (1978): 113.

224 Ibid.
225 Diod. 32.12.2: κατ’ ἀρχὰς γοῦν τοῦ Μαρσικοῦ πολέμου πλησίον τῆς Ῥώμης οἰκοῦντά
φασιν Ἰταλικόν, γεγαμηκότα παραπλήσιον τοῖς εἰρημένοις ἀνδρόγυνον, προσαγγεῖλαι
τῇ συγκλήτῳ, τὴν δὲ δεισιδαιμονήσασαν καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Τυρρηνίας ἱεροσκόποις
πεισθεῖσαν ζῶντα προστάξαι καῦσαι. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ὁμοίας κεκοινωνηκότα
φύσεως, ἀλλ’ οὐ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν τέρας γεγενημένον, φασὶν ἀγνοίᾳ τῆς νόσου παρὰ
τὸ προσῆκον ἀπολωλέναι. μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ καὶ παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις τοῦ τοιούτου γενομένου
διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τοῦ πάθους ζῶντά φασι κατακαῆναι; transl. C. H. Oldfather.

88
 Because of the event the Senate decreed that the priests should read the Sibylline oracles,
and they made atonement and narrated the oracles. 226

After this short historical introduction, two fragments of the Sibylline oracles fol-
low, in which the Sibyl is presented as predicting the birth of the hermaphrodite:
The fate of mortals, who only afterwards learn what place each person is to go,
And all the prodigies and plagues of the goddess Destiny
This loom of mine will reveal, if you consider these things in your mind,
Trusting in its strength. I declare that one day a woman will bear
A hermaphrodite having all the male parts
And all the parts that infant female women manifest.227

Thereafter detailed prescriptions are given concerning the ritual propitiation of

the gods, especially Demeter and Persephone; for instance, the Sibyl bids the
recipients of the oracle to perform the following: gather a treasure of coins; sac-
rifice thrice nine bulls at public expense; gather a number of girls to perform a
rite in the Greek manner; pray to Demeter with offerings; sacrifice thrice many
offerings unmixed with wine and place them into the ravening fire, etc. The sec-
ond oracle bids to offer the blood of a dark-haired ox that is attired in splendid
garments to Aidoneus-Pluton; to sacrifice a white cow according to ancestral
custom in the land; to sing a hymn by women belonging to the foremost families
among the people, etc.228
Thus in Mir. 10 we again encounter a hermaphrodite which is regarded as
a dangerous sign that needs purification by means of numerous and elaborate
rites. However, this time nothing is said about removal of the creature, as if it

226 Mir. 10.1: Ἐγεννήθη καὶ ἐπὶ Ῥώμης ἀνδρόγυνος, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Ἰάσονος,
ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Μάρκου Πλαυτίου [καὶ Σέξτου Καρμινίου] Ὑψαίου καὶ
Μάρκου Φουλβίου Φλάκκου. δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν ἡ σύγκλητος ἐκέλευσεν τοὺς ἱερομνήμονας
ἀναγνῶναι τοὺς Σιβύλλης χρησμούς· οἱ δ’ ἐξ<ιλάσαντο καὶ ἐξ>ηγήσαντο τοὺς
χρησμούς.
227 Mir. 10.2: <μ>οῖραν ὀπισθομα<θῶν, τίν’ ἔ>φυ πᾶς εἰς τόπον ἐλθ<εῖν>,
ὅσσα τέρα <τε> καὶ ὅσσα παθήματα δαίμονος Αἴσης,
ἱστὸς ἐμὸς λύσει, τάδ’ ἐνὶ φρεσὶν αἴ κε νοήσῃς
ῥώμῃ ἑῇ πίσυνος. καί τοί ποτέ φημι γυναῖκα
ἀνδρόγυνον τέξεσθαι ἔχοντά περ ἄρσενα πάντα
νηπίαχοί θ’ ὅσα θηλύτεραι φαίνουσι γυναῖκες; on the basis of the translation by
Hansen.
228 The oracles are acrostics in hexameter verse; according to scholars they were com-
posed in the 3rd/2nd century BC (Diels (1890): 25–26), in the 2nd c. BC (MacBain
(1982): 135) or in the 1st century BC (Breglia Pulci Doria (1983): 286–288).

89
were not considered as dangerous as Polycritus’ child, who had been condemned
to death by burning. In this account the emphasis is apparently put, above all, on
the oracles and to a lesser extent on the bisexual child’s appearance.
And, in my view, this point leads us to the conclusion that the hermaphrodites
in Phlegon’s Mirabilia play a particular role: in both accounts (Mir. 2 and 10)
these extraordinary creatures serve as factors triggering off other extraordinary
elements. In Mir. 2 such a reaction takes place at the story level: the appearance of
an androgynous infant begins a sequence of odd and bizarre events, such as the
child’s dead father’s return, his prophecies, his cannibal act of devouring his own
baby, and the oracle uttered by the hermaphrodite’s head – all of which would not
exist if there was no hermaphrodite in the first place. In other words, one marvel
makes another marvel happen, for otherwise there would be no reason for them
to appear in the story. Thanks to the hermpahrodite, bizarre elements such as
the revenant that consumes flesh and the oracular head find their place in the
story and create an irrational chain of causation. As a matter of fact, it is not that
irrational if we accept that miraculous events have their own logic, according to
which they might happen in sequence. This may be explained by the fact that
one marvel already has so strong an impact on the environment that it does not
allow people to remain indifferent to it, but rather causes unusual reactions and,
in consequence, makes other marvels occur. We may also call it the logic of the
metaphysical, which is not transparent to humans, at least at the level of fiction.
From this point of view, the narrative is all about a mysterious dialogue be-
tween the divine and the mortals. The birth of a hermaphrodite is rightly inter-
preted by the characters in the story as a sign from the gods. Because the sign’s
meaning is misinterpreted by its recipients, the gods send a messenger – the rev-
enant – to reveal its actual meaning. Since even such an instance is rejected by
the recipients, a third sign is necessary – the oracular head. And since heads do
not leave their bodies spontaneously by themselves, there must be a factor that
would separate them from their bodies, thus the tearing and devouring of the
flesh as performed by the revenant may be viewed as quite a logical solution
to the problem. Seen from that perspective, there are three signs or three mes-
sages from the gods for humans in Phlegon’s story and the appearance of the
hermaphrodite is but the first sign, although one provoking the following two. In
other words, the hermaphrodite serves as a pretext in order to introduce other
extraordinary elements. However, the story does not lack internal coherence, de-
spite its being built up of elements of the bizarre and the odd, obviously for the
sake of entertainment.

90
 The case of the hermaphrodite from chapter 10 of the Mirabilia is somewhat
different, since this time we are not dealing with a narrative but with a hybrid, a
hardly coherent text that consists of a short prose introduction and two separate
fragments of hexametric Sibylline oracles. But also in this case the appearance of
the hermaphrodite serves as a pretext in order to quote two fragments of mystic
and mysterious prophecies about the terrible disasters that are to come. Without
a hermaphrodite or some similar oddity there would be no excuse to place the
oracles in the compilation which, in spite of the fact that it is devoted to marvels
of various kinds, focuses exclusively on monstrous human oddities.
With their undefined sexuality and double set of genitals, the hermaphrodites
are monsters par excellence, and this is obviously their primary role in the Mi-
rabilia – to shock and astonish by means of their hybrid nature. They perfectly
fit the general pattern of the compilation, which is embodied ambiguity and hy-
brid corporeality. Neither properly women nor properly men, hermaphrodites
remain unclassifiable, and go against nature based on the simple binary opposi-
tion of male/female.
As reflected in both of Phlegon’s accounts and in the other ancient texts quot-
ed above – hermaphrodites are monsters literally (= freaks of nature), but also in
the wider sense (= portents); they were therefore considered to be a divine mes-
sage subjected to the process of reading, which was to be performed by experts
in contacts between mortals and the gods. Their fate was for many centuries
unenviable – usually their destiny was death by drowning or burning until the
1st century AD, i.e. the times of Pliny, who gave famous evidence concerning
hermaphrodites: “Individuals are occasionally born, who belong to both sexes;
such persons we call by the name of hermaphrodites, they were formerly called
Androgyni, and were looked upon as monsters, but at the present day they are
employed for sensual purposes”.229
Interestingly, in the times of Phlegon, who lived and wrote a century after
Pliny, hermaphrodites ceased to be perceived as dangerous signs since they most
likely had lost their supernatural significance, at least to members of the educated
elite. For Phlegon and his contemporaries, hermaphrodites were probably those
deliciae in Pliny, and served as entertainment. But the “monsters did not simply
evaporate as rational humanism came on the scene”, as Stephen Asma states.230

229 Plin. NH 7.34: Gignuntur et utriusque sexus quos hermaphroditos vocamus, olim
androgynos vocatos et in prodigiis habitos, nunc vero in deliciis; transl. J. Bostock
and H. T. Riley.
230 Asma (2009): 42.

91
 In light of this fact, the stories of hermaphrodites fundamentally change their
meaning. What we have in the Mirabilia is a play with the former significance of
hermaphrodites. The two accounts of androgynous infants incorporated into the
compilation refer to times when such creatures were regarded as dangerous. In
this respect these accounts resemble those found in the works of the ancient his-
torians, such as Diodor or Livy, who registered such extraordinary or supernatu-
ral phenomena among other meaningful facts for the sake of historiographical
diligence. In the Mirabilia, however, according to the rules of the genre of para-
doxography, they are used for the sake of entertainment along with other freaks
of nature. The compiler saw to it that very special stories be chosen abounding
in incredible elements to the extent that it would be quite difficult to find other
stories that would exceed them in terms of the odd and the bizarre (as in Mir. 2),
or in terms of the mysterious and the mystic (as in Mir. 10).

The God
Ancient attitudes toward hermaphroditism also had a different side, since the
Greeks worshipped an androgynous god, however, one that was of rather minor
importance, by the name of Hermaphroditus. The origins of his cult, dated to at
least the 4th century BC,231 remain unclear. We know, however, that similarly to
the cults of other “dual-sexuality” gods, such as Aphrodite-Aphroditos on Cyprus
or the oriental deity Astarte, it involved such rites as changing gender roles and
the exchange of clothing.
The name Hermaphroditus is a rare twin form that is analogous to ἀνδρόγυνος,
ἀρρενόθηλυς (‘man-womanly’), and may be explained as a combination of
Hermes and Aphrodite, and not as Hermathena, etc., which is a combination of
Ἑρμῆς in the sense ‘herm’ and the goddess’s name.
The extant mythological story of Hermaphroditus, associated with the myth
of the nymph Salmacis, is related only by Ovid (Met. 4.274–388), thus it is late
and seems secondary: the nymph fell in love with Hermaphroditus, the son of

231 Sources documenting the cult can be listed, although they are not of a high level
of confidence: 1. a votive inscription from Hymettus in the deme of Anagyrus (385
BC), see Kirchner, Dow (1937): 7–8; 2. possibly Thphr. Char. 16.10: depending on
whether one accepts the reading of the manuscript Ἑρμαφροδίτους, or P. Steinmetz’s
conjecture Ἑρμᾶς, ἀφρονεῖν; 3. a private altar (Cos, 3rd cent. BC), on which H. is
named in an inscription with other gods, see Segre (1993): EV 18; 4. possibly Alciphr.
2.37: depending on the interpretation, a woman makes an offering to H. in the deme
Alopece, or to a person named H., or even to the pile of stones (ἕρμα) of Phaedrias.
Cf. Heinze (1998).

92
Aphrodite and Hermes, but he resisted her courtship. One day, when Hermaph-
roditus was bathing in a fountain, Salmakis embraced him in the water and asked
the gods for eternal union, thus she merged with him into an androgynous body;
thereupon Hermaphroditus cursed the fountain to make those bathing there be-
come effeminate. This legend, however, which made Hermaphrodite the son of
two deities, seems to have been invented in later times to explain the name.232 The
origins of Hermaphrodite remain obscure.
The existence of the cult of the androgynous god in no way changed the status
of beings with real signs of hermaphroditism – they were ritually removed. These
two phenomena, i.e. the cult of the god Hermaphrodite and the fear of real her-
maphrodites conceived as evil omens, must have coexisted for a very long time;
this coexistence may also be viewed as paradoxical. Marie Delcourt explains this
paradox as follows: “Androgyny occupies two poles of the sacred. Pure concept,
pure vision of the mind, it appears charged with the highest values. Fulfilled in
a being of flesh and blood, it is a monstrosity, and nothing more. It attests the
wrath of the gods against the group that had this misfortune to reveal it. The
unfortunates who represent the divine wrath are removed as soon as possible”.233

II.1.2.2 Sex-changers
The two cases of hermaphrodites as discussed above do not exhaust the topic in
the Mirabilia. There is also another aspect of androgyny, namely the spontaneous
sex change, that can be found in the compilation: significantly, sex-changers were
considered by Phlegon and other ancient authors to be “successive” hermaph-
rodites. In antiquity, these two phenomena apparently were mixed up and both
were termed the same as hermaphrodites. Although Marie Delcourt claims that
the ancients found both equally maleficent,234 the sources seem ambiguous on
this point, since in many cases, as we shall see below, the sex-changers were not
eliminated; we need therefore to once again examine literary evidence to learn
how the sex-changers were treated in ancient times.
Phlegon gathered quite an impressive collection of six such stories (chapters
4–9). Among them are two stories about Teiresias and Caeneus/(Caenis), which
have been classified as “mythical” by scholars, and four “genuine” cases of sex-
changers which may be regarded as historical or semi-historical accounts.

232 Delcourt (1961): 46.

233 Ibid.: 68–69.
234 Ibid.: 44.

93
 As in the whole work, also here no commentary is provided by the compiler,
nor are his criteria of selection explained. There is, however, an evident differ-
ence between sexual metamorphosis based on a myth and that based on events
from real life: the former refer to prehistoric times, when humans interacted with
gods, whereas the latter may be dated more or less precisely. Also, the mythical
sex-changers were famous personalities: Teiresias was a great seer and Caeneus
a great hero, unlike the “genuine” sex-changers who were ordinary people. Inter-
estingly, although these differences could not have escaped Phlegon’s notice, he
decided to include the myths in his compilation.
Scholars mostly agree that the mythical sex-changers are fundamentally dif-
ferent from the historical instances: “in this kind of successive androgyny we
must not see a transposition of genuine cases where an adolescent turns out not
to be of the sex supposed at his birth. The stories of Caeneus and Teiresias do
not spring from concrete experience. They are indeed myths, born of customs
or beliefs – and, moreover, each one requires a separate explanation”.235 Before
these explanations are provided, I will examine all of Phlegon’s accounts that
concern sex-changers, beginning with the “mythical” ones and then passing on
to the “historical” cases; I will try to answer the question as to why the compiler
so easily equated the former with the latter, or, in other words, why he put myths
into his paradoxographical work.
The section devoted to sexual metamorphoses in the Mirabilia begins with
the mythical story of Teiresias. In chapter 4, Phlegon, invoking Hesiodus (fr. 275
Merkelbach-West), Dicaearchus (fr. 37 Wehrli2), Clearchus (uncertain),236 Cal-
limachus (fr. 576 Pfeiffer) and “certain others”, relates the following incident:
Teiresias, son of Eueres, one day saw a pair of snakes copulating on Cyllene, a
mountain in Arkadia. He wounded one of them and immediately changed his
form from a man into a woman. After this transformation, Teiresias as a “she” had
intercourse with a man. Apollo told “her” in an oracle that if “she” encountered
another pair of snakes and once again wounded one of them, “she” would return
to “her” previous form. Teiresias did this and became a man again. Later on, Zeus
and Hera had an argument on the subject of sexual pleasure during intercourse:
Zeus claimed that the woman had the greater share, more than the man, and
Hera claimed the opposite. Since Teiresias had had the experience of both sexes,
they decided to consult him on the matter. He replied that the man experiences
only one-tenth of the pleasure, whereas the woman experiences nine-tenths.

235 Ibid.: 34.

236 See Stramaglia’s commentary in his edition.

94
Furious Hera made him blind, but Zeus gave him the gift of prophecy and a life-
span of seven generations.
In general, the author follows the most popular version of the myth,237 and
although the original passages as referred to by Phlegon have not survived, they
are attested in other sources.238 These sources differ from Phlegon’s version only
in such details as the proportion of male and female sexual pleasure, although in
all cases the latter has the greater share.
The most striking aspect of this story is the fact that Teiresias’ transformation
is supernatural and unexplained. The apparent cause of the transformation –
wounding a snake – seems mysterious, even odd. In Phlegon’s text there is some
evidence which indicates that the sex of the wounded snake in both the first and
the second event is not accidental. As Luc Brisson notices, the compiler seems
to be playing with the meaning of the word ἕτερος (‘one or the other of two’):
he does not use the term in its most common sequence τὸν ἕνα… τὸν ἕτερον –
‘the one and the other’, but in fact uses the exact opposite, saying that Teiresias
wounded first τὸν ἕτερον – the other, and then, in the second instance, τὸν ἕνα –
the first, i.e. the one. The word play relies on the double meaning of ἕτερον, which
signifies ‘the other of two’ and also ‘the different one’. Therefore, the term used
in the story may suggest that Teiresias first wounded ‘that different/other one
of the two snakes’, which means ‘different from him’ in terms of sex, namely the

237 For another version of the story of Teiresias in which he accidentally sees Athena
naked in a bath, whereupon the enraged goddess deprives him of his sight but even-
tually gives him in compensation the power of divination, see e.g. Callim. Hymn.
5.75–131; Prop. 4.9.57–58; Nonn. Dion. 5.337–342. In this version no sex change is
mentioned, although without a doubt both versions are related since they present
the breaking of an ocular taboo: in one Teiresias sees the copulating snakes and his
sexual integrity is threatened, in the other he sees the naked goddess and is punished
through the loss of his sight. Cf. Brisson (1976): passim; Delcourt (1961): 33–43;
Krappe (1928); Forbes Irving (1999): 162–170; Ugolini (1995): 33–65; A third version
of the myth also exists, according to which Teiresias was originally a woman. While
she was wandering in the mountains, Apollo coveted her. In exchange for sexual
favors he taught her about music. Once she was proficient, she refused to give herself
to Apollo. Thus the god changed her into a man so that Eros could experience her.
She was also a judge in the quarrel between Zeus and Hera. Thereafter she changed
her gender a few times more in different circumstances; the story was related in
the elegiac poem Teiresias by Sostratus (FGH 23 F 7), see Eust. in Od., p. 390, 5–16
Stallbaum.
238 Hyg. Fab. 75; Lact. Plac. in Theb. 2.95; Hes. fr. 275 Merkelbach-West ap. Apollod. Bibl.
3.71–72; Ov. Met. 3.316–338; Ant. Lib. Met. 17.5.

95
female, and was as a result immediately transformed into a woman.239 As Hansen
points out, such an explanation is confirmed in a number of texts (Schol. in Hom.
Od. 10.494, and Eust. in Od., p. 389,45 – 390, 2) which specify the gender of the
snakes, and notes that Teiresias first struck the female, whereas in the second
event it was the male reptile that was wounded, so the resulting change was first
from a man to a woman, and then from a woman to a man.240
The spontaneous sex change was explained neither in Phlegon’s version of the
story nor in most other versions. The only reason given for the transformation
is Teiresias’ encounter with the copulating snakes. Marie Delcourt proves, how-
ever, that the sight of copulating snakes is taboo in the folklore of many nations.
The scholar recalls a similar incident in Pliny (NH 7.122) involving the father of
Gracchi who, when returning home, saw two copulating snakes. An augur told
him that his life would be saved if he killed the female. The Roman answered
that it would be better to kill the male since his wife Cornelia was young and
could still bear children.241 Delcourt concludes that “in the Roman tale, the sight
of the snakes threatened the life of the onlooker; in the Greek tale, it threatened
his sexual integrity”.242 Moreover, in classical times snakes were believed to bring
the gift of prophecy: the soothsayers Melampus, Cassandra and Helenus allowed
snakes to lick their ears so that they could understand the language of animals
and the noises of the natural world.243 On the other hand, such a special gift was
believed to cause a loss of some sort in order for a balance to be maintained, as,
for instance, the loss of sight in the case of Teiresias.
According to some scholars, the strange story of Teiresias is a remnant of the
ritual transvestitism that was centered around the periodic changing of clothes,
from male to female, which was performed by shamans in ancient times. In the
Greek interpretation, the remembrance of an old rite was changed into the story
of a famous mythical prophet with the use of folkloric themes to give it perfect
cohesion.244 Teiresias sees the snakes copulating and his sex changes thereafter;
as the only human to have had authentic male and female sexual experience he
is asked by two gods to settle their quarrel over the sexual pleasure of both men
and women during intercourse. His response invokes the anger of the goddess,

239 Brisson (1976): 12.

240 Hansen (1996): 114.
241 Delcourt (1961): 37.
242 Ibid.: 38.
243 Ibid.; cf. Brisson (1976): 46–77. See Apollod. 1.97; Eust. in Il., p. 393, 13 – 394, 2 van
der Valk.
244 Delcourt (1961): 41–42.

96
who deprives him of his sight, but he is eventually compensated for by being
given the power of divination. “The idea underlying the many stories about blind
soothsayers, of suffering or mutilated magicians, is that superiority in any one
direction must be paid for, and often at a high price. When the Greeks had lost
the sense of this mysterious contract whereby a god could claim from a human
something of his substance in exchange for a special gift, they represented blind-
ness as a punishment. This is clear in the story of Teiresias”.245
Delcourt’s notion of folkloric themes concealing an old rite in the story of
Teiresias was developed by other scholars,246 who examined international folk-
tales and observed in them the appearance of the same pattern of the so-called
repeated encounter, in which the following outline is to be discerned: a man ar-
rives at a certain place, or is engaged in a certain activity, and is then suddenly
transformed into a woman. In this new form he/she lives as a married woman
and bears seven children. After seven years have passed he/she is engaged in the
same activity or arrives at the place where the metamorphosis previously oc-
curred, and is changed back into a man again. He returns home and learns from
his wife that his absence lasted only a few moments. Hansen suggests that the leg-
end of Teiresias is a mythologization of this international tale in its ancient form
which, in fact, does not rule out Delcourt’s hypothesis of the story originating
in the ancient rite of transvestitism: many folktale motifs – as Vladimir Propp247
proved – originated from ancient customs and beliefs.248
The most interesting question is why Phlegon chose to include this mythical
story among the historical accounts of sex-changers and other “genuine stories”
of various human oddities. The obvious answer would be that the story addresses
“successive hermaphroditism”, thus it found its place in the section devoted to
sexual transformation. Certainly, Phlegon may not have differentiated between
myths and historical accounts, simply by considering the former to be very an-
cient. But even he must have encountered problems with dating these mythical
stories, especially as he usually endeavored to locate them in time and place. In
this case he could only refer to as many sources as possible. Nevertheless, by us-
ing Teiresias’ story as an opening of this part of the Mirabilia, the author achieved
some chronological sequence, i.e. from ancient times to his own time. In this
light, the historicity of the “mythical” case is confirmed by the modern cases
quoted by the compiler and, conversely, the “historical” cases may be interpreted

245 Ibid.: 39.

246 Forbes Irving (1990): 164–165; Hansen (1996): 114–115.
247 Propp (1983): passim.
248 Hansen (1996): 115.

97
as manifestations of divine intervention which happened in a very distant past;
the phenomenon of sex-change is thus presented as a fact that continually oc-
curred in human history.
Furthermore, the story of Teiresias is a unique example of a transformation
from a man into a woman. Perhaps, due to the lack of similar metamorphoses,
Phlegon incorporated this story in his compilation. The case of Teiresias is ex-
traordinary because of the double sex change, as each time the prophet became
either fully female or fully male. Thus the section devoted to sexual metamor-
phoses opens up with an account of a rather special sex-change which happened
under mysterious circumstances to a man who was not an ordinary mortal in
other respects. Significantly, the compiler truncated Teiresias’ “biography” by
limiting it to the episode of sexual transformation, hence just to the event that
apparently was his main interest, thus omitting the rich story of Teiresias’ career
as a famous seer. For Phlegon, the extraordinary double transformation was the
most important part of the myth since it fit his collection of human oddities, and
particularly the section with sexual anomalies; and for this reason the rest of the
story was ignored.
In a similar manner Phlegon uses the story of another mythical personage –
Caeneus – which follows that of Teiresias in the Mirabilia. The reader learns in
chapter 5 that:
The same authors relate that in the land of Lapiths a daughter was born to King Elatos
and named Kainis. After Poseidon had had sexual intercourse with her and promised to
fulfill any wish for her, she asked that he change her into a man and render her invulner-
able. Poseidon granted her request, and her name was changed to Kaineus.249

The same authors as in Teiresias’ story – namely Hesiod (fr. 87 Merkelbach-

West), Callimachus (fr. 577 Pfeiffer) and Dicaearchus (fr. 38 Wehrli2) – are ref-
ered to by Phlegon as his sources. Yet again the compiler focuses only on a part
of the myth that concerns the sex change and omits the rest, in which Caeneus
became a tyrant, planted his spear in the middle of a market-place and ordered
that everybody pay divine honors to it and swear by it. Zeus, angered by his impi-
ety, sent the centaurs against him. Since the centaurs could not wound him, they

249 Mir. 5: Οἱ αὐτοὶ ἱστοροῦσιν κατὰ τὴν Λαπίθων χώραν γενέσθαι Ἐλάτῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ
θυγατέρα ὀνομαζομένην Καινίδα. ταύτῃ δὲ Ποσειδῶνα μιγέντα ἐπαγγείλασθαι
ποιήσειν αὐτῇ ὃ ἂν ἐθέλῃ, τὴν δὲ ἀξιῶσαι μεταλλάξαι αὐτὴν εἰς ἄνδρα ποιῆσαί τε
ἄτρωτον. τοῦ δὲ Ποσειδῶνος κατὰ τὸ ἀξιωθὲν ποιήσαντος μετονομασθῆναι Καινέα.

98
overwhelmed him with tree-trunks and drove him into the earth.250 Also in this
case, Phlegon, not interested in the myth itself, selects just a single motif from
Caeneus’ biography to enrich his collection of sex-changers.
In this story, Delcourt again observes a relic of the ancient rite of changing
garments in which women wore male clothes. The scholar interprets Caenis’ wish
as implying a certain invulnerability not only in the ordinary sense but with a
sexual connotation, since, as she says, “the vocabularies of Greek and Latin, at
all stages, from the style of tragedy to that of farce, assimilate the sexual act to a
wound”.251 The scholar also notes the etymologies of the name Caeneus which,
regardless of its actual origin, for the Greeks also meant καινίς, ‘sword’; καίνω, ‘to
kill’; καίνυμαι, ‘to excel’; καινός, ‘new, unusual’. Delcourt explains that transvestit-
ism is a rite of passage and initiation, so “the youth who has renewed himself is
invulnerable and stands erect and living under the trees that have overwhelmed
him. Although the story has been twisted to fit a morality foreign to its primitive
meaning, the ethics of rites of adolescence is still perfectly distinguishable in
it”.252 Paul Forbes Irving, however, disagrees with this rational interpretation of
the myth and proposes that it should be viewed as an entirely imaginative con-
struction. The scholar argues that the myth of Caeneus is, in fact, a much more
complex narrative based on the antithesis of the male and female, in which the
episode involving the sex change is not the story in itself but only a prelude to
the main story of Caeneus that depicts his rise as a famous hero. In this account,
Caeneus becomes an extremely masculine and virile man who transcended the
basic opposition of male and female. Specifically, Caeneus is transformed from
something less than a man to something more than a man. This analysis justi-
fies Caeneus’ decision to become an aggressive “superman” as a manifestation
of female resentment and rivalry.253 Although it is impossible to determine the
actual origin of Caeneus’ story, the interpretation offered by Forbes Irving seems
persuasive. Undoubtedly, the myth of the sex change, when contrasted with the
story of the later fate of Caeneus as a man, appears to be based on the male/

250 Cf. Pind. fr. 128f Maehler; Apollod. Epit. 1.22; Ap. Rhod. 1.57–64 and schol.; Verg. Aen.
6.448–449 and Serv.; Hyg. Fab. 14, 4; Ov. Met. 12.169–209 and 459–535. The strange
death of Caeneus seems to be a favorite subject in early art: the earliest depiction
dates from the 7th century; see Schefold (1966): pl. 27c; for the vases, see Brommer
(1973): 499–501.
251 Delcourt (1961): 35.
252 Ibid.: 36.
253 Forbes Irving (1990): 155–162.

99
female opposition and thus to emphasise the relative importance of men and
women in society.
Viewed from this perspective, the compiler’s reduction of the story of Cae-
neus again appears to be significant: the omission of the later part of Caeneus’
life in the male form highlights Phlegon’s particular interest in the phenomenon
of the sex change itself. The author neglects the sensational, even paradoxical, ex-
istence of the individual after his sexual transformation and focuses only on the
metamorphosis. Phlegon’s concentration on sex changes becomes even more evi-
dent in the next section of his work, in which he relates four other cases of such
metamorphoses but dating from historical times. Again, the compiler’s attention
is directed solely to the sex change, and the later fate of sex-changers is ignored.
Chapter 6 in the Mirabilia is the longest and most detailed of all the accounts
of “genuine” sex-changers in the compilation. Phlegon relates an occurrence
which took place in Antioch, by the Meander River, in 45 BC, “when Antipater
was archon at Athens and Marcus Vinicius and Titus Statilius Taurus, surnamed
Corvinus, were consuls in Rome”. After this short introduction the story goes as
follows:
A maiden of prominent family, thirteen years of age, was good-looking and had many
suitors. She was betrothed to the man whom her parents wished, the day of the wedding
was at hand, and she was about to go forth from her house when suddenly she experi-
enced an excruciating pain and cried out. Her relations took charge of her, treating her
for stomach pains and colic, but her suffering continued for three days without a break,
perplexing everyone about the nature of her illness. Her pains let up neither during the
night nor the day, and although the doctors in the city tried every kind of treatment, they
were unable to discover the cause of her illness. At around daybreak of the fourth day
her pain became stronger, and she cried out with a great wailing. Suddenly male genitals
burst forth from her, and the girl became a man.254

254 Mir. 6.2–3: παρθένος γὰρ γονέων ἐπισήμων τρισκαιδεκαέτις ὑπάρχουσα ὑπὸ πολλῶν
ἐμνηστεύετο, οὖσα εὐπρεπής. ὡς δ’ ἐνεγυήθη ᾧ οἱ γονεῖς ἐβούλοντο, ἐνστάσης τῆς
ἡμέρας τοῦ γάμου προϊέναι τοῦ οἴκου μέλλουσα αἰφνιδίως πόνου ἐμπεσόντος αὐτῇ
σφοδροτάτου ἐξεβόησεν. ἀναλαβόντες δ’ αὐτὴν οἱ προσήκοντες ἐθεράπευον ὡς
ἀλγήματα ἔχουσαν κοιλίας καὶ στρόφους τῶν ἐντός· τῆς δὲ ἀλγηδόνος ἐπιμενούσης
τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἑξῆς ἀπορίαν τε πᾶσι τοῦ πάθους ποιοῦντος, τῶν πόνων οὔτε νυκτὸς
οὔτε ἡμέρας ἔνδοσιν λαμβανόντων, καίτοι πᾶσαν μὲν θεραπείαν αὐτῇ προσφερόντων
<τῶν> ἐν τῇ πόλει ἰατρῶν, μηδεμίαν δὲ τοῦ πάθους δυναμένων αἰτίαν εὑρεῖν, τῇ
τετάρτῃ τῶν ἡμερῶν περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον μείζονα τῶν πόνων ἐπίδοσιν λαμβανόντων,
σὺν μεγάλῃ οἰμωγῇ ἀνακραγούσης, ἄφνω αὐτῇ ἀρσενικὰ μόρια προέπεσεν, καὶ ἡ
κόρη ἀνὴρ ἐγένετο.

100
This is the only such story quoted by Phlegon in which the transformation is
regarded as an evil omen, as is shown in the end:
Some time later she was brought to the Emperor Claudius in Rome. Because of the por-
tent he had an altar built on the Capitoline to Jupiter the Averter of Evil.255

Phlegon, beginning his account with the words “There was also a hermaphrodite
in Antioch…” clearly considers this as a case of hermaphroditism. Evidently, al-
though the girl was not born with features of two sexes, the fact that the male
organ appeared suddenly allows her to be classified as a hermaphrodite. Strictly
speaking, she became a hermaphrodite since her female genitals probably re-
mained after the male ones had burst forth, thus she became equipped with two
sets of reproductive organs. Branded a hermaphrodite, the girl is treated as a
maleficent portent that needs to be expiated. Thus the Emperor Claudius builds
an altar on the Capitol to a divine being referred to as “Zeus Alexikakos” in Phl-
egon’s version. William Hansen translated this as “Jupiter the Averter of Evil”,
arguing that a prominent temple of Jupiter stands on this hill. The construction
of the altar is the only reaction to the portentous event, and neither the hermaph-
rodite’s execution nor exile is mentioned; the life of this man-woman does not
seem to be at risk.
As Hansen points out, the story is disturbing to us due to the mysterious
transformation, which is explosive, unexpected and unexplained.256 Certainly,
the girl’s form changes in a most unusual manner, i.e. from an ordinary human
being she becomes an ambiguous one, no longer simply a woman nor a nor-
mal man. Nevertheless, nothing about the individual’s later life is revealed, which
again suggests that it was of little interest to the compiler, who limited his ac-
count only to the extraordinary phenomenon of the sexual transformation.
The other stories in the Mirabilia also fail to mention any responses or reac-
tions to the appearance of the individuals after their metamorphoses. The story
in Mir. 7 is much shorter but very similar to the one above:
There was also a hermaphrodite in Mevania, a town in Italy, in the country house of Ag-
rippina Augusta when Dionysodoros was archon in Athens, and Decimus Iunius Silanus
Torquatus and Quintus Haterius Antoninus were consuls in Rome.

255 Mir. 6.4: μετὰ δὲ χρόνον εἰς Ῥώμην ἀνηνέχθη πρὸς Κλαύδιον Καίσαρα· ὁ δὲ τούτου
ἕνεκα τοῦ σημείου ἐν Καπετωλίῳ Διὶ Ἀλεξικάκῳ ἱδρύσατο βωμόν.
256 Hansen (1996): 177–178.

101
 A maiden named Philotis, whose family came from Smyrna, was of marriageable age
and had been betrothed to a man by her parents when male genitals appeared in her and
she became a man.257

The story is dated to AD 53. Its outline is identical to that in Mir. 6, although the
account ends dramatically at the climax. Again, the reader learns nothing about
the fate of the girl after the transformation and, similarly, the metamorphosis
happens when the girl reaches puberty, which is symbolically expressed by her
being of marriageable age. Obviously, the forthcoming wedding makes the sex
change more dramatic. Concluding from the resemblance between these two
stories, Hansen (1996: 119) presumes that Phlegon excerpted both stories from
the same source.258
However, the case of the unnamed maiden in Mir. 6 is rendered more exciting
due to the great pain and mysterious disease experienced by the girl, which are
described in detail: her protracted suffering builds the suspense in the story; the
story of Philotis is deprived of such tension. Again, nothing is said about what
happened to the person after the transformation.
The next two accounts are rather different, since here the reader is informed,
although very succinctly, of the subsequent fate of the sex-changers. The brief
story in Mir. 8 goes as follows:
There was another hermaphrodite at this same time in Epidauros, a child of a poor fami-
ly, who earlier was called Sympherousa but upon becoming a man was named Sympher-
on. He spent his life as a gardener.259

The date of the event is vaguely determined by the phrase “at this same time”
(κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς χρόνους), which, at first glance, seems to refer to the previous
story that can be dated precisely to AD 53. This helps one to locate the case of
Sympherusa approximately in the middle of the 1st century AD. Hansen suggests,
however, that an Epicurean philosopher of the 1st century BC, Philodemus of Ga-
dara, might have alluded to the case of Sympherusa as “the person in Epidauros

257 Mir. 7.1–2: ἐγένετο καὶ ἐν Μηουανίᾳ, πόλει τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἐν Ἀγριππίνης τῆς Σεβαστῆς
ἐπαύλει ἀνδρόγυνος, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Διονυσοδώρου, ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ
Δέκμου Ἰουνίου Σιλανοῦ Τορκουάτου καὶ Κοΐντου Ἁτερίου Ἀντωνίνου. Φιλωτὶς
γάρ τις ὀνόματι παρθένος, Σμυρναία τὸ γένος, ὡραία πρὸς γάμον ὑπὸ τῶν γονέων
κατεγγεγυημένη ἀνδρί, μορίων αὐτῇ προφανέντων ἀρρενικῶν ἀνὴρ ἐγένετο.
258 Hansen (1996): 119.
259 Mir. 8: καὶ ἄλλος δέ τις ἀνδρόγυνος κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς χρόνους ἐγένετο ἐν Ἐπιδαύρῳ,
γονέων ἀπόρων παῖς, ὃς ἐκαλεῖτο πρότερον Συμφέρουσα, ἀνὴρ δὲ γενόμενος
ὠνομάζετο Συμφέρων, κηπουρῶν δὲ τὸν βίον διῆγεν.

102
who married as a maiden but then became a man” in his illustrations of rare oc-
currences.260 If these words truly describe the same person, known from Phlegon
as Sympherusa, this means that the event must have taken place no later than
during Philodemus’ lifetime (c. 110 – c. 35 BC), and therefore does not match the
chronological sequence of the section devoted to sex-changers in the Mirabilia,
which includes the previous two accounts from AD 45 and AD 53, and the fol-
lowing example (Mir. 9) from AD 116.261 Furthermore, there is a similar story,
although much more detailed, quoted by Diodorus (32.11), who claims it to have
happened also in Epidaurus thirty years after the death of Alexander Balas,262
who died in 145 BC; thus the event must have happened about 115 BC. There was
an orphan Callo who was supposed to be a girl. She had an imperforate vagina,
but in addition to the so-called pecten she had had a perforation for urination
from birth. Having reached maturity, she wed a fellow citizen. For two years she
lived with him, but because she was incapable of having sexual intercourse as a
woman, she was obliged to submit to anal intercourse. At a certain point a tumor
appeared on her genitals, causing her great pain, and thus a number of physi-
cians were called to attend to her. An apothecary who had offered to cure her cut
into the swollen area, whereupon male genitals emerged, namely testicles and an
imperforate penis. The apothecary completed the operation by making a passage
into the urethra. He demanded double fees thereafter, saying that he had found a
female invalid and made her into a healthy young man. Callo laid aside her loom,
no longer performing female activities, and changed her name to Callon. She was
also said to have been a priestess of Demeter before her change to the male form,
so because she had witnessed things forbidden to men, she was brought to trial
for impiety.
Summing up, we have three stories about sexual transformations that oc-
curred in Epidaurus. Two of them (Philodemus, Diodorus) can be dated to not
later than the end of the 1st century BC, i.e. in c. 115 BC in Diodorus, and no
later than the thirties of the 1st century BC, when Philodemus died; they both
tell of a girl (named Callo/Callon in Diodorus) who changed her gender after
having gotten married. The third story, found in Phlegon, concerns a girl named
Sympherusa/Sympheron and says nothing about her being married; its date

260 Phld. Sign., col. 4 = P.Herc. 1065, col. II, ll. 9–11: ὁ γαμηθεὶς ὡς παρ|θένος [ἐν]
Ἐπιδαύρωι κἄπειτα | γενόμ̣[εν]ο̣ς ἀνήρ. This fragment has been revised, edited and
translated by Delattre-Biencourt, Delattre (2004): 236.
261 Hansen (1996): 119.
262 The ruler of the Greek Seleucid kingdom in 150–146 BC; incorrectly identified as
Alexander the Great by Hansen (1996): 120-121.

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vaguely refers to as if the middle of the 1st century AD (c. AD 53) but is supported
by the chronological order evidently applied by the compiler in this section of
the Mirabilia: AD 45 (Mir. 6) – AD 53 (Mir. 7) – “at this same time” = c. 53 AD
(Mir. 8) – AD 116 (Mir. 9).
As opposed to Hansen, I believe it is rather Diodorus and Philodemus, not
Phlegon and Philodemus, who recount the same case of sex change, whereas
Phlegon relates a different and much later story which coincidentally is also set
in Epidaurus. Obviously, this might also not be a coincidence and all of the au-
thors present simply various versions of the same story involving sex change and
Epidaurus; or, one cannot rule out the possibility that the climate in this particu-
lar city created favorable conditions for sexual transformations, thus Phlegon’s
Sympherusa is simply one of the numerous examples thereof, whereas Diodorus
and Philodemus tell a different story or even different stories. Alternatively, Phl-
egon could have copied the story word for word from his source and ignored the
fact that the phrase “at this same time” originally referred to a different context
and time; in such a case it would send us back to Philodemus and Diodorus, but
still in Phlegon the scanty details and the overall meaning seem to concern a
different situation.
Phlegon’s story lacks the dramatic tension that is noticeable in other accounts.
The sex change here is accompanied neither by pain nor by surgery but by accu-
sation of impiety and a trial. There is neither a wedding nor a frustrated husband.
The transformation is marked only by masculinization of the form of the name.
Instead, the reader learns that Sympherusa’s parents were poor, which implies
they might not have been able to afford doctors or surgery. Sympheron did not
choose a typically male profession, or at least not the kind that would emphasize
his masculinity. Conversely, Callo in Diodorus’ report gave up work reserved for
women and engaged in male activities, which reveals female rivalry and resent-
ment that is similar to Phlegon’s Caeneus in Mir. 5. Callo’s metamorphosis is
accompanied by dramatic events and has serious repercussions: although appar-
ently not regarded as portentous, she is accused of impiety despite being inno-
cent at that time and completely ignorant of the events that were about to occur.
The retrospective law seems to demonstrate how grave violation of such a taboo
was considered to be in those times.
In Phlegon’s account Sympherusa’s life also does not seem to be endangered,
as nothing is reported to indicate a portentous interpretation of the event. The
person most likely lived a quiet life working as a gardener and most probably suf-
fered no ill-effects as a result of the transformation since she/he was not officially
involved in any cult.

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 The last story in this sequence in the Mirabilia is essentially similar to the pre-
vious example, especially because it lacks exaggeration and drama:
Likewise in Syrian Laodikeia there was a woman named Aitete, who underwent a change
in form and name when she was living with her husband. Having become a man, Aitete
was renamed Aitetos. This happened when Makrinos was archon at Athens, and Lucius
Lamia Aelianus and Sextus Carminius Veterus were consuls in Rome.
I myself have seen this person.263

This is another instance in which no consequences appear to have resulted from

the sex change, which likely means the later life of the individual renamed Aetet-
us was uneventful. This occurrence took place much later than the previous ones,
since it is dated to AD 116 – the time of Phlegon. This is one of the rare passages
when the compiler marks his presence as he claims to be an eye-witness, most
probably in order to give credence to his report. And likely, Phlegon is trustwor-
thy here since, as Hansen suggests, he could truly have acquired the information
from Aetetus himself or from another local informant rather than excerpted it
from a written source.264
Significantly, in all of the cases reported by Phlegon none of the sex-changers
are victimized or harassed. Although termed hermaphrodites, they are not ban-
ished from society, unlike the androgynous infants that are regarded maleficent
portents, with the concomitant unfortunate consequences.
Similarly in the accounts of other authors, “successive hermaphrodites” do
not seem to be in danger. Besides the story of Callon from Epidaurus, Diodorus
quotes a number of other examples of such metamorphoses, invariably from a
woman into a man. Among them, there is a relatively long story which is associ-
ated with the death of Alexander Balas. When the king was consulting the oracle
of Apollo in Cilicia, the god told him that he should beware of the place that
bore the “two-formed one”. At the time the prophesy seemed enigmatic, but its
meaning was revealed later. In Abae in Arabia a certain woman named Heraïs,
who had a Macedonian father and an Arabian mother, being of marriageable
age, wed a man named Samiades. After having lived with his wife for a year, Sa-
miades departed on a long journey and Heraïs was struck by a strange infirmity.
A serious tumor appeared at the base of her abdomen and continued to grow,

263 Mir. 9: καὶ ἐς Λαοδίκειαν δὲ τῆς Συρίας γυνή, ὀνόματι Αἰτητή, συνοικοῦσα τῷ ἀνδρὶ
ἔτι μετέβαλε τὴν μορφὴν καὶ μετωνομάσθη Αἰτητὸς ἀνὴρ γενόμενος, ἄρχοντος
Ἀθήνησιν Μακρίνου, ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Λουκίου Λαμία Αἰλιανοῦ καὶ <Σέξτου
Καρμινίου> Οὐέτερος. τοῦτον καὶ αὐτὸς ἐθεασάμην.
264 Hansen (1996): 120.

105
and at the same time she had high fevers. The physicians who were summoned
applied remedies which they thought would reduce the inflammation, but on
the seventh day the tumor burst and male genitals appeared from her groin. As
this occurred when only her mother and two maidservants were present, they
decided to keep it a secret. After having recovered from her illness she continued
to wear female clothes. However, when Samiades returned and wished to have
sexual intercourse with her, she was ashamed to be seen by him and refused. Not
surprisingly, he grew angry. A quarrel broke out since Heraïs’ father, despite his
son-in-law’s demands, was too ashamed to disclose the reason for his daughter’s
behavior. Thus Samiades brought suit against her father for the return of his own
wife. After the judges determined that it was the wife’s duty to go home with
her husband, she eventually disrobed and revealed the truth, thus challenging
the court for forcing two men to live together. All present were amazed at the
turn of events. The doctors, concluding that her male organ had been abnor-
mally encased within the female organ and concealed by a membrane, surgically
completed the transformation. Heraïs changed her name to Diophantus and was
even enrolled in the cavalry under Alexander Balas. When the king was assas-
sinated at Abae – “the birthplace of the two-formed one” – the message of the
oracle became clear. Samiades, overwhelmed by shame over his unnatural mar-
riage but still in love with his former wife, made Diophantus his heir and took
his own life. The story, fundamentally similar to that of Callo, ends with a moral
statement that she who was born a woman adopted a man’s courage, while the
man proved to be weaker than a woman.265
Thus it seems that after the transformation nothing prevented the woman
from continuing to live as a man: she was by no menas an outcast from society;
in fact, it was just the opposite, since she undertook a career as a cavalryman. In
this account yet again an ordinary girl changes into a manly man.
“The cases of women who have changed to men are not a fable”,266 asserts
Pliny one century after Diodorus, and then he relates the story of a girl in Casi-
num who was living with her parents when she became a boy. However, on
the orders of the augurs she was deported to a deserted island. In this case the
transformation resulted in the exile of the “hermaphrodite”. On the other hand,
Pliny quotes Licinius Mucianus who asserts that he saw in Argos a man named
Arescon whose name was previously Arescusa – she married a man, but when
she developed a beard and other male features she, now a he, took a wife. The

265 Diod. 32.10.2–9.

266 Plin. NH 7.36: ex feminis mutari in mares non est fabulosum.

106
author also claims to have seen in Africa a certain Lucius Constitius of Thys-
dritum who was born a female and changed into a man on his wedding day.267
In only one of the three cases presented by Pliny is the individual whose sex
changed condemned to life in exile. In the other case the person chose the life of
a normal man and married a woman.
In most of the narratives as discussed above, a common pattern is to be ob-
served: the protagonist is a young woman who is either betrothed or married
and who suddenly undergoes a mysterious metamorphosis from a female into a
male when male genitals burst out of her. As a result, the marriage, or the mar-
riage arrangement, is broken. The sex-changers often take up a typically male
occupation.
Concluding, all of the sexual transformations related in the Mirabilia and in
other sources are technically from a woman into a man rather than the reverse
(with the exception of Teiresias). Perhaps for anatomical reasons the phenom-
enon of a metamorphosis from a female to a male was regarded as more probable
and imaginable. It was also supported by the physiological theory of Galen, who
in the famous passage (De usu part. 4.158–165 Kühn) claims that female genitals
are inverted and internalized male genitals which may be extruded if the body’s
heat is very high. Another – or complementary – explanation is the cultural bias
which saw the woman as being inferior to a man and of a less stable – therefore
potentially changeable – state.268 This fact may shed some light on the question
as to why the sex-changers seem to have been accepted by ancient society: since
they had evolved from an inferior being, for this is how they were viewed, to a
superior being, namely a man, they gained a higher status within the society.
This is best illustrated in the story of Caeneus in Mir. 5 who, although initially
an insignificant girl, became a strong, powerful man and king, and in the story
of Heraïs (Diod. 32.10.2–9) who, after having changed the sex, took the male
name of Diophantus and became a great warrior. Both examples reveal that the
sex change from a woman into a man socially advanced the individual who had
experienced it. This would also explain why sex-changers did not share the fate
of hermaphrodites and were neither exiled nor killed but could continue to live
in society after their transformation had taken place.
Only in two instances of all those quoted above did the sex change trigger
a reaction from the state: one time, in Mir. 6, it is the construction of an al-
tar to Zeus the Averter of Evil and likely nothing more, since although Phlegon

267 Ibid.
268 Beagon (2005): 173. See also Flemming (2000): passim.

107
truncated his stories, he would not have failed to report such a dramatic detail
as removal of the sex-changer or a ritual performance if he had found it in his
source; the second time is the exile to a deserted island as related by Pliny (NH
7.36). The other testimonies indicate that the transformations were not in the
main regarded as evil omens and so did not result in grave consequences for
the individuals whose sex had changed. This fact contradicts Marie Delcourt’s
opinion that both of the phenomena were considered maleficent269 and instead
shows that the sex-changers were regarded as less dangerous than hermaphro-
dites. Thus, sex-changers most probably did not give rise to the same level of fear
as hermaphrodites and were categorized as cases of a mysterious disease rather
than as signs of divine wrath.
In fact, although the ancient reports of a sudden spontaneous sex change
seem fantastic, there are grounds to treat some as potentially true when discuss-
ing them by using terms from modern medicine. The characteristics of the phe-
nomenon described by the ancient authors actually resemble the genetic defects
of a disorder called “hypospadias” in modern medical terminology.270 The term
“hypospadias” (ὑποσπαδίας271) is derived from the Greek words ὑπό, ‘under’, and
σπάδων, ‘eunuch’, and refers to one of the most common genital anomalies that
are currently treated by pediatric urologists. “A hypospadic boy may be registered
as a girl; the mistake is discovered at puberty. On the other hand, there are girls
whose external genital organs resemble those of boys, and it is difficult to distin-
guish a little girl so equipped from a hypospadic boy. When the ancients (and for
that matter the moderns too) speak of a change of sex, they are simply describ-
ing the moment when the real sex, undisclosed at birth, is revealed”.272 Certainly,
the ancient accounts are often exaggerated and for the sake of sensation they are
described as a metamorphosis, not as a process but as a sudden change.
Thus, hypospadias may be an explanation for the references to sex-changers in
ancient texts. There is also another disorder that is recognized by modern medi-
cine which presents similar symptoms to those in the ancient cases of sexual
transformation: this is the so-called pseudo-hermaphroditism which is charac-
terized by ambiguity of the external organs that appear to be intermediate be-
tween typical female and male genitals. In most cases such organs resemble the
female genitals, but at puberty the real sex is revealed.273

269 Delcourt (1961): 44.

270 Ibid.
271 Ps.-Gal. Def. medic. 413, 19.445 Kühn.
272 Ibid.
273 Androutsos (2006): 214.

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 As was mentioned above, although both groups – the hermaphrodites and the
sex-changers – were often described by using the same term in ancient times,
they do not seem to have been treated equally. Children born with androgynous
genitals were usually removed from society, whereas the sex-changers rarely en-
countered hostile reactions. Nevertheless, many must have taken both phenom-
ena quite seriously. There is a passage by Diodorus in which the author, after
mentioning a few examples of sex change and hermaphroditism, concludes with
a complaint about the superstitious beliefs of his contemporaries:
Not that the male and female natures have been united to form a truly bisexual type,
for that is impossible, but that Nature, to mankind’s consternation and mystification,
has through the bodily parts falsely given this impression. And this is the reason why
we have considered these shifts of sex worthy of record, not for the entertainment, but
for the improvement of most of our readers. For many men, thinking such things to be
portents, fall into superstition, and not merely isolated individuals, but even nations and
cities.274

It can be inferred from Diodorus’ words, which are an amazingly rational reflec-
tion on the nature of hermaphrodites and sex-changers, that his view was not
one that was commonly shared and accepted in his times. The opinions of ordi-
nary people with regard to these abnormalities could have significantly differed.
Interestingly, Diodorus, who lived in the first century BC, asserts that he re-
corded all of the examples not for entertainment but for improvement of his
readers. Perhaps such an improvement had finally taken place, at least within
the educated elite, since at the beginning of the Christian era, Euenus of Athens
composed this epigram:
Formerly I raised my youthful hands to Cypris, offering her pine torches to grant me a
child, for already in the nuptial chamber I had loosed my virgin dress. Now suddenly I
see myself revealing a virile form. They call me bridegroom, bride no longer. After the
altars of Aphrodite, I garland those of Ares and Hercules. Thebes in olden time sang of
Tiresias. Chalcis today has seen me put aside the mitra to assume the chlamyde.275

274 Diod. 32.12.1: οὐκ ἄρρενος καὶ θηλείας φύσεως εἰς δίμορφον τύπον δημιουργηθείσης,
ἀδύνατον γὰρ τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ τῆς φύσεως διὰ τῶν τοῦ σώματος μερῶν ψευδογραφούσης
εἰς ἔκπληξιν καὶ ἀπάτην τῶν ἀνθρώπων. διόπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς τὰς περιπετείας ταύτας
ἀναγραφῆς ἠξιώσαμεν, οὐ ψυχαγωγίας ἀλλ’ ὠφελείας ἕνεκα τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων.
πολλοὶ γὰρ τέρατα τὰ τοιαῦτα νομίζοντες εἶναι δεισιδαιμονοῦσιν, οὐκ ἰδιῶται μόνον
ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔθνη καὶ πόλεις; transl. C. H. Oldfather.
275 AG 9.602: ἅ ποτε παρθενικαῖσιν ἱλασκομένα παλάμῃσιν / Κύπριδα, σὺν πεύκαις καὶ
γάμον εὐξαμένα, / κουριδίους ἤδη θαλάμῳ λύσασα χιτῶνας, / ἀνδρὸς ἄφαρ μηρῶν
ἐξελόχευσα τύπους· / νυμφίος ἐκ νύμφης δὲ κικλήσκομαι, ἐκ δ᾽ Ἀφροδίτης / Ἄρεα

109
His words can be taken as evidence that during his times a sex change was for
many a simple curiosity. One century later, Phlegon’s collection of curiosities was
composed undoubtedly for entertainment alone, and not for the education of the
readers; this feature differentiates Phlegon’s attitude from Diodorus’ approach.

Women who became Monsters. Conclusions

The accounts of the hermaphrodites and sex-changers are not an accidental ad-
dition to the Mirabilia since they present an abnormal human body. Again, the
marvel is of the “corporeal” kind; in this case this is the ambiguity of sex which
makes the body marvelous and extraordinary. All of the individuals presented
in this section of Phlegon’s work are monstrous: some of them are monsters in
the religious sense since they constitute omens, and some are shown as a simple
curiosity. But all of them are ambiguous and therefore paradoxical creatures, i.e.
they are neither women nor men. The hermaphrodites are born as monsters,
whereas the sex-changers become monsters when the features of the reverse sex
spontaneously appear on their bodies.
In the Mirabilia there are seven stories which deal with uncertain sex. The en-
tire section opens up with the case of the double metamorphosis from a man into
a woman and the opposite (Teiresias, chapter 4), which is followed by six cases of
a change from a woman into a man (chapters 5–9). Yet ambiguous sexuality ap-
pears already in chapter 2 in the story of Polycritus’ hermaphroditic child which,
in fact, introduces the topic of gender. Thus, sexual ambiguity is used smartly by
the compiler as a link between the two parts of the work and the two different
themes. The last story of the uncertain gender section is chapter 10, which deals
with a hermaphrodite as well; the sequence is thus opened and closed by an ac-
count of a hermaphrodite, whereas the middle (chapters 5–9) consists of stories
of successive hermaphrodites.
With no doubt the gender topic was chosen by the compiler on purpose as
it concerns a monstrous human body. All of the cases quoted by Phlegon pre-
sent an ambiguous being of an undeterminable sex. The hermaphrodites, born
as neither men nor women, fall in between categories. Such liminal beings or,
seen from another perspective, male-female hybrids, were frightening due to
their ambiguity. Their appearance transgressed the borders of the human species
established on the basis of the male/female opposition, thus indicating a collapse
in the natural order. Recognized in the earliest times as evil omens announcing

καὶ βωμοὺς ἔστεφον Ἡρακλέους. / Θῆβαι Τειρεσίην ἔλεγόν ποτε· νῦν δέ με Χαλκὶς /
τὴν πάρος ἐν μίτραις ἠσπάσατ᾽ ἐν χλαμύδι; transl. J. Nicholson.

110
divine wrath, hermaphrodites were monsters par excellence, the terata which
needed to be immediately removed. Later they became “merely” curiosities, but
again due to their sexual ambiguity which transgressed the norms observed in
the practice of everyday life.
The sex-changers who had experienced both sexes successively were appar-
ently not regarded as maleficent as the hermaphrodites; they were nonetheless
referred to as such: in Phlegon the term androgynos appears twice to describe the
phenomenon (Mir. 7 and 8). Yet they shared with the “proper” hermaphrodites
the monstrous sexual ambiguity which made them marvelous enough to be in-
cluded by Phlegon in the collection of the Mirabilia and to be registered among
extraordinary occurrences in the works of other ancient authors.
Again, as was in the case of the revenants, the marvel concerns an unusual
phenomenon related to the human body; this time it is the double male-female
set of genitals, or the appearance of male genitals on the female body. First death,
and now gender appeared to be less stable and certain than one could expect.
Walking corpses reveal that the borderline between the world of the living and
that of the dead is rather thin; hermaphrodites and sex-changers indicate that
gender is not, as one would believe, determined once and for all. Their exist-
ence proves that a kind of intermediate form between male and female, although
unnatural, is possible. Being embodied paradoxes, the hermaphrodites and sex-
changers found their place among the various hybrids and other human oddities
collected in the Mirabilia.

II.1.2.3  The World Reversed: Births from Males

There is also another phenomenon in the Mirabilia which concerns matters of
sex and of the androgynous, namely births from males. However, the examina-
tion thereof in this section is controversial and may be contrary to the compiler’s
intention. Phlegon himself included these two brief accounts of males who had
given birth in the part devoted not to hermaphrodites and sex-changers but to
monstrous births of different kind, such as multiple body features, animal chil-
dren and amazing multiple births, as if he was interested mainly in the children
born from men and less in the men themselves. Moreover, the emphasis in one
of these stories (Mir. 26) is evidently put on the newborn, which is told to have
been embalmed. The text goes as follows:

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 The doctor Dorotheos says in his Reminiscences that in Egyptian Alexandria a male ho-
mosexual gave birth, and that because of the marvel the newborn infant was embalmed
and is still preserved.276

Nothing is known of the homosexual’s fate and he remained anonymous. The

doctor Dorotheus as mentioned by Phlegon must be the Greco-Egyptian med-
ical doctor, Dorotheus of Heliopolis, who lived before the 1st century AD; his
works have not survived and are known only from references in other authors.277
The event must have happened in the 1st century BC at the latest.
Chapter 27 of the Mirabilia is very similar:
The same thing occurred in Germany in the Roman army, which was under the com-
mand of Titus Curtilius Mancias: a male slave of a soldier gave birth. This happened
while Konon was archon in Athens and Quintus Volusius Saturninus and Publius Cor-
nelius Scipio were consuls in Rome.278

The data allow dating the event to AD 56 and again reveal the chronological
order that was applied by the compiler.
Although the idea of male parturition is present in Greek thought, as it ap-
pears from Greek myths which abound with stories of male gods who gave birth
through different parts of their bodies,279 Phlegon is most likely the only an-
cient author who quotes two “genuine” cases of male parturition. Furthermore,
as Hansen points out, in the myths the relations are heterosexual, thus the male
god only continues the pregnancy that has begun naturally in the female body,
whereas in Mir. 26 the relation is said to be homosexual; in Mir. 27 the reader
is merely informed that the male who gave birth was a slave of a certain soldier,
from which it may be inferred that there was also a homosexual relation between

276 Mir. 26: Δωρόθεος δέ φησιν ὁ ἰατρὸς ἐν Ὑπομνήμασιν, ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ τῇ

κατ’ Αἴγυπτον κίναιδον τεκεῖν, τὸ δὲ βρέφος ταριχευθὲν χάριν τοῦ παραδόξου
φυλάττεσθαι.
277 On Dorotheus, see Wellmann (1905); FGH 289 Komm. 390.
278 Mir. 27: ἐν Γερμανίᾳ ἐν τῷ στρατῷ τῶν Ῥωμαίων, ὃς ἦν ὑπὸ Τίτῳ Κουρτιλίῳ Μαγκίᾳ,
τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἐγένετο. δοῦλος γὰρ στρατιώτου ἔτεκεν, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Κόνωνος,
ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Κοΐντου Οὐ<ο>λουσίου Σατορνίνου καὶ Ποπλίου Κορνηλίου
Σκιπίωνος.
279 E.g. according to Hesiod (Th. 453–500), Cronus swallowed each of his children that
his wife Rhea had borne, and kept them inside himself until he was forced to spew
them up; Zeus swallowed the pregnant Metis and later Athena was born from her
father’s forehead (Theog. 886–900 and 924–926); in one version of the myth of Dio-
nysus, the god was also born from his father Zeus’ thigh (Apollod. 3.27–28).

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the master and his slave, as happened often in antiquity.280 The word used by Phl-
egon for the ‘homosexual’ (as translated by Hansen281) is κίναιδος, which means,
as the translator himself admits, not so much a homosexual in our sense of the
term but rather a passive partner in homosexual anal intercourse;282 generally,
the Greek term refers to a catamite, i.e. a boy kept for homosexual practices.
Although the LSJ states that κίναιδος in its first meaning indicates a catamite
and, generally, a “lewd fellow”, Jack J. Winkler defines this term as referring to “a
man socially deviant in his entire being, principally observable in behavior that
flagrantly violated or contravened the dominant social definition of masculinity”
and concludes: “The κίναιδος simply and directly desires to be mastered”.283 Since
in Mir. 27 a slave is mentioned, we may therefore suspect that in both cases as
quoted by Phlegon the male who gave birth was a catamite, i.e. a boy-slave who
played the role of the penetrated one in the homosexual relation with his master,
the penetrator.284
Strikingly, the emphasis in the story is put on the child born of a man, not on
the man himself: this is the newborn that is embalmed and preserved as a marvel
(by the way, it seems to indicate the baby did not survive the delivery). Although
there is no evidence in the text that children born of males differed from “nor-
mal” children in any way, the compiler placed these two stories among instances
of various monstrous births, as if he regarded those babies to be monsters also.
Obviously, according to the laws of nature these infants, the offspring of males,
should not have come into being at all; their existence is therefore a paradox.
Nevertheless, one may say that the man who became a mother is much more
interesting than his child who does not display any unusual features.
Dóra Pataricza claims that these two of Phlegon’s stories may have a kernel of
truth: she assumes that “one of the possible explanations is that they were seem-
ingly intersexual women having functioning wombs but regarded as men due to
their masculinized genitals. Such genitals can vary on a wide range: clitoris hy-
pertrophy, phalluslike clitoris (micropenis), scrotumlike labia majora, or seemin-
ly masculine penises with a void scrotum”.285 Thus, once again we are most likely
dealing here with congenital disorders such as female pseudo-hermaphroditism,

280 Hansen (1996): 161.

281 Ibid.: 47.
282 Ibid.: 159.
283 Winkler (1990): 45–46, 54.
284 On the word κίναιδος, see also Williams (1999): 174–179; Azize, Craigie (2002):
56–59.
285 Pataricza (2009): 131.

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as was in the case of the sex-changers in the previous section. Another possibil-
ity, according to Pataricza, is simply that the two individuals were but mascu-
line women who were thought to be men.286 The scholar recalls Aristotle’s (Gen.
an. 728a2–4) classification of women into two groups, of which one consisted
of dark-skinned women termed masculine (ἀρρενωποί) by the author, and the
other which included fair-skinned women described as feminine (θηλυκαί). It is
therefore imaginable that such fertile men in Phlegon were in fact women of a
particularly masculine appearance and, perhaps, had masculine external genitals
due to, e.g. certain hormone disorders.287
Regardless of the question whether these two brief stories have a core of truth
or not, there is another issue worth considering, namely why the children, and
not the men who gave birth, make the marvel. In fact, these men were biologi-
cally not equipped with organs suitable for bearing offspring yet were somehow
able to give birth as if they had been inseminated by their male partners. From
this point of view, they are monstrously ambiguous creatures, neither fully mas-
culine nor fully feminine, who function against the laws of nature. In general,
the κίναιδος, a catamite, has been, from the social perspective of ancient times
as described by Winkler, a deviant and a kind of monster who violates not only
the laws of nature but also social conventions.288 Both instances of men who gave
birth as quoted by Phlegon are therefore monsters in a double sense: first, they
are anomalies who, against their sex, unnaturally produced offspring; this fact
questions their gender identity, thus making them resemble hermaphrodites and
sex-changers in terms of sexual ambiguity; second, as passive partners in homo-
sexual relations they act against the social conventions. And since they combine
in themselves both masculine and feminine characteristics, it is difficult to clas-
sify them clearly either as men or as women, which renders them monstrous by
definition.
The male pregnancies exhaust the topic of uncertain gender; however, the
themes concerning anomalies of human reproduction will be continued in the
next section, which is devoted to monstrous births. This issue was already briefly
brought up above with the examination of cases of male parturition: the prod-
ucts thereof, i.e. the children, were apparently regarded monstrous by the com-
piler, who placed their stories among other anomalous human births. This in an
interesting question which may be explained by the fact that although children

286 Ibid.: n. 7.
287 Ibid.: 132.
288 Winkler (1990): 45–54.

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born of men did not display other unusual features, they constituted tangible
proof of the marvel that had happened and, in fact, were marvels themselves; yet
the lack of visible abnormal characteristics differentiates these instances from
the others recounted by Phlegon that will be discussed in the next section.

II.1.3  Neither Human Nor Animal

II.1.3.1  Monstrous Births
In this section I will examine the cases of physiologically abnormal births found
in the Mirabilia; there are six such stories as related by Phlegon. However, not
all of them will be discussed here, but only those which may be classified as
human-animal hybrids. The others, which describe children with multiple body
features, will be left aside for the moment. Once again, my rationale for break-
ing the thematic arrangement as applied by the compiler is to remain within my
division of the Mirabilia’s content into “monsters” and “the monstrous”. While the
human-animal hybrids are explicit monsters, the multiple body features will bet-
ter match the category of “the monstrous”, which will be discussed below, along
with various instances of record-breaking properties of the human body, such
as gigantic size, enormous frequency or acceleration of some physiological pro-
cesses. I hope this departure from the compilation’s original order will facilitate a
better understanding and interpretation of the Mirabilia.
Reports of various malformations as preserved in Phlegon, not only ones
about animal children but also those about multiple body parts, would certainly
be interesting cases for studies that in modern times are called teratology. As has
been mentioned above, the term ‘teratology’ derives from the Greek word τέρας,
which refers to abnormal, malformed offspring, as well as to the evil omen which
such children were often taken for and hence removed immediately after birth,
usually by being left exposed in an isolated place or by drowning.
Strikingly, the ancient idea of the τέρας – a monster and an evil omen at the
same time – encompassed not only newborns with visible malformations but
even children that simply did not resemble their parents, as has been expressed
by authors such as Aristotle, who said in the famous passage:
The same causes must be held responsible for the following groups of facts. Some chil-
dren resemble their parents, while others do not; some being like the father and others
like the mother, both in the body as a whole and in each part, male and female offspring
resembling father and mother respectively rather than the other way about. They re-
semble their parents more than remoter ancestors, and resemble those ancestors more
than any chance individual. Some, though resembling none of their relations, yet do
at any rate resemble a human being, but others are not even like a human being but a

115
 monstrosity. For even he who does not resemble his parents is already in a certain sense
a monstrosity (τέρας); for in these cases Nature has in a way departed from the type,289

or as Aeschines who preserved an ancient oracle:

The curse goes on: That their land bear no fruit; that their wives bear children not like
those who begat them, but monsters (τέρατα)…290

For ancient people obviously children who were not similar to their parents were
already a monstrosity; and a creature which had some abnormal features was
regarded as an absolute monster.291
Phlegon quotes three reports of children who resembled animals much more
than their human parents; whereas the stories themselves resemble one another
very much. The first story goes as follows:
An extraordinary omen occurred in Rome when the archon at Athens was Deinophilos
and the consuls in Rome were Quintus Veranius and Gaius Pompeius Gallus. A highly
respected maidservant belonging to the wife of Raecius Taurus, a man of praetorian
rank, brought forth a monkey.292

According to the compiler this marvel happened in AD 49. The next one took
place sixteen years later (AD 65):
The wife of Cornelius Gallicanus gave birth near Rome to a child having the head of
Anubis, when the archon at Athens was Demostratos and the consuls in Rome were
Aulus Licinius Nerva Silianus and Marcus Vestinus Atticus.293

289 Aristot. Gen. an. 767a36–b7: Αἱ δ’ αὐταὶ αἰτίαι καὶ τοῦ τὰ μὲν ἐοικότα γίγνεσθαι τοῖς
τεκνώσασι τὰ δὲ μὴ ἐοικότα, καὶ τὰ μὲν πατρὶ τὰ δὲ μητρὶ κατά τε ὅλον τὸ σῶμα
καὶ κατὰ μόριον ἕκαστον, καὶ μᾶλλον αὐτοῖς ἢ τοῖς προγόνοις, καὶ τούτοις ἢ τοῖς
τυχοῦσι, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄρρενα μᾶλλον τῷ πατρὶ τὰ δὲ θήλεα τῇ μητρί, τὰ δ’ οὐθενὶ τῶν
συγγενῶν ὅμως δ’ ἀνθρώπῳ γέ τινι, τὰ δ’ οὐδ’ ἀνθρώπῳ τὴν ἰδέαν ἀλλ’ ἤδη τέρατι.
καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὴ ἐοικὼς τοῖς γονεῦσιν ἤδη τρόπον τινὰ τέρας ἐστίν· παρεκβέβηκε γὰρ
ἡ φύσις ἐν τούτοις ἐκ τοῦ γένους τρόπον τινά; transl. A. Platt.
290 Aesch. In Ctesiph. 111: Καὶ ἐπεύχεται αὐτοῖς μήτε γῆν καρποὺς φέρειν, μήτε γυναῖκας
τέκνα τίκτειν γονεῦσιν ἐοικότα, ἀλλὰ τέρατα…; transl. C. D. Adams.
291 See above, notes 205 and 206.
292 Mir. 22: ἐγένετο σημεῖον παράδοξον ἐπὶ Ῥώμης, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Δεινοφίλου,
ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Κοΐντου Οὐηρανίου καὶ Γ{ν}αΐου Πομπηίου Γάλλου. Ῥαικίου
γὰρ Ταύρου, ἀνδρὸς στρατηγικοῦ, τῆς γυναικὸς θεράπαινα τῶν τετιμημένων
ἀπεκύησε πίθηκον.
293 Mir. 23: Κορνηλίου Γαλλικανοῦ ἡ γυνὴ παιδίον ἔτεκεν κεφαλὴν ἔχον Ἀνούβιδος ἐπὶ
Ῥώμης, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Δημοστράτου, ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Αὔλου Λικιννίου
Νερούα Σιλιανοῦ καὶ Μάρκου Οὐεστίνου Ἀττικοῦ.

116
The last one comes from AD 83:
A woman from the town of Tridentum in Italy brought forth snakes that were curled
up into a ball, when the consuls in Rome were Domitian Caesar for the ninth time and
Petilius Rufus for the second time and there was no archon in Athens.294

It seems that in antiquity deformed children displaying animal characteristics

were usually interpreted as animals born of humans and not as humans only
resembling animals. All of the three cases quoted above prove that such a belief
must have been common and popular. Aristotle clearly criticized it in his schol-
arly disquisition by saying:
For, following what has been said, it remains to give the reason for such [monsters].295 If
the movements imparted by the semen are resolved and the material contributed by the
mother is not controlled by them, at last there remains the most general substratum, that
is to say the animal. Then people say that the child has the head of a ram or a bull, and
so on with other animals, as that a calf has the head of a child or a sheep that of an ox.
All these monsters result from the causes stated above, but they are none of the things
they are said to be; there is only some similarity, such as may arise even where there is no
defect of growth. Hence often jesters compare some one who is not beautiful to a ‘goat
breathing fire’, or again to a ‘ram butting’, and a certain physiognomist reduced all faces
to those of two or three animals, and his arguments often prevailed on people.
That, however, it is impossible for such a monstrosity to come into existence – I mean
one animal in another – is shown by the great difference in the period of gestation be-
tween man, sheep, dog, and ox, it being impossible for each to be developed except in
its proper time.296

294 Mir. 24: γυνὴ ἀπὸ πόλεως Τριδέντου τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀπεκύησεν ὄφεις ἐσφαιρωμένους,
ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Δομετιανοῦ Καίσαρος τὸ ἔνατον καὶ Πετιλίου Ῥούφου τὸ
δεύτερον, ἐν Ἀθήναις ἀναρχίας οὔσης.
295 My supplement.
296 Aristot. Gen. an. 769b10–25: Καὶ γὰρ ἐχόμενον τῶν εἰρημένων ἐστὶν εἰπεῖν περὶ
τῶν τοιούτων τὰς αἰτίας. τέλος γὰρ τῶν μὲν κινήσεων λυομένων τῆς δ’ ὕλης οὐ
κρατουμένης μένει τὸ καθόλου μάλιστα — τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τὸ ζῷον. τὸ δὲ γιγνόμενον
κριοῦ κεφαλήν φασιν ἢ βοὸς ἔχειν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ὁμοίως ἑτέρου ζῴου,
μόσχον παιδὸς κεφαλὴν ἢ πρόβατον βοός. ταῦτα δὲ πάντα συμβαίνει μὲν διὰ τὰς
προειρημένας αἰτίας, ἔστι δ’ οὐθὲν ὧν λέγουσιν ἀλλ’ ἐοικότα μόνον — ὅπερ γίγνεται
καὶ μὴ πεπηρωμένων. διὸ πολλάκις οἱ σκώπτοντες εἰκάζουσι τῶν μὴ καλῶν ἐνίους
τοὺς μὲν αἰγὶ φυσῶντι πῦρ τοὺς δ’ οἰῒ κυρίττοντι. φυσιογνώμων δέ τις ἀνῆγε πάσας
εἰς δύο ζῴων ἢ τριῶν ὄψεις, καὶ συνέπειθε πολλάκις λέγων. ὅτι δ’ ἐστὶν ἀδύνατον
γίγνεσθαι τέρας τοιοῦτον, ἕτερον ἐν ἑτέρῳ ζῷον, δηλοῦσιν οἱ χρόνοι τῆς κυήσεως
πολὺ διαφέροντες ἀνθρώπου καὶ προβάτου καὶ κυνὸς καὶ βοός· ἀδύνατον δ’ ἕκαστον
γενέσθαι μὴ κατὰ τοὺς οἰκείους χρόνους; transl. A. Platt.

117
Aristotle reasonably argues that cross-species births are technically impossi-
ble. In his opinion, an animal child is only similar to an animal. His explana-
tion for the production of animal-like monsters as provided at the beginning of
the above passage is, however, rather obscure. In the persuasive interpretation of
Robert Garland, Aristotle means that when the male seed is not potent enough to
control or to shape the material provided by the female at the moment of fertili-
zation, the embryo cannot assume the appearance of a human being.297
Yet the three animals or human-animal hybrids as depicted in Phlegon reflect
the contrary and the likely widespread conviction that animal-like children are
animals themselves. Hansen, when discussing the report of the woman who had
brought forth a monkey, suggests, however, that a tempting explanation is that
the woman gave birth to a child with simian features or that it was a micro-
cephalic infant, after which “oral storytelling exaggerated the marvel by trans-
forming simile to metaphor: the infant who only looked like a monkey gradually
become, in popular accounts, a monkey”.298 In fact, as Robert Garland observes,
in popular belief, originating from sympathetic magic, maternal impressions had
a strong impact on the physical appearance of future offspring.299 This theory ap-
pears already in Empedocles, who was reported to say that:
The impressions (φαντασίαι) of the woman at time of conception give shape to the
offspring. For women who have fallen in love with statues and pictures frequently give
birth to children who resemble them.300

That it maintained the status of a scientific theory also much later is proven in
the work of a medical writer, Soranus, a contemporary of Phlegon. The author
(Sor. Gyn. 1.39.1) claims that the influence of the sensory impressions of moth-
ers-to-be at the time of conception could have changed the child’s appearance.
As an example he takes cases of women who, after having seen monkeys at con-
ception, brought forth ape-shaped infants that, as Garland presumes, might have
actually been children born with a caudal appendage.301 Another question is in
what circumstances a woman could have seen monkeys during copulation, but
this will likely remain a rhetorical one. Soranus (ibid.) also repeats the traditional

297 Garland (1995): 155.

298 Hansen (1996): 152.
299 Garland (1995): 151; cf. Pilgrim (1984): 7.
300 Emped., test. 81 Diels-Kranz: τῇ κατὰ τὴν σύλληψιν φαντασίᾳ τῆς γυναικὸς
μορφοῦσθαι τὰ βρέφη· πολλάκις γὰρ ἀνδριάντων καὶ εἰκόνων ἠράσθησαν γυναῖκες
καὶ ὅμοια τούτοις ἀπέτεκον; transl. Garland (1995): 151.
301 Garland (1995): 151.

118
argument for the impact of statues on mothers-to-be, and quotes the story of
a tyrant of Cyprus who, being misshapen, forced his wife to look at beautiful
statues during sexual intercourse with him and became the father of comely chil-
dren. Pliny (NH 7.52) also acknowledges the circumstances accompanying the
moment of conception, such as sight, hearing, memory and images, to be crucial
for the appearance of the human offspring.
It seems that in antiquity the theory of maternal impressions influencing the
form of progeny enjoyed popularity; it was applied in order to explain, e.g. mon-
strous human-animal births rather than cross-species copulation. An exception,
as Mary Beagon notices, would here be the evidence of Plutarch (Sept. sap. conv.,
Mor. 149c–e), who tells an anecdote about a marvel that happened on the estate
of the tyrant Periander of Corinth.302 An equine-human offspring was purport-
edly born of a mare and a herdsman: at least such was the interpretation of the
occurrence by the philosopher Thales of Miletus, who was summoned by Peri-
ander to examine whether the creature was an evil omen (τι σημεῖον καὶ τέρας)
or not. The tyrant was scared of pollution and stain (μίασμα καὶ κηλίς) since he
was about to perform a sacrifice. Tales encouraged him by saying that it was
not a portent since the human-animal child was the result of coitus of a young
shepherd and mare. Robert Garland rightly points out that this story must re-
flect the intellectual climate of Plutarch’s own times since it is hardly imaginable
that the “rationalistic” explanation proposed by the philosopher was accepted in
the 6th century BC; the occurrence would have been rather regarded as porten-
tous.303 Thus the anecdote testifies rather that one superstition had been replaced
by another,304 of course, if one should treat it seriously. Nevertheless, the story
depicts, in fact, technically a birth of a hippocentaur, since the child is said to
have had the upper parts of the body, including the neck and hands, of a human,
whereas the lower parts were those of a horse. Yet the same motif, treated jok-
ingly, appears in a fable by Phaedrus (3.3) telling that the ewes of a certain farmer
were giving birth to lambs with human heads; the man, frightened that this was
a portent, called the seers who did not agree on what to do but eventually Aesop
advised him to find wives for his shepherds.
Similar story is found in Pliny (NH 7.30), who refers to Duris (FGH 76 F48)
reporting on a race of Indians who supposedly used to copulate with animals
and produce animal hybrids. On the other hand, there is also the myth of the

302 Beagon (2005): 46.

303 Garland (1995): 71.
304 Ibid.

119
Minotaur, a monster half-man half-bull who was the fruit of unholy coupling
between a mortal woman – queen Pasiphaë, the wife of king Minos of Crete –
and a bull.305 As Robert Garland observes, “it is conceivable that the myth of the
Minotaur might have served in part as a stern warning against bestiality and
the commingling of worlds which properly should remain distinct”.306 Moreover,
the myth itself presents such a union between creatures of different species as
unnatural and impossible, since Pasiphaë had to use deceit and to mimic the
appearance of a cow in order to satisfy her forbidden desire, i.e. she had to simu-
late being the same species as her animal lover; otherwise the intercourse would
most likely not have happened. Pasiphaë’s lust, as well as her act, was against
nature, but in fact its origin was supernatural since it was punishment that had
been sent on her by an angered god. Due to her deviant desire Pasiphaë also
became a monster, and even, symbolically, she transformed herself into a hybrid
creature when taking on the form of a cow. The result of her monstrous love is
her monstrous offspring – the human-animal hybrid.
Since there are two – perhaps competing – explanations for the appearance
of crossbreeds to be found in our sources, it is worthwhile to make a distinc-
tion between the cases of animal children and the human-animal ones, as these
are essentially different phenomena. It seems meaningful that the women who
were mentioned by Soranus that looked at monkeys brought forth monkeys, not
human-simian hybrids: they did, after all, copulate with men and only saw mon-
keys at that very moment. This is unlike Pasiphaë, who had intercourse with an
animal and thus gave birth to a human-animal creature, or the mare in Plutarch’s
story which was inseminated by a human and bore a hybrid as well. The two lat-
ter examples basically depict the consequences of crossbreeding, whereas in the
former one the other species is involved only as a factor influencing the moment
of natural sexual activity between two humans; in the same way as pictures or
statues that may impress the future mother. Aristotle’s testimony is ambiguous
since it rejects only the phenomenon of animals born of other animals as impos-
sible but does not refer to either of the theories explaining the causes thereof;
instead he proposes his own biological theory based on the observation of dif-
ferent gestatory periods. Yet the distinction between animal and only partially
animal births may help one to analyze and understand the cases found in the
ancient sources.

305 Hes. fr. 145 Merkelbach-West; Bacchyl. Dithyramborum vel epiniciorum fragmenta, fr.
26 Maehler; Eur. fr. 11 Nauck = 472e Kannicht; Diod. 4.13.4 and 4.77.1–3; Apollod.
3.9–11; Philostr. Imag. 1.16; Hyg. Fab. 30.8 and 40.1–2; Ovid. Met. 8.131–137; et al.
306 Garland (1995): 61.

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 One of the most commonly reported animals born of human beings are
snakes. Pliny (NH 7.34) writes that a slave girl gave birth to a snake and since it
happened at the beginning of the Marsic war, the monstrous birth was recorded
as a prodigy. In the case quoted by Julius Obsequens (57, cf. Appian. Civ. 1.83),
a woman brought forth a live snake in Clusium, Etruria, in 83 BC; the seers or-
dered the parents to throw it into the flowing water. Although Phlegon, when re-
counting the story of a woman who bore the snakes does not mention that it was
regarded to be portentous, many similar occurrences as related by other authors
were considered as such, as we can observe, e.g. in Pliny. The abnormal infants
were removed like hermaphrodites – they were left exposed or drowned.307
In the third instance reported by Phlegon, the newborn appears with the head
of Anubis. Anubis was an Egyptian “canine god of cemeteries and embalming.
His most usual form is that of a crouching desert dog, ears pricked up and tail
hanging. The Anubis dog is probably the jackal.”308 Thus the partly animal child
in Phlegon must have had the head of either a dog or a jackal. It is interest-
ing, however, why the baby was not simply described as such but instead it was
compared to the Egyptian god. William Hansen gives three persuasive explana-
tions: first, that “the overall image of the child’s human body and canine head was
most familiar as that of the mixed-form god Anubis; or, secondly, because “the
child’s head resembled that of Anubis specifically in being jackal-like”. Thirdly, as
is brilliantly suggested by the scholar, Phlegon may have wanted to avoid using
the word ‘dog-headed’ (in Greek it is κυνοκέφαλος), which could have sounded
imprecise since it was also the term to name the exotic species of partly human
and partly canine folk (‘Dog Heads’) who were believed to live in Libya or India;
it also meant ‘a baboon’.309
The animal or partly animal children that were described by Phlegon as well
as the other abnormal births reported by many ancient authors were considered
to be monsters: in earlier times they were monsters in the sense of maleficent
portents which needed to be immediately removed for the sake of a commu-
nity’s safety; later they became just pets. Plutarch (Curios., Mor. 520c) says that in
Rome there existed a so-called market of monstrosities (τεράτων ἀγορά) where
deformed people were exposed for sale. Among the various human oddities
on display, such as individuals without calves (ἄκνημοι) or with three eyes
(τριόφθαλμοι), there were also people with animal features: Plutarch mentions

307 Delcourt (1961): 67 ff.

308 Hart (2005): 25.
309 Hansen (1996): 153.

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the weasel-armed (γαλάγκωνες) and the ostrich-headed ones (στρουθοκέφαλοι).
It seems that the author does not mean here actual crossbreeds, namely ostrich-
men or weasel-men, unlike Phlegon who apparently wants his reader to believe
in the appearance of a jackal-baby; in this context these epithets are rather simply
metaphors, which due to the lack of appropriate medical terminology had been
used to name some atypical characteristics, referring respectively to the “short-
armed”310 and, as Hansen proposes, probably to “microcephalic” features.311 How-
ever, even if these terms serve just as a vague comparison they connote hybrids
by the vivid depictions of animal features on the human body. Furthermore, this
very fact that deformed people were displayed in public proves not only that the
social attitude towards such phenomena had noticeably changed but, above all,
that they were allowed to live and were not removed after birth. Much more than
that, they became objects of desire: Plutarch (ibid.) says that there were people
who were so fond of curiosities (πολυπράγμονες) that they did not care about
the beautiful boy- and girl-slaves who were exposed for sale, considering them
not worth their money, but instead they frequented the monstrosities market and
looked for human oddities.
And Phlegon too was, so to say, πολυπράγμων: although we do not know
whether he visited that special market, he certainly browsed through books
searching for monstrosities that would enrich his collection of mirabilia. The
cases of human-animal hybrids match this perfectly since they concern, just like
the hermaphrodites as well as the sex-changers and male mothers, deviations
from the biological and social norm of human sexuality and reproduction that
seem to be issues of Phlegon’s greatest interest. Thus those monstrous creatures
resulting from a strange mix or confusion of species found their place in the
Mirabilia.

II.1.3.3  Hippocentaurs: Humanoids?

There is also another category of hybrids in Phlegon, namely hippocentaurs,
whose stories are related in the last two chapters of the compilation. For the
last time, therefore, I will neglect Phlegon’s arrangement of the material and im-
pose my own in order to exhaust the topic of monstrous crossbreeds. The most
important question is, however, why hippocentaurs appear in the Mirabilia? As
was said earlier, the work concerns human phenomena almost exclusively; as for
marvels that are not explicitly related to humans, except for the hippocenaturs,

310 LSJ s.v. γαλιάγκων; cf. Aristot. Phgn. 808a31–32, 813a11–12.

311 Hansen (1996): 153.

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there are just a couple of stories about the bones of giants who were believed,
however, to be human ancestors or, at least, to have resembled humans by appear-
ance (see below). And the same feature most likely explains the role of the hip-
pocentaurs in the compilation, i.e. their likeness to humans. In the Greek myth,
hippocentaurs (i.e. ‘horse-centaurs’) were composed of male beings,312 partly hu-
man (head, arms and the upper body) and partly equine (trunk and four legs).
Hansen observes that the ancient authors often used the compound “hippocen-
taur” instead of “centaur”; the former term is more precise, since according to
the myth (cf. Diod. 4.69.5–70.1), centaurs were the human fathers of the hip-
pocentaurs who were their composite offspring begotten by them with mares.313
Already Homer (Od. 21.295–304) mentions the centaur Eurytion whose wild
behavior initiated bad relations between centaurs and humans. Among the most
famous were also Hylaeus or Nessus, as well as those who were more friendly
to humans, such as Pholon or Cheiron, whom many stories are connected with.
Centauromachy was a popular subject in ancient art: it appears on the pottery
of different periods as well as on the finest works of architecture; its representa-
tion is to be found, for instance, on the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at
Olympia (460 BC), on the metopes of the south side of the Parthenon at Athens
(447–440 BC), or on the west frieze of the Hephaisteion at Athens (440 BC), and
in many other places.314
However, the stories in the Mirabilia are not retellings of the myth but rather
“genuine” reports of hippocentaurs that were purportedly captured alive in times
not very distant to those of Phlegon. Thus, let the compiler speak:
A hippocentaur was found in Saune, a city in Arabia, on a very high mountain that teems
with a deadly drug. The drug bears the same name as the city and among fatal substances
it is extremely quick and effective.
The hippocentaur was captured alive by the king, who sent it to Egypt together with
other gifts for the emperor. Its sustenance was meat. But it did not tolerate the change of
air, and died, so that the prefect of Egypt embalmed it and sent it to Rome.
At first it was exhibited in the palace. Its face was fiercer than a human face, its arms
and fingers were hairy and its ribs were connected with its front legs and its stomach.
It had the firm hooves of a horse and its mane was tawny, although as a result of the

312 There is no literary evidence for female hippocentaurs, but they are found in ancient
art, see Lucian (Zeux.3–6) on Zeuxis’ painting.
313 Hansen (2004): 132.
314 See e.g. Angelino, Salvaneschi (1986); Bethe (1921); Marangou, Leventopoulou et al.
(1992).

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 embalming its mane along with its skin was becoming dark. In size it did not match the
usual representations, though it was not smaller either (Mir. 34).315

In chapter 35 we learn that:

There were also said to have been other hippocentaurs in the city of Saune mentioned
above.
So far as concerns the one sent to Rome, anyone who is skeptical can examine it for
himself, since as I said above it has been embalmed and is kept in the emperor’s store-
house.316

The centaur apparently made a career of sorts, since Phlegon’s report is not the
first and only one which describes this very beast: earlier Pliny claimed to have
seen it:
Claudius Caesar writes that a hippocentaur was born in Thessaly and died on the same
day; and in his principate I actually saw one which had been brought to him from Egypt
preserved in honey.317

Both Phlegon and Pliny refer to the same creature, and their reports are com-
plementary to each other since the former gives more details about the hippo-
centaur’s appearance and the latter about the circumstances under which it was
brought to Rome. Phlegon must have seen the beast more than a half-century
after Pliny (the reign of Claudius falls on the years AD 41–54, whereas that of
Hadrian, when Phlegon lived, on AD 117–134). Within this long space of time
the beast had already lost its fresh look.

315 Mir. 34: εὑρέθη ἐν Σαύνῃ τῆς Ἀραβίας πόλει ἱπποκένταυρος ἐπὶ ὄρους μάλα ὑψηλοῦ,
ὅ ἐστιν γέμον φαρμάκου θανασίμου. καλεῖται δὲ τὸ φάρμακον ὁμώνυμον τῇ πόλει,
ὀξύτατον δὲ καὶ ἀνυτικώτατον τῶν ὀλεθρίων καθέστηκεν. τὸν δὲ ἱπποκένταυρον
συλλαβὼν ὁ βασιλεὺς ζωὸν ἀποπέμπει σὺν ἑτέροις δώροις πρὸς Καίσαρα εἰς τὴν
Αἴγυπτον. τροφὴ δὲ αὐτοῦ κρέα. οὐ φέρων δὲ τὴν μεταβολὴν τοῦ ἀέρος τελευτᾷ, καὶ
οὕτως ὁ ἔπαρχος τῆς Αἰγύπτου ταριχεύσας ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Ῥώμην. καὶ πρῶτον ἐν τοῖς
βασιλείοις ἀπεδείχθη, τὸ μὲν πρόσωπον ἀγριώτερον τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου ἔχων, χεῖρας δὲ
καὶ τοὺς τούτων δακτύλους τετριχωμένους, πλευρὰ δὲ συναφῆ τοῖς πρώτοις σκέλεσι
καὶ τῇ γαστρί. ὁπλαὶ δὲ ἦσαν αὐτῷ ἵππου στερεαὶ καὶ ἐπίξανθοι χαῖται, καίπερ ὑπὸ τῆς
ταριχείας συμμελαινόμεναι τῷ δέρματι. μέγεθος δὲ ἦν οὐχ οἷοί περ οἱ γραφόμενοι,
οὐδ’ αὖ πάλιν μικρόν.
316 Mir. 35: ἐν δὲ τῇ προειρημένῃ πόλει Σαύνῃ ἐλέγοντο καὶ ἕτεροι εἶναι ἱπποκένταυροι.
τὸν δὲ πεμφθέντα εἰς Ῥώμην εἴ τις ἀπιστεῖ, δύναται ἱστορῆσαι. ἀπόκειται γὰρ ἐν τοῖς
ὁρίοις τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος τεταριχευμένος, ὡς προεῖπον.
317 Plin. NH 7.35: Claudius Caesar scribit hippocentaurum in Thessalia natum eodem
die interisse, et nos principatu eius adlatum illi ex Aegypto in melle vidimus; transl.
Beagon (2005).

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 Both Phlegon’s and Pliny’s stories illustrate a very interesting cultural phenom-
enon, namely the great demand for mythical monsters; thanks to their high rank
in the popular imagination the hippocentaurs, along with other fabulous beasts,
appeared not only in works of art but often beyond it too; alleged specimens of
such creatures were discovered quite frequently. “Like modern cryptozoologists
searching for relict dinosaurs in unexplored lands, some Greek and Romans im-
agined that a few supposedly extinct creatures of mythical era might have eluded
destruction and still survived. Living or preserved half-human hybrids, such as
Centaurs, were especially sought after”, observes Adrienne Mayor.318
Thus, unsurprisingly, there are many ancient reports of the fabulous creatures
that are said to have been discovered or even captured alive. These “discoveries”
were very likely “paleontological fiction” – to use the words of Adrienne Mayor.319
Some of them might simply have been cases of erroneous identification, whereas
others were most probably forgeries, usually believed to be genuine; for instance,
Pausanias (9.20.4–21.1) describes a pickled Triton, a mythical sea deity with the
upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, which was examined by him at
Tanagra in Boeotia in the temple of Dionysus in c. AD 150. He quotes two ver-
sions of the story relating the circumstances under which the beast had landed at
the sanctuary and lost its head, and continues his narration by reporting another
instance of the pickled Triton which was displayed at Rome:
I saw another Triton among the curiosities at Rome, less in size than the one at Tanagra.
The Tritons have the following appearance. On their heads they grow hair like that of
marsh frogs not only in color, but also in the impossibility of separating one hair from
another. The rest of their body is rough with fine scales just as is the shark. Under their
ears they have gills and a man’s nose; but the mouth is broader and the teeth are those
of a beast. Their eyes seem to me blue, and they have hands, fingers, and nails like the
shells of the murex. Under the breast and belly is a tail like a dolphin’s instead of feet.320

318 Mayor (2001): 227.

319 Ibid.: 228–253, passim.
320 Paus.9.21.1: εἶδον δὲ καὶ ἄλλον Τρίτωνα ἐν τοῖς Ῥωμαίων θαύμασι, μεγέθει τοῦ
παρὰ Ταναγραίοις ἀποδέοντα. παρέχονται δὲ ἰδέαν οἱ Τρίτωνες: ἔχουσιν ἐπὶ τῇ
κεφαλῇ κόμην οἷα τὰ βατράχια τὰ ἐν ταῖς λίμναις χρόαν τε καὶ ὅτι τῶν τριχῶν οὐκ
ἂν ἀποκρίναις μίαν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν σῶμα φολίδι λεπτῇ πέφρικέ σφισι
κατὰ ἰχθὺν ῥίνην. βράγχια δὲ ὑπὸ τοῖς ὠσὶν ἔχουσι καὶ ῥῖνα ἀνθρώπου, στόμα δὲ
εὐρύτερον καὶ ὀδόντας θηρίου: τὰ δὲ ὄμματα ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν γλαυκὰ καὶ χεῖρές εἰσιν
αὐτοῖς καὶ δάκτυλοι καὶ ὄνυχες τοῖς ἐπιθέμασιν ἐμφερεῖς τῶν κόχλων: ὑπὸ δὲ τὸ
στέρνον καὶ τὴν γαστέρα οὐρά σφισιν ἀντὶ ποδῶν οἵα περ τοῖς δελφῖσίν ἐστιν; transl.
W. H. S. Jones, H. A. Ormerod.

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Adrienne Mayor supposes that “something was found or fabricated to create
an illusion that the body of the Triton in Rome and Tanagra was miraculously
preserved”,321 since, according to her, it is imaginable that in Pausanias’ time the
Triton figure could have easily been manufactured from the parts of a large dried
fish and a human mummy.322 The scholar claims that also Pliny’s and Phlegon’s
centaur was a counterfeit monster, combined of mummified human and pony
parts.323 In her opinion, “ancient sightings of relict populations of prehistoric
creatures from the age of giants, and ancient hoaxes that sought to create the ma-
terial evidence of their existence, typically involved human-animal composites,
such as Tritons, Satyrs, and Centaurs”.324 Those frauds, as Mayor explains, were
most likely produced by taxidermists skilled in ancient embalming techniques
who had gotten their material by collecting and assembling together parts of
different animals. She presumes that possibly the fake monsters could also have
been modeled in clay, wax, and wood, even with such details as scales, hair, feath-
ers, hides, and fingernails added for realism.325
The accounts of extraordinary discoveries of mythical creatures allow us to
assume that the demand for such marvels in those times resulted in an increas-
ing supply of fabricated monsters. Phlegon’s entire collection of mirabilia was
obviously created to meet the same need, namely to satisfy the curiosity of people
greedy for oddity and marvels. The work reflects the author’s personal interest in
monsters as well as his contemporaries’ avocation for miracles and sensation. As
for the hippocentaurs and their role in the compilation, since the compiler had
at his disposal a “genuine” specimen, an embodiment of ancient myths, he did
not care about relating instances of hippocentaurs from the remote past. Being
associated with the imperial court, Phlegon had easy access to a place where the
embalmed beast was displayed and could have made a detailed study of its body.
When meticulously describing the creature he apparently takes as his point of
reference human appearance, and states that its face “was fiercer than a human
face, its arms and fingers were hairy”. Thus the hippocentaur is presented as a
humanoid, a strange combination of human-like and animal features.
Phlegon considers, or just pretends to consider, the beast to be a genuine hip-
pocentaur from Arabia – a distant land that was believed in antiquity – just as

321 Mayor (2001): 230.

322 Ibid.: 232.
323 Ibid.: 327, n. 12.
324 Ibid.: 236.
325 Ibid.: 232.

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Africa or India – to produce monstrous races and species.326 From Arabia, the
wonderland, the reader of the Mirabilia receives a “gratuitous marvel”, to quote
Hansen’s words, namely the mysterious deadly drug by the name of Saune which
is identical to the name of the hippocentaur’s home country.327 The drug, as the
scholar observes, is neither known nor is its relevance to the narrative clear. Its
role, however, is likely to present the habitat of the monstrous race of hippo-
centaurs, hidden in the lofty mountains, as a dangerous one that is difficult to
access.328 Due to this fact, Saune appears to be a marvelous world which is in all
respects different from the human world.
Concluding, the cases of hippocentaurs found their place in Phlegon’s col-
lection of human oddities even though these creatures were only human-like
beings which, unlike the human-animal children, were not born of humans but
constituted a different race;329 yet their ambiguous form matches the general idea
underlying the Mirabilia. Also, the compiler did not resist the temptation to men-
tion the instance of this mythical creature, known to him from personal experi-
ence; all the more that the specimen had been brought from an exotic land and
exhibited at the imperial storehouse, thus it corresponded with the human and
animal oddities that were displayed in public and thereby well complemented
the collection of monstrosities.
The human-animal beings portrayed in the Mirabilia are literally an embodi-
ment of abnormality which breaks the laws of nature. The reports of monstrous
births again express Phlegon’s interest in “corporeal” marvels, as do those of
hippocentaurs that complete Phlegon’s assembly of monsters; all of them treat
human-animal hybrids that are “bodily” paradoxes.
The human-animal crossbreeds in the Mirabilia are another example of un-
classifiable beings that belong at once to two opposing worlds. Alongside the
revenants that constitute an unnatural or even supernatural combination of the
dead and alive, as well as the hermaphrodites and sex-changers that join in them-
selves both male and female elements, the human-animal hybrids are mysterious
paradoxes consisting of components that should never merge. Thus, all of the
monsters described by Phlegon embody a fusion of fundamental oppositions,
such as dead-alive, male-female, and human-animal – all of which natural order

326 See e.g. Romm (1992): passim; Sedlar (1980): passim.

327 Hansen (1996): 171.
328 Ibid.
329 Homer already separates the centaurs from the humans (Od. 21.303), though he does
not explicitly mention their animal form. Pindar (fr. 166 Maehler) presents them as
animals despite their human components.

127
is based on; these divisions define the principal categories that allow the hu-
man world to function: the masculinity of man is established and confirmed
in opposition to woman, and feminity is delimited contrary to masculinity; the
boundaries of the human species are demarcated by those of the animal and vice
versa; the realms of the dead and those of the living also coexist in opposition to
one another. A hybrid, being by definition a confusion of orders and fundamen-
tal oppositions, transgresses therefore these borders and introduces chaos into
the world, thus no wonder that in the early ages such “creatures” were believed to
be of supernatural origin. Their paradoxical appearance was considered highly
significant and they themselves were regarded as portents, most often those dan-
gerous and maleficent ones that had been sent by angered gods. They were both
omens and scapegoats, hastily removed in the purgatory rites since they brought
pollution upon the community. The hybrids never ceased to arouse sensation,
which in later times, however, was not accompanied by fear but by admiration,
as the testimonies of Pliny, Phlegon or Plutarch clearly prove: the more bizarre
or mysterious of a combination these “monsters” were, the greater interest they
attracted.

II.2  The Monstrous

In this section I will discuss all of the remaining chapters of the Mirabilia that
again deal with the various extraordinary features of the human body; however,
the cases they decribe do not necessary fit the definition of a monster as a hybrid
but are rather distinguished by some other abnormality, such as unusual height
or amazing fertility, or unnaturally rapid physical development; in other words,
they list the extremes of the human body, they may therefore be compared to
contemporary publications such as The Guinness Books of Records and the like.
Briefly, they encompass various aspects of the monstrous. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines the “monstrous” as “of unnaturally or extraordinarily large di-
mensions; gigantic, immense, enormous”. These epithets, along with another one –
the “multiple” – perfectly describe the cases gathered in chapters 11–19, 25, and
28–31 of the Mirabilia, and may be applied either to features of the body (such as
the “monstrous” size of a skeleton) or to its properties (such as abnormally rapid
development).
Although the appearance of such monstrous beings, unlike that of hybrid
monsters, is not a paradox understood as a combination of opposites, it also
threatens the world order: bodily extremes undermine the basis of the ancients’
popular and scientific knowledge about themselves, especially the ideas of the
human body’s physical limits.

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 For the most part these stories deal with extending or transgressing those
limits with respect to the human body in its present state; interestingly, however,
there is an entire section (Mir. 11–19) of reports about discoveries of gigantic
bones which were attributed to mythical giant heroes known from the epic tradi-
tion. Thus these stories refer either to records beaten in the remote past or to the
past norm, but again a point for comparison here is the “normal” – for Phlegon
and his contemporaries – human body.

Monstrously Old, Monstrously Big: Giant Bones

Chapters 11–19 of the Mirabilia report on the sensational discoveries of enor-
mous bones at several locations within the basin of the Mediterranean Sea and
in Asia Minor. This must have been a popular topic in ancient Greek and Roman
literature since similar accounts are to be found in the works of many authors,
e.g. in Herodotus (1.68), Pausanias (1.35.7–8), Plutarch (Cim. 8.5–7), Philostratus
(Her., pp. 667–670 Olearius), or Pliny (NH 7.75).
The huge bones were evidently prehistoric fossils which, compared to the skel-
etal remains of normal size, were in antiquity identified as relics of extinct races,
usually those of giant heroes. Phlegon appears to share this opinion since he
recounts in Mir. 11 the following story:
In Messene not many years ago, as Apollonios says, it happened that a storage jar made
of stone broke apart in a powerful storm when it was pounded by much water, and there
came out it the triple head of a human body. It had two sets of teeth. They sought to
discover whose head it was, and the inscription explained it: ‘Idas’ was inscribed thereon.
So the Messenians prepared another storage jar at public expense, placed the hero in it,
and tended him more carefully, since they perceived that he was the man about whom
Homer says
And of Idas, who of men on earth at that time
Was the strongest. He drew his bow against lord Phoibos
Apollo for the sake of his lovely-ankled bride. 330

The identity of Apollonius as referred to by Phlegon is uncertain; however, he

seems to be identical to “Apollonius the grammarian” who is quoted in Mir. 13
and to be Phlegon’s source for the other stories of giant bones.331

330 Homer already separates the centaurs from the humans (Od. 21.303) though he does
not explicitly mention their animal form. Pindar (fr. 166 Maehler) presents them as
animals despite their human components.
331 Hansen (1996): 139; in Stramaglia’s edition pp. 46ff.

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 Although the size of Idas’ bones is not explicitly defined, they were most likely
huge, since in the eight cases which follow the discovered skeletons were amaz-
ingly large; another hint is the measurement of the storage jar, since this type of
pottery, the pithos, was always of a large size; in early antiquity these jars could
have been used as coffins, since in Messenia heroic burials in amphoras were
excavated by archeologists.332 A similar story is related by Pausanias (1.35.7–8),
who says that in Lydia the crest of a hill was opened up by a storm and revealed
huge bones attributed to a hero who was held by the local experts to be Hyllus,
son of Ge. Pliny (NH 7.73), in turn, recounts that as a result of an earthquake in
Crete, a body forty-six cubits in height had been discovered in a ruptured moun-
tain. Phlegon himself, in Mir. 19, also cites a similar story, referring to a lost work
of Theopompus of Sinope, an author who is not known from elsewhere333:
Theopompos of Sinope says in his work On Earthquakes that in the Cimmerian Bospor-
os there was a sudden earthquake, as a result of which one of several ridges in that region
was torn open, discharging huge bones. The skeletal structure was found to be of twenty-
four cubits. He says the local barbarian inhabitants cast the bones into the Maiotis Sea.334

This is one more story in which the point is the immense size of the relics that,
unfortunately, were not identified. This is unlike those in Mir. 11, which were at-
tributed to a hero by the name of Idas whose height was unknown, but instead
they were distinguishable by other unusual features, namely extra body parts:
three heads and two sets of teeth. Such a mysterious multiplicity has no obvi-
ous explanation, except for the fact that the pithos hiding Idas’ remains, if ever
existed, could have simply contained more than one skeleton. Yet Hansen seeks
in this story some characteristics that are specific to oral narratives, in which
the quality is often expressed as a quantity, such as multiple limbs which signify
physical strength, as in the case of Cottus, Briareus and Gyges, the three sons
of Gaia and Uranos who each possessed fifty heads and a hundred arms and
whose main quality was their strength (Hes. Th. 147–153), or as Argus, the son of

332 Mayor (2001): 149.

333 Pajón-Leyra (2009): 457, n. 1249 (quoted in Stramaglia’s edition, p. 51) holds that
this author lived during the reign of Tiberius (14–37 AD); however, as Stramaglia
observes, the earthquake mentioned by this author at that time is very dubious.
334 Mir. 19: Θεόπομπος δέ φησιν ὁ Σινωπεύς, ἐν τῷ περὶ σεισμῶν, ἐν τῷ Κιμμερικῷ
Βοσπόρῳ αἰφνιδίως σεισμοῦ γενομένου τῶν παρ’ αὐτοῖς τινα ἀναρραγῆναι λόφον
καὶ ἀναβαλεῖν ὀστᾶ ὑπερμεγέθη, ὥστε τὴν σύνθεσιν τοῦ σκελετοῦ πηχῶν εὑρεθῆναι
εἰκοσιτεσσάρων. ταῦτα δέ φησιν τὰ ὀστᾶ τοὺς περιοικοῦντας βαρβάρους εἰς τὴν
Μαιῶτιν ῥίψαι λίμνην.

130
Arestor, the guardian of the heifer-nymph Io, whose hundred eyes expressed his
vigilance (e.g. Ov. Met. 1.623–629).335
The hero Idas is known in tradition as being superhumanly strong and ex-
traordinarily brave: he struggled with the god Apollo over the nymph Marp-
essa, took part in the Calydonian Hunt and participated in the voyage of the
Argonauts (Hom. Il. 9.556–560; Apollod. 1.67; Ap. Rhod. 1.151–153), but he was
neither triple-headed nor equipped with a double set of teeth. However, as Adri-
enne Mayor observes, in Homeric-Hesiodic lore mythical strongmen were often
said to have multiple heads or limbs, such as the giant Geryon who had three
heads (Hes. Th. 287) or three bodies (Aesch. Ag. 870), or six hands, six feet and
wings (Stesich. fr. 186 Page). On these grounds she assumes that the skeleton of
Idas as mentioned by Phlegon was “unique material evidence of a literal belief
in that archaic image of giants”.336 Since the mythical giants were imagined to be
superhumans with some characteristics that were magnified and multiplied and
which expressed their superiority over humans in all respects, it is probable that
Idas’ triple head and double teeth were to indicate the same idea. In the context
of the Mirabilia, these “extra bones” make the story even more odd and sensa-
tional; no doubt that for such an amateur of curiosities as Phlegon the report of
an extraordinary skeleton that was found accidentally in a storage jar was a real
treat, especially due to the bizarre multiple features which, as a particular aspect
of the monstrous, emerge as a recurring pattern in some part of the compilation.
As for the rest of the bones as referred to in the Mirabilia, their special quality
was mostly their enormous size. Phlegon reports in Mir. 12 that:
In Dalmatia in the so called Cave of Artemis one can see many bodies whose rib-bones
exceed eleven cubits.337

The skeletons discovered in Dalmatia supposedly measured about sixteen feet

(almost five meters). For the sceptics, Phlegon assembled more instances of gi-
ants’ bones; in Mir. 15 he writes:
One should not disbelieve the foregoing narrative, since in Nitriai in Egypt bodies are
exhibited that are no smaller than these and are not concealed in the earth but are un-
encumbered and plain to see. The bones do not lie mixed together in disorder but are
arranged in such a manner that a person viewing them recognizes some as thigh bones
others as shin bones and so on with the other limbs.

335 Hansen (1996): 140.

336 Mayor (2001): 149.
337 Mir. 12: ἐν Δαλματίᾳ τε ἐν τῷ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος καλουμένῳ σπηλαίῳ, ἔστιν ἰδεῖν πολλὰ
σώματα, ὧν τὰ τῆς πλευρᾶς ὀστᾶ ὑπερβάλλειν ἑκκαίδεκα πήχεις.

131
 One should not disbelieve in these bones either, considering that in the beginning when
nature was in her prime she reared everything near to gods, but just as time is running
down, so also the sizes of creatures have been shrinking.338

And he adds in Mir. 16:

I have also heard reports of bones in Rhodes that are so huge that in comparison the
human beings of the present day are greatly inferior in size.339

Phlegon expressed here a notion, which was common in antiquity, that the world
is aging and that all creatures are diminishing. As it emerges from the examples
he quoted, the human body’s size had drastically decreased as compared to the
ancient race that, in turn, appeared to be monstrously large.
The passage in Mir. 15 describes the huge bones as lying on the surface of
the desert, unlike the fragmented bone assemblages that were usually seen in
Greece and Asia Minor.340 Phlegon is the very first to mention the fossils of Ni-
tria (modern Wadi Natrun) in Egypt, where modern paleontologists found the
most impressive and significant Pliocene fossils.341 “Nitria was not an easy place
to visit, yet by Phlegon’s day travelers went out of their way to view the spectacle
of massive, articulated skeletons of mastodonts, such as Gomphotherium angus-
tidens, or the huge giraffids Sivatherium maurusium and Libytherium”.342 Due to

338 Mir. 15: οὐ χρὴ δὲ ἀπιστεῖν τῷ εἰρημένῳ, ἐπεὶ καὶ τῆς Αἰγύπτου Νιτρ<ί>αι εἰσὶν
τόπος, ἐν αἷς δείκνυται σώματα οὐκ ἐλάττω τούτων, οὐ κεκρυμμένα γῇ, ἀλλ’ ἐμφανῆ
ἀφειμένα· <ἃ> οὔτε συγκέχυται οὔτε συμπεφύρηται, ἀλλ’ ἐν τάξει κεῖται, ὡς γνωρίσαι
προσελθόντα τοῦτο μὲν μηρῶν ὀστᾶ, τοῦτο δὲ κνημῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μελῶν. διὸ
οὐ χρὴ οὐδὲ τούτοις ἀπιστεῖν, ἐννοουμένους ὅτι κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἡ φύσις ἀκμάζουσα
ἅπαντα ἐγγὺς θεῶν ἐκουροτρόφει, μαραινομένου δὲ τοῦ χρόνου συμμεμάρανται καὶ
τὰ μεγέθη τῶν φύσεων.
339 Mir. 16: καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ Ῥόδῳ δὲ παρειλήφαμεν ὀστᾶ τηλικαῦτα τὸ μέγεθος, ὡς
παραβαλλομένους τοὺς νῦν ἀνθρώπους πολὺ καταδεεστέρους εἶναι.
340 Mayor (2001): 149. The notion of a gradual decrease in the creatures’ sizes was com-
mon in antiquity. It is visible in the phrase, recurring in the Iliad (5.304, 12.383,
12.449, 20.287): οἶοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι (in S. Butler’s translation: “such as mortals now
are”), and is expressed in the myth of the Ages of Man found in Hes. (Op. 109–201)
and in Ovid, Met. 1.89–150. Pliny also shared this belief (NH 7.73–74); Aulus Gel-
lius (3.10.11) pondered on the probability of the idea of cosmic senescence; cf. Iuv.
15.69–70. It seems as if the Greeks lived in fear of degeneration of the human race.
See Guthrie (1957).
341 Mayor (2001): 150.
342 Ibid.

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the specific conditions in this desert basin, entire skeletons were uncovered by
the wind, having been left unbroken and in their place.343
The story of Mir. 13 is much more sensational and provides a unique descrip-
tion of the first known reconstruction of a life-sized model from prehistoric ani-
mal remains,344 although at that time they were recognized as heroic relics:
Apollonios the grammarian reports that in the time of Tiberius Nero there was an earth-
quake in which many notable cities of Asia Minor utterly disappeared, which Tiberius
subsequently rebuilt at his own expense. On account of this people constructed and
dedicated to him a colossus beside the temple of Aphrodite, which is in the Roman fo-
rum, and also set up statues in a row next to it from each of the cities.
Among the places that suffered from the earthquake were numerous cities in Sic-
ily as well as the regions around Rhegium, and numerous peoples in Pontus were also
struck. In the cracks in the earth huge bodies appeared that the local inhabitants were
hesitant to move, although as a sample they sent to Rome a tooth of one of the bodies. It
was not just a foot long but even greater than this measurement. The delegates showed
it to Tiberius and asked him if he wished the hero to be brought to him. Tiberius devi-
ded a shrewd plan such as that, while not depriving himself of a knowledge of its size,
he avoided the sacrilege of the robbing of the dead. He summoned a certain geometer,
Pulcher by name, a man of some renown whom he respected for the man’s skill, and
bade him fashion a face in proportion to the size of the tooth. The geometer estimated
how large the entire body as well as the face would be by means of the weight of the
tooth, hastily made a construction, and brought it to the emperor. Tiberius, saying that
the sight of this was sufficient for him, sent the tooth back to where it had come from.345

343 Ibid.
344 Ibid.: 147.
345 Mir. 13–14: Ἀπολλώνιος δὲ ὁ γραμματικὸς ἱστορεῖ ἐπὶ Τιβερίου Νέρωνος σεισμὸν
γεγενῆσθαι καὶ πολλὰς καὶ ὀνομαστὰς πόλεις τῆς Ἀσίας ἄρδην ἀφανισθῆναι, ἃς
ὕστερον ὁ Τιβέριος οἰκείᾳ δαπάνῃ πάλιν ἀνώρθωσεν. ἀνθ’ ὧν κολοσσόν τε αὐτῷ
κατασκευάσαντες ἀνέθεσαν παρὰ τῷ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἱερῷ, ὅ{ς} ἐστιν ἐν τῇ Ῥωμαίων
ἀγορᾷ, καὶ τῶν πόλεων ἑκάστης ἐφεξῆς ἀνδριάντας παρέστησαν. ἔπαθον δὲ καὶ
τῆς Σικελίας ὑπὸ τοῦ σεισμοῦ οὐκ ὀλίγαι πόλεις καὶ τὰ πλησίον Ῥηγίου. ἐσείσθη δὲ
οὐκ ὀλίγα καὶ τῶν ἐν Πόντῳ ἐθνῶν. κατὰ δὴ τῆς γῆς τὰς διαστάσεις ἐφάνη σώματα
μεγέθη, ἃ ἐκπλαγέντες οἱ ἐπιχώριοι κινῆσαι μὲν ὤκνησαν, δείγματος δ’ ἕνεκεν
ἔπεμψαν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ὀδόντα ἑνός, οὐ ποδιαῖον μόνον ἀλλ’ ὑπερβάλλοντα καὶ
τοῦτο τὸ μέτρον. ἐπιδείξαντες δὲ Τιβερίῳ οἱ πρέσβεις εἴροντο εἰ βούλεται κομισθῆναι
τὸν ἥρω πρὸς αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα ἐμφρόνως ἐβουλεύσατο, μήτε τῆς γνώσεως
τοῦ μεγέθους ἑαυτὸν ἀποστερήσας τό τε ἀνόσιον τῆς νεκροσυλίας παραιτησάμενος.
γεωμέτρην γάρ τινα τῶν οὐκ ἀφανῶν, Ποῦλχρον ὀνόματι, τιμώμενον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διὰ
τὴν τέχνην, καλέσας πρόσωπον ἐκέλευσε πλάσαι πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ ὀδόντος. ὁ
δὲ σταθμησάμενος, ἡλίκον ἂν γένοιτο τό τε σύμπαν σῶμα καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ

133
In antiquity it was common practice to present extraordinary finds to emperors
or rulers (on this see the next chapter), as we could already observe in Mir. 6
when a hermaphrodite was presented to Claudius, and as we will see in Mir. 20,
where the child with multiple body parts is brought before Emperor Nero. In
this case Emperor Tiberius is shown as an enthusiast of curiosities, however, as
William Hansen observes, his idea of making the reconstruction illustrates the
tactful aristocratic style, wisdom and piety of the emperor who, wishing to of-
fend neither the dead nor the delegation, although eager to examine the marvel,
contented himself only with the idea of it.346 Yet by these means he had his house
glamorized by this unique, emperor-like only, curiosity.
The story reported by Phlegon in Mir. 17 is likely the most extraordinary and
bizarre one:
The same author says that there was a certain island near Athens that the Athenians
wanted to fortify. As they were digging foundations for the walls they found a coffin that
was a hundred cubits long and in which there lay a withered body matching the coffin in
size. On the coffin was the following inscription:
I, Makroseiris, am buried on a long isle
After living a life of five thousand years.347

The source for this account was most likely the same Apollonius, the Grammar-
ian, as mentioned before in Mir. 11. The find is impressively gigantic: the ancient
hundred cubits is approximately one hundred and fifty feet (forty-five meters).
Due to its long shape, the entire island constitutes a grave for the huge coffin and
the remains of the hero.
In the translation by Hansen, however, the inscription reads: “[…] buried on
a small island”, since Hansen had used Giannini’s edition of Phlegon’s text. Gi-
annini corrected the passage from ἐν νήσῳ μακρᾷ to ἐν νήσῳ μικρᾷ, following
Hercher’s suggestion.348 Antonio Stramaglia, the editor of the newest edition,
reads the original text as μακρᾷ, which in his opinion is justified both metri causa
and by context: the island in question seems to be “either Helena, now Makronisi

τῷ τοῦ ὀδόντος ὄγκῳ, ἐργασάμενος διὰ ταχέων ἐκόμισε τῷ αὐτοκράτορι. κἀκεῖνος

εἰπὼν ἀρκεῖσθαι τῇ θέᾳ ταύτῃ ἀποπέμπει τὸν ὀδόντα ἐκεῖσε ὅθεν καὶ ἐκομίσθη.
346 Hansen (1996): 143.
347 Mir. 17: ὁ δὲ αὐτός φησιν πλησίον Ἀθηνῶν νῆσόν τινα εἶναι, ταύτην δὲ τοὺς
Ἀθηναίους βούλεσθαι τειχίσαι. σκάπτοντας οὖν τοὺς θεμελίους τῶν τοίχων εὑρεῖν
σορὸν ἑκατὸν πηχῶν, ἐν ᾗ εἶναι σκελετὸν ἶσον τῇ σορῷ, ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγεγράφθαι τάδε:
τέθαμμ’ ὁ Μακρόσειρις ἐν νήσῳ μακρᾷ ἔτη βιώσας πεντάκις τὰ χίλια; transl. Hansen
(1996): 45, adapted.
348 Hercher (1876): 366.

134
near the Cape Sunion, or Euboea”, as suggested by Ernst von Lasaulx,349 as well
as by Ulrich von Wilamowitz, who proposes Helena since “de insula longa agi
videtur”.350 Stramaglia finds these propositions accurate and probable since both
Helena and Euboea are actually long; Adrienne Mayor suggests the ancient isle
Phabra, now called Fleves, due to its location near Pireus and to the presence of
Neogene sediments, which could have concealed prehistoric bones;351 however,
the isle Phabra is by no means long, as Stramaglia observes. Irrespective of the
identity of the island, its elongated shape seems to be an important detail since
the inscription likely alludes to the similarity between both the size and shape of
the bones as well as the coffin and the isle; as a matter of fact, there seems to be
word play between Μακρό(σειρις) – μακρᾷ.
The name Macroseiris literally means “Long-Osiris” and is composed of the
Egyptian divine name Osiris and the Greek adjective μακρός, which may refer
to height (‘tall’) or time (‘long’): in this context the name “seems to reflect the
bearer’s great size and age”.352 Isis-Osiris cults were established in Greece before
the 3rd century BC. Since Isis’ worship center was located in Athens, in Piraeus,
Mayor presumes that the tale of Macroseiris was spread by Athenian Isis wor-
shippers who wished to link the Osiris myth with their home territory in Attica.
Thus, if the discovery of the huge bones had actually occurred, the find must
have been paleontological fossils, acclaimed as the body of the divine Osiris.353
Certainly, the account of Macroseiris as quoted by Phlegon alludes to the
myth of Osiris not only by the name of the dead but also by an important
detail from his mythical biography. Osiris was the Egyptian god of the after-
life who, in the version related by Plutarch (Is. et Or., Mor. 356b–358a), was
assassinated by his brother Seth, identified by the Greeks with the mythical
evil beast Typhon that had plotted an attempt on his life. Seth had a beautiful
chest corresponding to Osiris’ height. He talked his brother into getting into
the chest, then shut it by sealing it with lead and threw it into the Nile. Osiris’
wife and sister Isis searched for him, and she finally found the coffin that had
served as a column holding up a roof of the palace in Byblus on the Phoe-
nician coast. She opened the coffin but Osiris was already dead. After many
adventures Seth came upon the corpse of Osiris, cut it into fourteen pieces
and scattered them throughout the land. Isis collected the remains and buried

349 Von Lasaulx (1854): 7.

350 Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1962): 572–573.
351 Mayor (2001): 151.
352 Hansen (1996): 146.
353 Mayor (2001): 153.

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them (in some versions only their wax models) in different shrines all over
Egypt. Actually, many shrines claimed to possess the true body of Osiris or its
parts. According to Adrienne Mayor, these claims might have been based on
the discoveries of paleontological fossils identified with members of the god;
the scholar presumes that the early Egyptian beliefs about giant deities overall
might have been influenced by the discoveries of prehistoric large bones.354
Phlegon’s story of Macroseiris undoubtedly plays with the Egyptian myth, al-
luding to its episode that concerns Seth’s chest which became a coffin for the god
Osiris. Yet this very fact that the myth was not explicitly recalled and thereby the
text is devoid of context renders Phlegon’s account strange and bizarre; the accu-
mulation of extraordinary details served with a large dose of exaggeration, such
as the gigantic size of the bones, the enigmatic inscription, the dead individual’s
unknown identity and his/her incredible longevity as well as the entire ambi-
ence of mystery enhanced this effect of strangeness. The relics of Macroseiris
remain so far the largest ones among all the finds described in both the Greek
and Roman sources, as is illustrated in the table which presents the most im-
portant cases as listed by Adrienne Mayor355 and thereafter adapted and supple-
mented by Dóra Pataricza:356357358

Approximate Approximate Giant bones (source)

“height” (in feet) “height” (in meters)
10 3.1 Orestes (Hdt. 1.67–68; Philostr. Her., p. 668
Olearius; Plin. NH 7.74; Solin. 1.90)
10+ >3.1 Augustus’ giants (Plin. NH 7.75)
14 4.5 Protesilaus (Philostr. Her., p. 673)
15 4.9 Asterius (Paus.1.35.6–7)
15+ >4.9 Ajax (Philostr. Her., p. 668)
15+ >4.9 Orontes (= Aryades; Paus. 8.29.4)
18 5.3 The giant of Icus357 (Philostr., p. 670)
34 11 The Bosporus skeleton (Phleg. Mir. 19)358
34 10 and 11 Carthage giants (Phleg. Mir. 18)

354 Ibid.: 150 ff.

355 Ibid.: 126.
356 Pataricza (2008): 276–277.
357 If one accepts Wilamowitz’s conjecture Ἴκῳ (today’s Alonnisos) for Κῷ.
358 My bold type.

136
 Approximate Approximate Giant bones (source)
“height” (in feet) “height” (in meters)
40 13.1 Maurus Scaurus’ sea monsters (Plin. NH
9.11)
45 14.7 Aryades (Philostr. Her., p. 669)
47 15.5 Cretan giant (Solin.1.90–91)
53 16.2 Giants in Thessaly (Philostr. Her., p. 671)
69 22.8 Cretan giant (Plin.NH 7.73)
85 28.1 Antaeus (Plut. Sert. 9.6–7; Strab.17.3.8)
140 45 Macroseiris (Phleg. Mir. 17)
Individual bones, teeth, and tusks
150–180 US 40–48 liters Skull on Lemnos (Philostr. Her., p. 670)
liquid gallons
5 inch diameter >0.1 Patella of Ajax (Paus. 1.35.5)
1 foot long 0.3 Tooth of a Pontic hero (Phleg. Mir. 14)
100 times human Molar at Utica (Aug. Civ. 15.9)
3 feet long 1 Calydonian Boar tusk (Paus. 8.46.1 and 5)
27 inch >0.6 Calydonian Boar tusk (Procop. Bell. 5.15.8)
circumference
16+ 5 The rib-bone of the skeleton found in the
Cave of Artemis in Dalmatia (Phleg. Mir.
12)

As we can see, Phlegon’s giants may be counted among the highest ranked dis-
coveries, which most likely reflects his personal fascination with finds of ex-
traordinary size that underpinned his attempts to find (or to fabricate) the most
impressive ones. The last report (Mir. 18) describes briefly another discovery
consisting of huge bones in coffins which was also the result of digging. The
source is the Hellenistic geographer and historian Eumachus (FGH 178 F2) of
the 3rd/2nd century BC whose work has been lost except for a few quotations. The
text goes as follows:
Eumachos says in his Geographical Description that when the Carthaginians were sur-
rounding their territory with a trench, they found in the course of their digging two

137
 withered bodies lying in coffins. One of them was twenty-four cubits in structure, the
other twenty-three.359

The size of the “bodies” is again exaggerated. Mayor observes that the major exca-
vation for the trenches around the city boundaries was dug by the Carthaginians
in the fifth century BC; later more earthworks were carried out during the Punic
Wars which ended in 146 BC. The scholar points out that although the exact
limits of the Carthaginian territory are unknown, the city was situated near the
cities of Utica, Sufetula, and Theveste, which have abounded in varied Neogene
fossil beds containing mastodons, such as Tetralophodon or Gomphotherium an-
gustidens, both about 10 feet (or 3 meters) tall, or deinotheres and mammoths.360
Thus, Phlegon in his report either plays up the bodies’ dimensions or merely
follows Eumachus, who did so first. The story is, however, the oldest reference to
the discovery of the prehistoric proboscidean remains of Tunisia and Algieria.361
The monstrous bones of giants are another example of marvels in the Mira-
bilia that are centered on unusual facts about the human body, since giants were
considered to be human beings; for Phlegon and his contemporaries they proved
that superhumans or superhumanoids had existed in the remote past. The ex-
traordinary size and relationship to the human species made the giant bones an
issue worth including in the compilation devoted to human oddities; some addi-
tional monstrous features, such as extra body parts or amazing longevity link the
marvels with other physical anomalies that follow a pattern that may be defined
as the monstrous in terms of size or properties; briefly: monstrously big, mon-
strously old, monstrously odd, and therefore, for Phlegon, monstrously perfect.

Two Heads, Four Heads: Monstrous Redundancy

Likewise as the mythical hero Idas in Mir. 11 who was equipped with three heads
and two sets of teeth, there are also three other references of creatures with mul-
tiple features to be found in the compilation; these very short entries concern,
exclusively, children born with multiple body parts, mostly multi-headed.

359 Mir. 18: Εὔμαχος δέ φησιν, ἐν Περιηγήσει, Καρχηδονίους περιταφρεύοντας τὴν

ἰδίαν ἐπαρχείαν εὑρεῖν ὀρύσσοντας δύο σκελετοὺς ἐν σοροῖς κειμένους, ὧν τοῦ μὲν
εἰκοσιτέσσαρας εἶναι πήχεις τὴν σύνθεσιν, τοῦ δὲ ἑτέρου εἰκοσιτρεῖς.
360 Mayor (2001): 154.
361 Ibid.

138
 In Mir. 20 we read of a four-headed infant:
A child was brought to Nero that had four heads and a proportionate number of limbs
when the archon at Athens was Thrasyllos, and the consuls in Rome were Publius Petro-
nius Turpilianus and Caesennius Paetus.362

Mir. 21 mentions a baby with two heads:

Another child was born with a head growing out of its left shoulder.363

Even if it has not been stated explicitly, it is obvious that the head growing out
of the child’s left shoulder was an additional one, since the report begins with
the words “and another [child] was born…” (καὶ ἕτερον ἐγεννήθη…), which
refers to the previous one. The last such story is Mir. 25, which reads:
In Rome a certain woman brought forth a two-headed baby, which on the advice of
the sacrificing priests was cast into the River Tiber. This happened when the archon at
Athens was Hadrian, who later was emperor, and the consuls at Rome were the Emperor
Trajan for the sixth time and Titus Sextius Africanus.364

The event of Mir. 20 may be dated to AD 61, and that of Mir. 21 is most likely
close to the former, as is rightly observed by William Hansen,365 whereas the date
of Mir. 25 is AD 112, therefore it belongs to Phlegon’s times. All three examples
of polycephaly are doubtless cases of some congenital cephalic disorders: the
two-headed babies were very likely conjoined twins sharing one body, which is
a rare phenomenon, in modern times it is estimated to occur from 1 in 50,000
births to 1 in 200,000 births;366 the case of the four-headed and multi-limbed
child could be explained as conjoined quadruplets including some parasitic for-
mations, which is a phenomenon that occurs extremely rarely.367
Both hermaphrodites and deformed abnormal births were classified as
τέρατα, i.e. maleficent portents and signs of divine wrath which needed to be re-
moved immediately for the sake of the entire community. Surprisingly, although

362 Mir. 20: παιδίον πρὸς Νέρωνα ἐκομίσθη τετρακέφαλον, ἀνάλογα ἔχον καὶ τὰ ἄλλα
μέλη, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησι Θρασύλλου, ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ Ποπλίου Πετρωνίου
Τουρπιλιανοῦ καὶ Καισεννίου Παίτου.
363 Mir. 21: καὶ ἕτερον ἐγεννήθη ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀριστεροῦ ὤμου κεφαλὴν ἐκπεφυκυῖαν ἔχον.
364 Mir. 25: ἐν Ῥώμῃ δικέφαλόν τις ἀπεκύησεν ἔμβρυον, ὃ ὑποθήκαις τῶν θυοσκόων εἰς
τὸν Τίβεριν ποταμὸν ἐνεβλήθη, ἄρχοντος Ἀθήνησιν Ἀδριανοῦ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος
<ὕστερον> γενομένου, ὑπατευόντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ αὐτοκράτορος Τραιανοῦ τὸ ἕκτον καὶ
Τίτου Σεξτίου Ἀφρικανοῦ.
365 Hansen (1996): 151.
366 Hanson (1975): 1257.
367 Cf. Spencer (2003): 376 ff.

139
in the first two cases, which are relatively late, the removal of the monster is not
mentioned, the third one, which is the latest, preserves the ritual of disposing the
baby by throwing it into the Tiber river; in this particular case the two-headed
newborn was considered to be an evil omen, such as were some of the hermaph-
rodites. This report, if it is true, proves that in Rome even in Phlegon’s times
the old superstition according to which abnormal births were portentous was
still alive, and in some cases such an event as a malformed child was not a mere
sensation. Again, the same procedure as depicted in Mir. 2 is adopted: the child
is examined by experts in divination and, on the strength of their opinion, it is re-
moved, this time by throwing it into flowing water. A similar story is to be found
in the Prodigiorum liber by Julius Obsequens (25), who mentions that in the year
136 BC a maidservant gave birth to a boy that had four feet, hands, eyes and ears,
and two sets of genitals; by verdict of the seers he was burned and his ashes were
thrown into the sea. Evidently, this is one more case of conjoined twins known
from antiquity. The same author lists many other instances of additional or – on
the contrary – lacking external body parts in humans (12, 14, 20, 26, 27a, 40,
50–53), as well as in animals (15, 24, 28, 32, 50, 53).
Although the event of the monstrous child thrown into the Tiber happened
in the times of Phlegon, he does not inform his readers about his opinion on
the issue; certainly it must have touched him since it was such a fresh mar-
vel and of his favorite kinds as well since it depicted a redundant, reduplicate,
multiplied human body or its parts that made that body amazingly monstrous.
Yet the multi-headed babies in the context of the report about the triple-headed
hero Idas (Mir. 11), although there is no telling if this was with accordance
of Phlegon’s intention or not, appear as a grotesque parallel to the enormous
mythical monsters equipped with additional body parts.
These creatures with multiple body features may also be regarded as hybrids
of sorts since they combine two or more human beings, as if they belonged to
a special category of monsters that could be defined as “neither one nor two” or
“neither one nor many”; this very feature renders them ambiguous and unclas-
sifiable enough to be included in Phlegon’s collection of human paradoxa.

Monstrous Multiples
Another extraordinary phenomenon which is closely related to the previous
one is that of unusual multiple pregnancies, described in the two chapters of the
Mirabilia: 28 and 29; it is marvelous also due to the fact that in both cases it is
recurring. From Mir. 28 we learn that:

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 Antigonos reports that in Alexandria a certain woman gave birth to twenty children in
the course of four deliveries and that most of them were reared.368

The report was excerpted from another paradoxographer, Antigonus of Carystus

from the 3rd century BC whose work is a compilation of marvelous stories titled
Mirabilia as well (the story of interest is in chapter 110.1; in today’s text of Anti-
gonus there is no mention of Alexandria).
The second account (Mir. 29) is more recent since it involves the Emperor
Trajan (reigned AD 98–117):
Another woman from the same city brought forth five children at one time, three of
them were male and two female, whom the Emperor Trajan ordered to be reared at his
own expense. In the following year the same woman give birth to another three.369

This woman, as Hansen points out, had apparently made a strong impression on
the Romans since she is mentioned several times by contributors to the codifica-
tion of Roman laws known as the Digest of Justinian (5.4.3; 34.5.7.pr.; 46.3.36).370
Although in this case the number of children delivered by the woman is deter-
mined, in the first one it is not: either these were quintuplets four times in a row
or the pregnancy did not necessarily consist of an equal number of fetuses each
time.
It seems that in antiquity, multiple births beyond a certain number were re-
garded portentous, although the testimonies, which are quite numerous, are also
contradictory;371 for instance, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 3.22.10)
mentions the Horatii – the famous male triplets from Rome who reared at pub-
lic expense in accordance with the law which was still in vigour in Dionysius’
time. Pliny (NH 7.33), quoting the example of the Horatii and their parallel – the
Curiatii, says that a multiple birth is considered a maleficent portent (inter os-
tenta ducitur) if it exceeds three, with the exception of Egypt, where some special
properties of the Nile’s water support human fecundity. Similarly, Gaius, one of
the contributors to the Digest of Justinian (34.5.7.pr.), declares that when more
than three children are born, it seems almost monstrous (portentosum).372 Pliny

368 Mir. 28: καὶ Ἀντίγονος δὲ ἱστορεῖ ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ μίαν γυναῖκα ἐν τέτρασιν τοκετοῖς
εἴκοσι τεκεῖν καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τούτων ἐκτραφῆναι.
369 Mir. 29: καὶ ἑτέρα τις γυνὴ κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν πόλιν πέντε ἐν ἑνὶ τοκετῷ ἀπεκύησεν
παῖδας, τρεῖς μὲν ἄρρενας, δύο δὲ θηλείας, οὓς αὐτοκράτωρ Τραιανὸς ἐκέλευσεν ἐκ
τῶν ἰδίων χρημάτων τρέφεσθαι. πάλιν δὲ μετ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἄλλα τρία ἡ αὐτὴ γυνὴ ἔτεκεν.
370 Hansen (1996): 163.
371 Delcourt (1938): 103.
372 Hansen (1996): 164.

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(NH 7.33) continues by quoting another example of a certain woman by the
name of Fausta in Ostia who during the reign of Augustus gave birth to quadru-
plets, which were to signify the famine that occurred later. However, the author
of a paradoxical treatise titled Mirabiles auscultationes (attributed to Aristotle)
seems to view the multiple pregnancies as a sign of extraordinary fertility, and
he quotes the case of Umbria which is reportedly so fecund a land that animals
produce offspring three times a year, and most women give birth to twins or tri-
plets (Mir. ausc. 836a19–23); and so is also Alexandria, as it may be inferred from
Phlegon who mentions two instances that were to happen there. Marie Delcourt
suggests that the number of multiple births might have been significant: triplets
could have been regarded as a lucky omen, while quadruplets were unlucky.373
The issue is, however, dubious, since Julius Obsequens (14) in the passage quoted
earlier reports that the birth of triplets in 163 BC was considered portentous;
meanwhile, in Phlegon quintuplets were welcomed and therefore were reared at
the expense of the Emperor Trajan.
Multiple pregnancies, such as triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets, occur
naturally very rarely: a traditional approximation of the incidence of twins is
1: 80, triplets 1:80² = 1:6400, and quadruplets (etc.) 1:803 = 1:512.000.374 Thus,
obviously every instance of multiple births is an exceptional event which caus-
es a sensation – whether it happened in ancient times or takes place today. Not
surprisingly, Phlegon, whose range of interest encompasses various unusual
aspects of human sexual life and procreation, found the cases of multiple preg-
nancies odd and strange; although the mothers who gave birth to multiple off-
spring several times are not monsters par excellence, their fertility is abnormal
and therefore monstrous; so their multiple offspring, in terms of numbers, is
monstrous too.

Monstrously Productive Couples

The cases of multiple pregnancies are followed by two accounts of the amazing
fecundity of couples which results in an extraordinarily large number of off-
spring. For the last time in the Mirabilia, however, Phlegon explores the myth375
by referring explicitly to the story of the Danaids and their husbands, the sons
of Aegyptus:

373 Delcourt (1938): 105.

374 Bush, Pernoll (2006).
375 For the other references to the myth, see the story of Caeneus and that of Teiresias
in the section “Sex-changers”, as well as that of the hippocentaurs.

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 [Mir. 30:] Hippostratos says in his book On Minos that Aigyptos begot fifty sons with
one wife Euryrrhoe, daughter of Neilos.376
[Mir. 31:] Likewise Danaos had fifty daughters with a single wife, daughter of Neilos.377

As a matter of fact, he divides one mythical story of two unusually fertile twin
brothers into two separate entries: Aegyptus was the king of Egypt and fathered
fifty sons who were all but one murdered by the fifty daughters of Aegyptus’ twin
brother, Danaus, on their wedding night. Interestingly, Phlegon relates a rare ver-
sion of the myth that says both brothers had begotten such numerous offspring
with a single wife each. Besides Phlegon, this version is found only in the work
of the Byzantine poet Tzetzes (Chil. 7.136 Leone); both Phlegon and Tzetzes ex-
cerpted it from Hippostratus (FGH 568 F1), a historian of the 3rd century BC
whose work is now lost. The more common version relates that Aegyptus and
Danaus fathered fifty sons and fifty daughters with many wives (Apollod. 2.12).
No wonder that the compiler chose the less common version, as it contains a
curiosity, i.e. the unusual fecundity of a couple. Again, as was the case of Caeneus
in Mir. 5, the myth has been truncated and limited merely to the detail deter-
mining the protagonists’ number of children, which is not only extraordinary
itself but also links the myth with other stories regarding a similar issue which
is also related to sex and procreation. It seems that Phlegon referred to the myth
since he was not able to find comparable examples of such impressive fecundity
coming from more recent times: the record set by Danaus and Aegyptus could
hardly be beaten and their offspring remained monstrously numerous, even for
the mythical tradition. Great fertility characterized especially sea deities, such
as Nereus and Doris, the parents of fifty daughters (Hes. Th. 240–264), as well
as Tethys and Oceanus, who said to have three thousand daughters and as many
sons (ibid. 337–370); other instances are Zeus and Mnemosyne, who begot nine
Muses (ibid. 53–79) or Niobe, the mother of fourteen children (Apollod. 3.45).378
The fifty daughters of Danaus and as many sons of Aegyptus constitute an im-
pressive number of offspring, even for humans from the remote past.

376 Mir. 30: Ἱππόστρατος δέ φησιν, ἐν τῷ περὶ Μίνω, Αἴγυπτον ἐκ μιᾶς γυναικὸς
Εὐρυρρόης τῆς Νείλου πεντήκοντα υἱοὺς γεννῆσαι.
377 Mir. 31: Δαναός τε ὁμοίως ἐκ μιᾶς γυναικὸς τῆς Νείλου Εὐρώπης πεντήκοντα
θυγατέρας ἔσχεν.
378 See Hansen (1996): 167.

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Juvenile Mothers and Young Old Men: Monstrously Fast Maturation
The last two entries in the Mirabilia relate two cases of unusually fast maturation
of the human body:
Mir. 32: Krateros, the brother of King Antigonos, says he is aware of a person who in the
space of seven years was a child, a youth, a man and an old man, and then died, having
married and begotten children.379
Mir. 33: Megasthenes says that the women who dwell in Pandaia give birth when they
are six years old.380

The alleged velocity of the maturation in both cases is abnormal in comparison

to the norm. Phlegon excerpted these from the work of a Macedonian historian
from the 4th/3rd century BC, and from Megasthenes (FGH 715 F13), a Greek eth-
nographer of the same period and author of the work On India. Both accounts
essentially differ from each other since the former refers to an individual marvel
which happened in the familiar world but transgressed the norm of the speed
of physiological development in the human body, whereas the latter mentions
a phenomenon which occurs on a regular basis in a distant exotic land where it
constitues the norm.381
Hansen observes that the significance of a “single local marvel” is the same
as that of a “distant mass marvel”, and similarly the wondrous events of chapters
20–25 in the Mirabilia on monstrous births, such as animal children or multiple
body features, are related as local and individual, whereas in exotic lands they
are said to concern entire tribes and nations, such as, e.g. in Pliny (NH 7.22–23),
who mentions the peoples of India who had eight toes on each foot or only one
leg, or a dog’s head, etc.: as it is commonly known, in Greek thought distant lands
were believed to be inhabited by different kinds of human, animal and plant
oddities.382 Certainly, the authors reporting an extraordinary event could not, for

379 Mir. 32: Κρατερὸς δέ φησιν, ὁ Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως ἀδελφός, γινώσκειν τινὰ
ἄνθρωπον, ὃν ἐν ἑπτὰ ἔτεσιν παῖδα γε νέσθαι καὶ μειράκιον καὶ ἄνδρα καὶ γέροντα
καὶ γήμαντα καὶ παιδοποιησάμενον ἀποθανεῖν.
380 Mir. 33: Μεγασθένης δέ φησιν τὰς ἐν Πα<ν>δαίᾳ κατοικούσας γυναῖκας ἑξαετεῖς
γενομένας τίκτειν.
381 Pandaea is also mentioned by Arrian (Ind. 8.4–9.8), who also drew his material from
the work of Megasthenes (FGH 715 F13); in the region of Pandaea in India, claims
the author, women are ripe for marriage at seven years of age, and men live no longer
than forty years. Pliny (NH 6.76) also mentions gens Pandae, which is the only region
in India to be ruled by women.
382 Hansen (1996): 168.

144
the sake of credibility, exaggerate on a large scale a local marvel which could have
been easily verified, which is unlike in the exotic land, where strange phenomena
were more imaginable and less verifiable: thus the authors could have indulged
in creating incredible tales.
Donatella Erdas suggests that the phenomenon as described by Craterus and
quoted by Phlegon in Mir. 32 is known in modern medicine under the name of
progeria.383 The term ‘progeria’ derives from the Greek words πρό (before) and
γῆρας (old age), and generally refers to several diseases wherein symptoms re-
sembling aspects of aging are manifested at an early age.
On these grounds it is quite probable that there is a kernel of truth in the story
reported by Phlegon, and that the person supposedly known to Craterus could
have suffered from progeria. Obviously, the ability to beget offspring attributed to
such people is a poetic exaggeration that is introduced in order to make the story
more sensational. Another ancient source which refers to a similar phenomenon
is Pliny (NH 7.75–76), who announces as a commonly known fact that the life
span of some infants is complete by the age of three years. He quotes from his
sources the case of a certain Euthymenes who grew to be three cubits tall (four-
and-a-half feet or 1.3 m) in three years, and although he was mentally dull, he
reached puberty and his voice had become strong; then he died suddenly of con-
vulsion of the limbs at the age of three. Pliny also claims to have seen almost all
these characteristics with the exception of the state of puberty in the son of a Ro-
man knight, Cornelius Tacitus, who was a financial procurator in Gallia Belgica
(perhaps the father of the famous historian). Pliny adds that the Greeks call such
people ἐκτράπελοι, for which there is no equivalent term in Latin.
As a matter of fact, the adjective ἐκτράπελος means ‘turning from the com-
mon course’, ‘perverse’, ‘strange’, or, explicitly, ‘monstrous’ (LSJ), with reference to
humans, such as huge children, and other beings, such as Cyclopes.384 Thus indi-
viduals whose physical development was extremely fast and hence their life cycle

383 Erdas (2002): 2–3.

384 Interestingly, Hermogenes (Id. 2.10) uses this term for various mythical monsters,
whereas he himself could be defined, although slightly figuratively, as such, in the
Plinian sense: according to his biogram by Philostratus (Vit. Soph., p. 577 Olearius),
Hermogenes, at the very early age of fifteen years old, gained fame as a brilliant
sophist and rhetor, but when he arrived at manhood his skills and powers suddenly
disappeared and he spent the remainder of his long life in a state of intellectual im-
potence. And once Antiochus the sophist when ridiculing him said: “Lo, here is that
fellow Hermogenes, who among boys was an old man, but among the old is a boy.”
(transl. W. C. Wright).

145
was drastically shortened are ἐκτράπελοι, i.e. turning from the common course
of life, transgressing the norm, therefore monstrous. Pliny and Phlegon refer to
more or less the same phenomenon: although the former quotes instances of
people who completed their cursus vitae faster (at the age of three) than the per-
son described by Phlegon (who died at the age of seven), the latter would most
likely say that his example is of a higher rank since the woman was fully able to
bear children despite her short course of life; once again, the author of the Mira-
bilia shows his predilection for issues dealing with sex and procreation.

Monstrous Longevity: Phlegon’s Macrobii

Phlegon, however, was also interested in marvels of the opposite spectrum, since
in his other work under the title of the Macrobii, preserved only in fragments,
he collected instances of incredibly long-lived people whose life span varied
from one hundred to one thousand years. The compilation has been divided into
groups according to the number of years, such as “persons who have lived a hun-
dred years”, “persons who were registered as being from one hundred and one
to one hundred and ten years”, etc; each group includes very brief entries which
mention only the name and place of the origin of the persons in question. These
unusually long lives may be regarded as cases of exceedingly slow life cycles, in
contrast to those that are abnormally fast: both phenomena are extreme devia-
tions from the norm, but in opposite directions. The Macrobii are one more piece
of evidence showing Phlegon’s particular interest in anomalies in issues funda-
mental for the existence of the human species.

Phlegon’s Monstrous World. Conclusions

The stories on unusually fast maturation close the litany of extraordinary phe-
nomena in the Mirabilia. I have examined all of the motifs in an order slightly
different from that imposed by Phlegon; my aim was to reveal the principal idea
underpinning the compilation, which was, as I attempted to show, to demon-
strate the monstrous in its most extreme form. The monster motif appears in
every single chapter, linking them all into one thematically coherent collection.
The Mirabilia encompass various aspects of the monstrous that can be, however,
overall divided into two groups: one including creatures which are both literally
and figuratively monsters, termed τέρατα in Greek, which technically means
human physical anomalies signifying often divine wrath whereas implicitly indi-
cating ambiguous beings that belong to two oppositing worlds, i.e. hybrids com-
bined of elements belonging to two different species or genders. The oppositions,
such as dead/living or human/animal which are joined in these beings are of

146
fundamental importance as they shape the frames of the human realm by setting
boundaries between it and that of non-humans; they also conserve the intrinsic
dual male/female nature of the world, thus they should never be mingled for the
sake of human species’ integrity. Most importantly, these beings, such as rev-
enants, hermaphrodites, sex-changers or human-animal children, again literally
and figuratively, are embodied paradoxes whose mixed-up bodies manifest con-
fusion about the acceptable norm and the limits of the human body. The other
group of motifs is covered under the umbrella term of the ‘monstrous’ that may
be applied to beings which are characterized by some extraordinary features or
properties that are also related to essential matters such as sex and procreation,
or death and life: they are not hybrids but rather record-breakers in categories
such as size, reproduction and fertility, speed of development, or longevity in
which they drastically transgress the norm.
The monstrous human body as depicted in the Mirabilia appears to be strange,
odd, ambiguous, hybrid, deformed, dismembered, multiplied, redundant and
overall obscene; it is a body that should neither be displayed nor watched, where-
as in Phlegon it is on display to be watched and admired, to shock and astonish.
It seems Phlegon was their first admirer and watcher. We can easily imagine him
searching for human oddities, browsing through various literary sources, such
as those of ancient historians, geographers and paradoxographers, and admir-
ing monsters displayed to the public throughout the Roman Empire during his
numerous travels at the Emperor Hadrian’s side. His collection of monstrosities
corresponds to the monster-market in Rome, as mentioned by Plutarch, who was
more or less Phlegon’s contemporary, in his work On Curiosity (Curios. 520c).
This market, according to Plutarch, specialized in selling slaves with deformed
bodies and was frequented by customers with specific tastes. Plutarch terms am-
ateurs of such bodies as πολυπράγμονες, ‘the curious’. Phlegon appears to be one
of them, to be πολυπράγμων, and we cannot rule out the possibility that he also
visited the market; it could have been his inspiration to search for monstrosities
in written sources. Nonetheless, monsters were evidently Phlegon’s hobby and
favorite pastime.
The result of this passion of his is this unusual compilation which is entirely
devoted to human monsters. Although the compiler did not provide his work
with any comments or commentary, his overall idea shows through it, since the
main themes and motifs can easily be distinguished. He must have chosen care-
fully the stories for his collection in order to make it thematically coherent, al-
though, as we can imagine, during his studies of the ancient sources he must
have encountered many different threads that were more or less tightly related

147
to the monster topic. He finally selected, however, only those accounts which
concerned physical human monstrosities, mostly hybrids, or creatures equipped
with monstrous properties. All of this can only be deduced from the work itself,
since Phlegon consequently remains silent on the matter regarding his prefer-
ences and ideas. The only traces of his presence are the two passages in which
he – wishing his words to be reliable – claims to having been an eyewitness of
the marvels, such as in Mir. 9, where he asserts to have seen Aetete, the person
who had changed sex, as well as in Mir. 35, in which he invited the disbeliev-
ers to come and see the embalmed hippocentaur which was, as he seemed to
be speaking from experience, still displayed at the imperial storehouse; the one
extra commentary is his reflection on the shrinking size of creatures in Mir. 15,
in which he might have expressed his own opinion and fear of cosmic degenera-
tion (if only this part was not copied from his source), which would indicate he
believed the huge bones that had been discovered in several locations within the
basin of the Mediterranean Sea belonged to a pre-human race of giant heroes.
The question whether he gave credence to the other marvels he quoted must
remain open. It is also worth considering if he regarded human oddities to be
evil omens or simply freaks of nature, since evidence for both attitudes is to be
found in his relations: on the one hand, there are stories in which the appearance
of a monster is interpreted by a community as a sign of divine wrath, on the
other hand, there are some stories which do not mention any reaction to such an
occurrence. Although Phlegon never comments on either of the cases, one aspect
is certain: he did not have a reverent attitude to the marvels he described since
he did not hesitate to exaggerate them for effect, as can be seen in many passages
of the Mirabilia: for instance, in the section devoted to the discoveries of huge
bones, the relics described by Phlegon are some of the largest among the remains
referred to in ancient sources; the man in Mir. 32 who died at the age of seven
years and who most likely suffered from a disease that is now termed progeria
was, according to Phlegon, able to beget children; the sexual transformation of
the girl in Mir. 6, which today would probably be classified as a case of a genetic
defect of the genital system, is depicted by the compiler as having lasted only
three days. “Phlegon should not be regarded as the author of fairy tales for adults.
His popularity indicates a wide audience of adults who – as people nowadays –
were interested in and fascinated by seemingly true stories more than obviously
fictitious ones. Thus Phlegon’s aim was to engage these people’s interest by creat-
ing stories around some real kernel of truth and scaling it up to make it even

148
more interesting” – observes Pataricza.385 This practice, as applied to the stories
in the Mirabilia, in some respects makes the compilation resemble the modern
tabloid press. William Hansen was the first to propose this comparison in the
Introduction to his translation of the Mirabilia. The scholar claims that Phlegon’s
aim was similar to that of tabloids, namely to satisfy the desire for the bizarre and
extraordinary.386 To a large extent Hansen is right; what I would add to support
his opinion is that Phlegon’s marvels are similar to the tabloids’ concern for the
most interesting – for both ancient and modern people – spheres of life such as
sex and death; on the other hand, however, it seems that in the tabloids the great-
est emphasis is put on what is scandalous, which is not the case in the Mirabilia.
Yet, in terms of esthetics Phlegon’s compilation does not differ from this type
of journalism as it operates with the use of the most simplified style, offering
instead, so to say, the essence of the sensational, of extraordinary phenomena
deprived of commentary, as if to let the facts speak for themselves. The style of
tabloids is also very simple, although they often have to juggle with allegations
about the referred facts, especially those concerning the private lives of celebri-
ties. If we refer to comparisons with modern mass or popular culture, I would
be inclined to see some resemblance between Phlegon’s type of marvels and the
type of art as performed by Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga. The
popstar tends to dazzle the audience with oddness, especially in her style of dress
as well as by the fact that she does not avoid introducing into her performance el-
ements of ugliness, disease, death and decay – all of which are conventionally not
regarded as such that match the sugary esthetics of pop music. Natalia Stencel
sees in Lady Gaga’s performances the great role that is played by her body, which
is presented as ugly, deformed, ill and dead; when the artist appears in public in a
dress made of raw meat she creates a show in which she herself cannot be sepa-
rated from the matter of her art. Decorating her face with odd projections, Gaga
pretends they are parts of her newly deformed body, and thereby breaks with the
boredom of the world of celebrities who are permanently trying to deceive their
audience that their beauty is natural, whereas it has been modified by plastic
surgery or computer graphics. Gaga aspires to be a body-work or a person-work
and her performance is always a total one.387 Shocking due to its strangeness and
obscurity, she reaches a metaphysical pathos, to use Arthur Lovejoy’s term as

385 Pataricza (2009): 130.

386 Hansen (1996): 12–15.
387 Stencel (2013).

149
referred to by Stencel. The philosopher applied the term to the obscure style of
some philosophers through which they gained popularity:
There is, in the first place, the pathos of sheer obscurity, the loveliness of the incom-
prehensible, which has, I fear, stood many a philosopher in good stead with his public,
even though he was innocent of intending any such effect. The phrase omne ignotum
pro mirifico concisely explains a considerable part of the vogue of a number of philoso-
phies, including some which have enjoyed great popular reputation in our own time. The
reader does not know exactly what they mean, but they have all the more on that account
an air of sublimity; an agreeable feeling at once of awe and of exaltation comes over him
as he contemplates thoughts of so immeasurable a profundity – their profundity being
convincingly evidenced to him by the fact that he can see no bottom to them.388

The same strategy is used by Lady Gaga, who made the incomprehensible both
her identification and brand, knowing that obscurity in the domain of art gener-
ates adoration for the artist that performs it, thus locating their work in a sphere
that can be defined as a sacred space.389 Significantly, Lady Gaga functions within
pop or mass culture which allows her to maintain the status of a strange and
enigmatic artist, since attempts to create art oriented at an intellectual audience
would plunge her into a niche, whereas she tries to attract the largest possible
audience. In my view, the point of convergence between Lady Gaga’s type of art
and Phlegon’s type of marvels is based on the obscure oddness through which
both phenomena enchant and fascinate the audience. Not accidentally, my com-
parison refers to the world of art since, as we shall see in the next chapter of this
book, in Phlegon’s times human oddities gained the status of works of art and
were displayed and admired. Thus it seems to me that the marvels of the Mira-
bilia function in a similar way, playing the role of objects of art and being a kind
of gallery of monsters displayed in order to be contemplated; they exemplify a
metaphysical pathos dazzling with their obscure monstrosity that remains in-
comprehensible and inexplicable. Their connection with the sacred and the met-
aphysical is unquestionable, since even in the compiler’s times monstrous beings
were still perceived sometimes in religious categories as being divine signs, or at
least their quite recent supernatural status could still be present in the common
memory. It is difficult to say, however, whether the compiler regarded them as
portents or simply as pets, or maybe as neither. The compilation appears to be the
fruit of the author’s scientific but also purely human, curiosity, combined with his
enthrallment and, perhaps, slight fear of monsters. His readers’ impressions were

388 Lovejoy (2010): 11.

389 Stencel (2013): 51.

150
most likely similarly mixed: the thrill of excitement was mixed with awe of the
supernatural. Now the question arises as to who exactly were his readers; for the
mass-oriented or perhaps rather popular-oriented character of Phlegon’s work
is dubious, this time unlike that of Lady Gaga. On the one hand, its simple style
leads us to believe that its readers were non-educated people; on the other hand,
the lack of quotations from the Mirabilia in ancient literature as well as all that
we know about Phlegon as a person allows us to believe that he was a sublime
amateur of the oral tradition, designing his work for people like him, including
the Emperor Hadrian who was famous for his curiosity of the world, and for
people affiliated with his court. Returning to Hansen’s idea of the Mirabilia as
a prefiguration of tabloids, I think that superficially there are some similarities,
but a deeper interpretation of the compilation reveals a different layer of sense.
First of all, there is the question of who the target reader was: tabloids are aimed
at the mass reader, whose existence in the 2nd century AD cannot seriously be
considered; it is more likely that the Mirabilia were addressed to a narrow circle
of courtmen and intellectuals from Hadrian’s entourage. Yet, despite the simple
style, the collection is composed in a very refined manner, giving the reader the
pleasure of dealing with a work that is thematically coherent and ingeniously
arranged; this feature, in my opinion, proves Phlegon’s audience was rather the
educated elite. Last but not least, the content of the compilation tightly corre-
sponds to the vogue for collections of human monstrosities that spread from the
imperial court and pervaded the higher classes of Roman society. The Mirabilia
may therefore be regarded as a manifestation of the specific interests of their
author and as a response to the specific demands and tastes of the elite of that
age. There is also the question of the work’s impact upon its readers: I would
risk the suggestion that, despite everything, the strange phenomena described
by Phlegon were stranger and less intelligible to his ancient consumers than they
are to modern readers and to their equivalents in the tabloids, which is due to
the fact that popular scientific knowledge, especially medical knowledge, is ac-
cessible today to a wider audience; I suppose, therefore, that the extraordinary
occurrences might have been more impressive in antiquity since they emanated
more metaphysical charm of the inexplicable and mysterious.
Concluding, I agree with William Hansen about the similarities between the
content of modern tabloids and that in the Mirabilia, as both may be character-
ized as strongly bizarre, grotesque and, above all, sensational; Hansen is abso-
lutely right in saying that Phlegon’s compilation is the first of sensationalistic

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literature in the Western world.390 Nevertheless, I think that the form and content
of the Mirabilia were created to satisfy not popular tastes, as is in the case of
tabloids, but (over-)refined ones that were displayed by the members of elitist
circles in the 2nd century AD; that is why the compilation takes up a subject that
was very much in vogue at that time.
Yet Phlegon’s Mirabilia reveal a deeper meaning, as they pose essential ques-
tions about the condition and nature of the human being due to the fact that the
monsters collected in the compilation force the reader to rethink his or her view
on the fundamental matters of life and death, as well as on the mystery of human
corporeal existence.
Thus, although the Mirabilia may be classified as a paradoxographical work,
this is the very reason why they differ from the other writings within this genre.
The latter traditionally are collections of marvels concerning various extraordi-
nary phenomena of the natural world, such as the unusual properties of waters,
stones, plants, etc., and sporadically they refer to humans; they deal with repeat-
able marvels, so to speak. Their aim is to describe the world in all its variety, with
a particular emphasis on the wonderful, whereas the Mirabilia gather strange
phenomena of the human world that are unique and unrepeatable, aiming at
revealing the monstrous side of the human being. However, thanks to references
to earlier authors, the Mirabilia are a fascinating record of a scrap of monster
history which allows us to observe their evolution from evil omens to domestic
pets – from the warning function to the decorative and entertaining function, yet
still with connotations of the sacred.
The marvels as described by Phlegon come from various regions of the oi-
kumene: they are said to have happened in Macedonia, in Aetolia, in central
Greece, in Asia Minor, in Rome and in other locations in Italy, in the Pelopon-
nese, in Syria, in Dalmatia, in Pontus, in Egypt, in Carthage, in Germany, in India,
and in Arabia. Such a geographical as well as chronological (from the mythical
times until the author’s era) variety proves that miracles do not know the limits
of time and place and may happen everytime and everywhere. Since in Phlegon’s
work they always also trangress the limits of what is normal with reference to
the human body, this indicates that those limits were universal and that every
exception to the rule was immediately noticed and labeled as monstrous, which
resulted in them gaining a special status: either that of an evil omen or that of
a work of art. In the first case they were removed and hidden; briefly, they had
to disappear, in the second, they were demonstrated, desired and admired; they

390 Hansen (1996): 12.

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were to appear in the public space. Both situations are just two sides of the same
coin, since the visible otherness of the phenomena in question always aroused
extreme emotions and reactions.
Phlegon has created his own monstrous world by patching together scraps
found in various sources and scaling them in order to make his work more mys-
terious and strange. Undoubtedly he was successful: the Mirabilia are a unique
piece displaying such an accumulation of the bizarre and grotesque that is hardly
paralleled in ancient literature. The work offers a fascinating trip into the mon-
strous world, whose charm is still fresh. It seems as if Phlegon wished to touch
the mystery of human existence by using the figures of monsters as visible signs
of the boundaries where the human world ends and another world begins; there-
fore, paradoxically, by determining what is monstrous says something about what
is human. Thus, only at first sight do the Mirabilia appear to be an amorphous
collection of bizarre and extraordinary phenomena; in fact, they constitute a har-
monious composition which deals entirely with the mystery of the monster and,
at the same time, with the mystery of the human being.
Phlegon of Tralles appears to be a great amateur of monsters, which makes
him a typical representative of his class and times. This chapter was devoted to
the first issue and discussed Phlegon and his interests in the monstrous. It re-
mains to recall the times he lived in and was influenced by: in the next chapter I
will briefly discuss selected issues that determine this distinctive phenomenon of
Phlegon’s times, namely the fondness for human oddities and all that was mon-
strous and which must have been his inspiration in his search for monsters. In
short, the Mirabilia need to be located within their cultural context.

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III.  Phlegon and the Monsters in Context

Every age has its own monsters; it seems, however, that particularly in the times
of the Roman Empire, when Phlegon lived, the monstrous became an object of
great desire and fascination. Many scholars have already noticed the increasing
interest toward the monstrous from the times of the Emperor Augustus onwards,
and have proposed different explanations for this phenomenon.391
Two works are especially worth mentioning here. Robert Garland, in his bril-
liant study on the deformed in the Greco-Roman world, devoted a chapter to
the role of the monstrous in imperial Rome titled The Roman Emperor in his
Monstrous World.392 The scholar interprets the popularity of monsters as a trend
initiated by the Roman emperors and their court and then adopted eagerly by the
upper class of society.
Carlin A. Barton, in The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, which is a fascinating
psychological study on the emotional life of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire,
includes an entire section under the significant title of The Monster, in which she
draws a group portrait of Roman society in post-republican Rome, depicting it
as an organism driven by extreme emotions such as envy, desire, despair and fas-
cination. Referring to the monster – a deformed, odd and ambiguous creature –
as a symbolic figure that enabled these emotions to be expressed, the scholar
attempts to explain the Romans’ particular admiration for the monstrous:
The Romans of the late Republic and early Empire were entranced by the horrific, the
miraculous, and the untoward, hypnotized by violence and cruelty and death, – as if a
type of paralysis agitans afflicted the whole of the people. One of the signals of this emo-
tional state is the proliferation of monsters. The anceps, the two-headed, the ambiguous,
always important to Roman culture, was also dangerous and constricted by taboo. But
in this period the filtering systems, the systems of discrimination within the culture,
appear to be undergoing a transformation allowing the barriers to be breached and the
grotesque and the miraculous to spill over into every aspect of Roman life.393

Both scholars point to some of the distinctive phenomena which well illustrate
the popularity of the monstrous in Rome under the reign of the emperors. It
is best manifested, as Garland observes, in the institution of the emperor as a

391 See, e.g. Barton (1993): passim; Garland (1995): passim; Hardie (2009): passim.
392 Garland (1995): 45–58.
393 Barton (1993): 85.

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patron of human oddity as well as in the vogue for deformed slaves;394 I would
add also the literary trend for collections of marvels.395 One may propose many
other interesting and significant phenomena referring to the topic of monsters;
I will, however, restrict myself to selected issues in order to merely signalize the
most characteristic features which can help us better understand Phlegon’s work.

The Emperor as a Patron of Monsters

In ancient Rome the imperial court was the place from which the fashion for
monstrosity had spread. The emperors collected human and not only human
oddities; their collections were often as impressive as they were frightening. The
fad began with the Emperor Augustus and, in fact, never ceased, as even the
tsars of Russia in the nineteenth century possessed human monstrosities at their
courts.396
Garland explains the motives for such a practice by the fact that the emperors
had essentially been situated outside the society over which they presided, and
had opportunities to indulge their monstrous, as the scholar says, cravings to the
full. Moreover, due to their special position, emperors constituted a unique phe-
nomenon – a kind of social anomaly – which attracted human monstrosities as
having a similar status in the society. According to this explanation, the emperor
was also a monster, and therefore he favored the company of other monsters.397
Although ancient historians who wrote the Roman emperors’ biographies cer-
tainly did not avoid a dose of exaggeration when presenting them usually as real
monsters, their reports, however, seem to reflect to some extent the actual ten-
dencies of those times. Thus, the emerging portrait gallery of the rulers of Rome
as enthusiasts of human oddities, from the pages of history, is indeed terrifying.
Interestingly, the first Roman who is said by Pliny to have possessed a kind of
museum with life-sized models of curiosities of human biology was Pompey the
Great (106–48 BC):
Pompey the Great placed among the decorations of his theatre the statues of renowned
marvels, sculpted for this purpose with particular attention by the virtuosity of leading
artists. Among them can be read the name of Eutychis, who was carried to her funeral

394 Garland (1995): 45ff.

395 Ibid.: 46–48; Barton (1993): 86ff.
396 See, e.g. Barton (1993): passim; Garland (1995): passim; Hardie (2009): passim.
397 Garland (1995): 45ff.

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 pyre in Tralles by twenty children, having given birth thirty times; and of Alcippe, who
gave birth to an elephant.398

As we can see, Pompey was also interested in marvels similar to those de-
scribed by Phlegon in the Mirabilia. His collection was an ancient prototype
and equivalent of Madame Tussauds gallery, but instead of having models of
famous artists and politicians it displayed statues of record-breakers in the field
of human biology.
Augustus, the first emperor, although known for his passion for the various
wonders of nature, architecture and art, is described by Suetonius (Aug. 83) as
having an abhorrence of dwarfs, cripples and everything of this kind, and re-
garding them as freaks of nature and evil omens. If this was true, then it would
indicate that the old belief in the prodigious nature of deformed and abnormal
creatures was still alive even among some members of the elite. On the other
hand, as Pliny (7.75) notes, a dwarf called Conopas, the smallest man of his times,
being two feet and a palm (0.66 m) in height, was the pet of Augustus’ grand-
daughter Julia, and had a wife called Andromeda, a freedwoman of Julia Augusta,
the emperor’s wife.
Despite his alleged aversion to the deformed, Augustus was the first ruler who
set a fashion for the wonders collections for later Roman emperors. Suetonius
(Aug. 72.3) reports that he decorated his own villas with objects noteworthy for
their antiquity and rarity; among which were the monstrous bones of huge sea
monsters and wild beasts, called the “bones of the giants”, and the weapons of
heroes. Augustus was evidently curious and interested in marvels as well, as Sue-
tonius describes him further:
[…] if anything rare and worth seeing was ever brought to the city, it was his habit to
make a special exhibit of it in any convenient place on days when no shows were ap-
pointed. For example, a rhinoceros in the Saepta, a tiger on the stage and a snake of fifty
cubits in front of the Comitium.399

Furthermore, he is said (Suet. Aug. 43.3) to have employed people of respectable

birth in scenic and gladiatorial performances, by the time it was forbidden by a

398 Plin. NH 7.34: Pompeius Magnus in ornamentis theatri mirabiles fama posuit ef-
figies, ob id diligentius magnorum artificum ingeniis elaboratas, inter quas legitur
Eutychis a XX liberis rogo inlata Trallibus, enixa XXX partus, Alcippe elephantum;
transl. Beagon (2005).
399 Suet. Aug. 43.4: […] si quando quid invisitatum dignumque cognitu advectum esset,
id extra ordinem quolibet loco publicare, ut rhinocerotem apud Saepta, tigrim in
scaena, anguem quinquaginta cubitorum pro Comitio; transl. J. C. Rolfe.

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decree of the senate. Whereupon he once made an exception for a young man
named Lycius, whom he showed merely as a curiosity, for the individual was less
than two feet tall (less than 0.6 m), weighed seventeen pounds (5.6 kg), and yet
had a stentorian voice.
The fad for imperial monster collections came to Rome from the Ptolemaic
court in Egypt,400 where confidential positions were assigned to ugly dwarfs. Sue-
tonius (Tib. 61.6) reports that Tiberius, Augustus’ successor, had many dwarfs
at his court; one of them, who was apparently licensed for foolery, once loudly
asked the emperor during a banquet, standing beside the table among the jest-
ers, why Paconius, who had been accused of treason, remained alive for so long.
The dwarf was evidently alluding to the inevitable execution of those who were
charged with such an offence during the reign of this emperor. At the party Tibe-
rius reprimanded him for his impertinence; a few days later, however, he wrote to
the senate with an order to decide immediately about the execution of Paconius.
Suetonius (Dom. 4.2) reports that at every gladiatorial spectacle Domitian was
attended by a small boy dressed in scarlet with an abnormally minute head and
used to talk with him, sometimes even on serious topics. Once, adds Suetonius,
Tiberius was overheard to ask the boy if he knew why he had decided to make
Mettius Rufus the prefect of Egypt on the last appointment day.
Tacitus mentions that Claudius, who, before he became emperor, used to be-
guile the dullness of his leisure with the company of jesters, was intimate with
Julius Pelignus, a governor of Cappadocia, who was a man despised both for his
stupid mind and ridiculous look.401
About Nero the historian says:
[Nero] rested awhile at Beneventum, where a crowded gladiatorial show was being ex-
hibited by Vatinius. The man was one of the most conspicuously infamous sights in the
imperial court, bred, as he had been, in a shoemaker’s shop, of a deformed person and
vulgar wit, originally introduced as a butt. After a time he grew so powerful by accusing
all the best men, that in influence, wealth, and ability to injure, he was pre-eminent even
in that bad company.402

400 On the great Egyptian influence on Roman culture, especially on religion and art,
see de Vos (1980); de Vos (1991); Ashton (2004); Platt (2009).
401 Tac. Ann. 12.49: ignavia animi et deridiculo corporis iuxta despiciendus.
402 Tac. Ann. 15.34: [Nero] apud Beneventum interim consedit, ubi gladiatorium munus
a Vatinio celebre edebatur. Vatinius inter foedissima eius aulae ostenta fuit, sutrinae
tabernae alumnus, corpore detorto, facetiis scurrilibus; primo in contumelias ad-
sumptus, dehinc optimi cuiusque criminatione eo usque valuit ut gratia pecunia vi
nocendi etiam malos praemineret; transl. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb.

158
Domitian, in turn, possessed a blind informer, Catullus Messalinus, described by
Juvenal as “a powerful and notable monster even as for our times”;403 his words
are a significant testimony to the ubiquity of monsters in that age. As for Catullus
Messalinus, this figure went down in history as a real monster, since Juvenal talks
about him further:
[…] a blind flatterer, a dire courtier from a beggar’s stand, well fitted to beg at the wheels
of chariots and blow soft kisses to them as they rolled down the Arician hill. None mar-
velled more at the fish than he, turning to the left as he spoke; only the creature hap-
pened to be on his right. In like fashion would he commend the thrusts of a Cilician
gladiator, or the machine which whisks up the boys into the awning.404

Also, Pliny the Younger writes about this man in his letter to Sempronius Rufus:
The conversation turned upon Catullus Messalinus, who was blind, and had that curse
to bear in addition to his savage disposition. He was void of fear, shame, and pity, and on
that account Domitian often used him as a tool for the destruction of the best men in the
State, just as though he were a dart urging on its blind and sightless course. All at table
were speaking of this man’s villainy and bloody counsels, when the Emperor [Trajan]
himself said: “I wonder what his fate would be if he were alive to-day,” to which Mauricus
replied, “He would be dining with us”.405

According to the Historia Augusta, the Emperor Commodus also had monsters
at his disposal:
[He] kept among his minions certain men named after the private parts of both sexes,
and on these he liked to bestow kisses. He also had in his company a man with a male
member larger than that of most animals, whom he called Onos. This man he treated

403 Iuv. 4.115: grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum.

404 Iuv. 4.116–122: […] caecus adulator dirusque – a ponte – satelles, / dignus Aricinos
qui mendicaret ad axes / blandaque devexae iactaret basia raedae. / nemo magis
rhombum stupuit; nam plurima dixit / in laevum conversus, at illi dextra iacebat /
belua. sic pugnas Cilicis laudabat et ictus / et pegma et pueros inde ad velaria raptos;
transl. G. G. Ramsay.
405 Plin. Epist. 4.22.5–6: incidit sermo de Catullo Messalino, qui luminibus orbatus inge-
nio saevo mala caecitatis addiderat: non verebatur, non erubescebat, non miserebatur;
quo saepius a Domitiano non secus ac tela, quae et ipsa caeca et improvida feruntur,
in optimum quemque contorquebatur. de huius nequitia sanguinariisque sententiis
in commune omnes super cenam loquebantur, cum ipse imperator: ‘quid putamus
passurum fuisse si viveret?’ et Mauricus: ‘nobiscum cenaret’; transl. J. B. Firth.

159
 with great affection, and even made him rich and appointed him to the priesthood of
the Rural Hercules.406

The emperor is also said (HA, Commod. 11.2) to have presented at a dinner party
two deformed hunchbacks who had been smeared with mustard on a silver plat-
ter, and after the show he made them rich and increased their social status.
The fad for living human monstrosities reached its nadir under the reign of
the Emperor Elagabalus, who possessed such a large collection of deformed indi-
viduals that his successor Alexander Severus decided to get rid of them in order
to save his treasury. In the life of Alexander Severus in the Historia Augusta we
are told that:
All the dwarfs, both male and female, fools, catamites who had good voices, all kinds of
entertainers at table, and actors of pantomimes he made public property; those, however,
who were not of any use were assigned, each to a different town, for support, in order
that no one town might be burdened by a new kind of beggars. The eunuchs, whom
Elagabalus had had in his base councils and had promoted, he presented to his friends,
adding a statement to the effect that if they did not return to honest ways, it should be
lawful to put them to death without authority from the courts. Women of ill repute, of
whom he arrested an enormous number, he ordered to become public prostitutes, and
he deported all catamites, some of them, with whom that scourge had carried on a most
pernicious intimacy, being drowned by shipwreck.407

As we could see earlier, also Hadrian, under whom Phlegon lived, was omnium
curiositatum explorator408: Mir. 34 reports that an embalmed hippocentaur was
displayed in the emperor’s storehouse. Yet, since Hadrian traveled extensively,409
his secretary Phlegon most likely accompanied him; the compiler had many

406 HA, Commod. 10.8–9: habuit in deliciis homines appellatos nominibus verendo-
rum utriusque sexus, quos libentius suis osculis applicabat. habuit et hominem pene
prominente ultra modum animalium, quem Onon appellabat, sibi carissimum. quem
et ditavit et sacerdotio Herculis rustici praeposuit; transl. D. Magie.
407 HA, Alex. Sev. 34.2–4: nanos et nanas et moriones et vocales exsoletos et omnia
acroamata et pantomimos populo donavit; qui autem usui non erant singulis civita-
tibus putavit alendos singulos, ne gravarentur specie mendicorum. eunuchos, quos
Heliogabalus et in consiliis turpibus habebat et promovebat, donavit amicis addito
elogio, ut, si non redissent ad bonos mores, eosdem liceret occidi sine auctoritate
iudicii. mulieres infames, quarum infinitum numerum deprehenderat, publicari ius-
sit, exsoletis omnibus deportatis, aliquibus etiam naufragio mersis, cum quibus illa
clades consuetudinem habuerat funestissimam; transl. D. Magie.
408 Tert. Apol. 5.7.
409 On Hadrian’s travels, see esp. Birley (1997): passim.

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opportunities to study and admire marvels in various parts of the imperium.410
Traces of his travels at the side of the emperor may be found in Mir. 9, where the
compiler claims to have seen with his own eyes a woman called Aetete who had
changed sex and, consequently, also her name to Aetetus. According to Phlegon,
the alleged marvel happened in AD 116 in the city Laodicea in Syria.
The social position of the emperor was inversely mirrored in the position of
the deformed, as they both constituted a “social anomaly”, to use Robert Gar-
land’s words;411 and therefore “monsters and emperors […] gravitated inevitably
towards each other. Indeed their exclusion from the world of able-bodied made
the deformed ideal companions and confidants of emperors”.412
The scholar observes that the emperor himself constituted a kind of mon-
ster due to his excessive power and singular status. The power of life and death
was too monstrous, claims Garland,413 referring to Tacitus, who says that already
under Augustus people “stripped of equality, all looked up to the commands of
a sovereign”.414 The autocracy, as presented by ancient historians, was usually
abused by the emperors; for instance, Suetonius (Aug. 67.2) reports that Augus-
tus ordered that an entrusted slave be punished by breaking his legs since the lat-
ter had accepted a bribe to reveal the contents of a confidential letter. Galen (Aff.
dig. 5.17–18 Kühn) recounts that once angered Hadrian stabbed a slave in the eye
with a stylus. Later, when he cooled down he asked the slave to choose a gift as
compensation, but the latter replied that all he wanted was his eye back. However,
Commodus appeared definitely to be the cruelest, since, according to HA:
In his passion for cruelty he actually ordered the votaries of Bellona to cut off one of
their arms, and as for the devotees of Isis, he forced them to beat their breasts with pine-
cones even to the point of death. While he was carrying about the statue of Anubis, he
used to smite the heads of the devotees of Isis with the face of the statue. He struck with
his club, while clad in a woman’s garment or a lion’s skin, not lions only, but many men as
well. Certain men who were lame in their feet and others who could not walk, he dressed
up as giants, encasing their legs from the knee down in wrappings and bandages to make
them look like serpents, and then dispatched them with his arrows.415

410 Such a conclusion emerges from the fragments of Phlegon’s Olympiads, of which two
books – 15 and 16 – are devoted to Hadrian’s reign.
411 Garland (1995): 48.
412 Ibid.: 49.
413 Ibid.: 51.
414 Tac. Ann. 1.4: omnes exuta aequalitate iussa principis aspectare; transl. A. J. Church
and W. J. Brodribb.
415 HA, Commod. 9.5–6: Bellonae servientes vere exsecare bracchium praecepit studio
crudelitatis. Isiacos vere pineis usque ad perniciem pectus tundere cogebat. cum

161
Furthermore, the emperor is portrayed as a real sadist who takes pleasure in
inflicting suffering:
In his humorous moments, too, he was destructive. For example, he put a starling on the
head of one man who, as he noticed, had a few white hairs, resembling worms, among the
black, and caused his head to fester through the continual pecking of the bird’s beak —
the bird, of course, imagining that it was pursuing worms. One corpulent person he cut
open down the middle of his belly, so that his intestines gushed forth. Other men he
dubbed one-eyed or one-footed, after he himself had plucked out one of their eyes or
cut off one of their feet.416

Tiberius, in turn, according to Suetonius (Tib. 61.2), would not interrupt his ex-
ecutions on sacred days, not even for the New Year.
As it emerges from the sources, even Hadrian, Phlegon’s master, who was usu-
ally represented as an educated and relatively gentle emperor, did not refrain
from cruelty. Due to their exceptional position, the emperors became embodied
monsters provided with monstrous power and displaying monstrous cravings,
which resulted in their monstrous behavior.

Monsters for Sale, Monsters on Display: Deformed Slaves

The trends promoted by the emperors pervaded the upper strata of the Roman
society, since deformed slaves came into vogue also in the households of rich
and well-to-do Romans, where they were kept for their masters’ amusement and
pleasure.
But for the Romans, collectables were not confined to inanimate objects. Hu-
mans too who had unusual characteristics were also sold to collectors for the
pleasuer of their owners.417

Anubim portaret, capita Isiacorum graviter obtundebat ore simulacri. clava non
solum leones in veste muliebri et pelle leonina sed etiam homines multos adflixit.
debiles pedibus et eos, qui ambulare non possent, in gigantum modum formavit,
ita ut a genibus de pannis et linteis quasi dracones tegerentur, eosdemque sagittis
confecit; transl. D. Magie.
416 HA, Commod. 10.4–6: in iocis quoque perniciosus. nam eum, quem vidisset albes-
centes inter nigros capillos quasi vermiculos habere, sturno adposito, qui se vermes
sectari crederet, capite suppuratum reddebat obtunsione oris. pinguem hominem
medio ventre dissicuit, ut eius intestina subito funderentur. monopodios et luscinios
eos, quibus aut singulos tulisset oculos aut singulos pedes fregisset, appellabat; transl.
D. Magie.
417 Laurence (2009): 149.

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 As was mentioned above, the Emperor Augustus’ wife as well as his grand-
daughter possessed dwarfs for entertainment (Plin. NH 7.75). Martial (3.82) de-
scribes a certain Zoilus, an extremely pretentious rich man, who was assisted at a
dinner party by a catamite who supplied him with red feathers to vomit, as well
as by a eunuch who held his master’s penis and pointed it into the chamber pot
when he was urinating. In another epigram (7.38), he says that a certain Severus
had a slave called Polyphemus who was so huge and ugly that even the Cyclopes
would wonder at him, and his frightening appearance equaled that of Scylla.
Interestingly, even Seneca’s wife possessed an expensive female dwarf by the
name of Harpaste, of whom the philosopher informed his friend Lucilius with
disapproval:
You know Harpaste, my wife’s female clown; she has remained in my house, a burden
incurred from a legacy. I particularly disapprove of these freaks; whenever I wish to
enjoy the quips of a clown, I am not compelled to hunt far; I can laugh at myself. Now
this clown suddenly became blind. The story sounds incredible, but I assure you that it is
true: she does not know that she is blind. She keeps asking her attendant to change her
quarters; she says that her apartments are too dark.418

Trimalchio from Petronius’ Satyricon owned, apart from eunuchs, a favorite

slave, “a wrinkled blear-eyed boy uglier than his master Trimalchio” (Sat. 28.5,
transl. M. Heseltine), who likely got into this position due to his ugliness.
Robert Garland observes that their disability made cretins ideal candidates
for accomplices in illegal love affairs, as is shown in one of Martial’s epigrams, in
which an adulterous pair uses a cretinous slave to pass back and forth kisses to
each other:
Fabulla has found out a way to kiss her lover in the presence of her husband. She has a
little fool whom she kisses over and over again, when the lover immediately seizes him
while he is still wet with the multitude of kisses, and sends him back forthwith, charged
with his own to his smiling mistress. How much greater a fool is the husband than the
professed fool!419

418 Sen. Epist. 50.2: Harpasten, uxoris meae fatuam, scis hereditarium onus in domo mea
remansisse. ipse enim aversissimus ab istis prodigiis sum; si quando fatuo delectari
volo, non est mihi longe quaerendus: me rideo. haec fatua subito desiit videre. in-
credibilem rem tibi narro, sed veram: nescit esse se caecam; subinde paedagogum
suum rogat ut migret, ait domum tenebricosam esse; transl. R. M. Gummere.
419 Mart.12.93: qua moechum ratione basiaret / coram coniuge, repperit Fabulla. /
parvum basiat usque morionem; / hunc multis rapit osculis madentem / moechus
protinus et suis repletum / ridenti dominae statim remittit. / quanto morio maior est
maritus; transl. H. G. Bohn. See Garland (1995): 46.

163
As I said earlier, this increased interest in human oddities is proven by Plutarch
(Curios. 520c), who mentions that in Rome there existed a very particular place –
the monstrosities market (τεράτων ἀγορά) – where among deformed slaves
who had been put up for sale one could find people who either had no calves,
had three eyes, or were ostrich-headed or weasel-armed. Plutarch called the cus-
tomers and visitors of this market “the curious” (πολυπράγμονες) who, not
interested at all in purchasing beautiful girls and boys sold at the conventional
slave markets, frequented instead a market specialized in the freaks trade.
Due to the growing demand for oddities, bizarre slaves fetched exorbitant
prices. According to Quintilian (Inst. 2.5.11), for some people deformed bodies
were more valuable than normal ones (distortis et quocumque modo prodigiosis
corporibus apud quosdam maius est pretium quam iis, quae nihil ex communis
habitus bonis perdiderunt), which seems to indicate that the former were sold at
higher prices than the latter. Quintilian’s evidence is confirmed by Martial, who
in one of his epigrams (8.13) refers to a person who complains that he recently
paid the vast sum of 20.000 sesterces for a slave advertized by the dealer Gar-
gilianus as a genuine idiot (morio), whereas the servant appeared to be by no
means a fool. In another epigram, Martial describes in turn a morio which seems
to be genuine fool:
His folly is not feigned, or assumed by cunning art. Whoever is not more than wise
enough, is wise.420

The question arises whether the epigram alludes to the gloomy practice of ar-
tificial production of deformed slaves for commercial purposes. Some scholars
claim that such a practice might have been perpetrated,421 evidence for this is
so weak, however, that such a fact seems dubious;422 it is based mostly on a pas-
sage in Longinus (Subl. 44.5), who vaguely mentioned that the Pygmies, com-
monly called νᾶνοι (dwarfs), were kept in cages (γλωττόκομα; literally the word
means ‘a case to keep the reeds or tongues of musical instruments’, see LSJ s.v.
γλωσσοκομεῖον), which not only hindered their growth but also attenuated them
through the bonds that beset their bodies. The author, however, admits that he
does not know if this is true, and does not make it precise if the practice was
perpetrated in the Greco-Roman world by Roman slave-dealers or outside its

420 Mart. 14.210: non mendax stupor est nec fingitur arte dolosa. / quisquis plus iusto
non sapit, ille sapit; transl. H. G. Bohn.
421 See e.g. Dasen (1993): 248.
422 Garland (1995): 47.

164
boundaries. It is therefore difficult to conclude from such a fuzzy passage that the
Romans went so far as to artificially produce deformed slaves.
Yet, as one may expect, the great popularity of monstrosities and bizarre phe-
nomena inevitably led to various frauds, of which evidence is to be found in
Martial as cited above (8.13 and 14.210) as well as in Pliny, who quotes a story
about a forgery of this kind:
The slave-dealer Toranius sold to Mark Antony after he became triumvir two exceed-
ingly handsome boys, one of whom had been born in Asia and the other north of the
Alps. Yet they were so alike that he marketed them as twins. Later on, when the boys’
speech had eventually given his game away, he was upbraided by a furious Antony, who
complained especially about the enormous price he had had to pay (two hundred thou-
sand sesterces in fact). The cunning dealer replied that he had charged such a large sum
precisely because, although there was nothing remarkable about resemblances between
a pair of true twins, the discovery of such a degree of similarity between two children
of different nationalities was of inestimable value. And so successfully did he instill a
suitable sense of amazement in Antony, that the mind behind the proscriptions, which
a moment earlier had been seething with insults, now became convinced that no other
possession was more appropriate to his status.423

The story also proves that bizarre human phenomena could have been extremely
expensive, which was likely due to the fact that the survival of individuals with
birth abnormalities was, as Ray Laurence claims, a truly rare occurrence, since
in the absence of modern medical intervention their life expectancy was very
low.424
Garland observes another interesting fact, namely that the human monstrosi-
ties were for many an object of sexual desire and were purchased to submit to
their owners’ sexual demands.425 The most extreme example of such a phenom-
enon is to be found in Pliny:

423 Plin. NH 7.56: Toranius mango Antonio iam triumviro eximios forma pueros, alterum
in Asia genitum, alterum trans Alpis, ut geminos vendidit: tanta unitas erat. postquam
deinde sermone puerorum detecta fraude a furente increpitus Antonio est, inter alia
magnitudinem preti conquerente (nam ducentis erat mercatus sestertiis), respondit
versutus ingenii mango, id ipsum se tanti vendidisse, quoniam non esset mira simili-
tudo in ullis eodem utero editis; diversarum quidem gentium natales tam concordi
figura reperire super omnem esse taxationem; adeoque tempestivam admirationem
intulit, ut ille proscriptor animus, modo et contumelia furens, non aliud in censu
magis ex fortuna sua duceret; transl. Beagon (2005).
424 Laurence (2009): 6–7.
425 Garland (1995): 52–54.

165
 There are persons, too, who are not ashamed to give for one a sum equal to the salary
of a military tribune, although, as its name indicates, its only use is to hold a lighted
candle. On the sale of one of these lamp-stands, Theon the public crier announced, that
the purchaser must also take, as part of the lot, one Clesippus, a fuller, who was hump-
backed, and in other respects, of a hideous aspect. The purchase was made by a female
named Gegania, for fifty thousand sesterces. Upon her exhibiting these purchases at an
entertainment which she gave, the slave, for the amusement of her guests, was brought in
naked. Conceiving an infamous passion for him, she first admitted him to her bed, and
finally left him all her estate. Having thus become excessively rich, he adored the lamp-
stand as much as any divinity, and the story became a sort of pendant to the celebrity of
the Corinthian lamp-stands. Still, however, good morals were vindicated in the end, for
he erected a splendid monument to her memory, and so kept alive the eternal remem-
brance of the misconduct of Gegania.426

As it appears, deformed slaves played various roles in the households of rich

Romans. They functioned as domestic pets, serving for entertainment, as well as
a symbol of the power, refinement and richness of their owners, and, sometimes,
as sexual gadgets. Undoubtedly, they also had a decorative function which made
them resemble works of art that are displayed to be admired and contemplated:
in the place of beauty, however, they offered a different esthetic value, i.e. their
unusual appearance, embodying perverted esthetics that satisfied the perverted
tastes of those times. In the wealthiest houses, whose masters could have afforded
to purchase many deformed slaves, instead of or along with a sculpture or paint-
ing gallery they constituted a sort of living gallery of monstrosities.
Scholars proposed different explanations for the origins of the vogue for col-
lecting human oddities in the Roman Empire; Robert Garland assumes it was
“prompted by ennui on a massive scale, combined with a perverse and seemingly
inexhaustible appetite for the exotic and bizarre”.427 The popularity of deformed
entities might also have been caused by the fact that such persons were believed
to be endowed with supernatural powers and were capable of averting evil from

426 Plin. NH 34.6: nec pudet tribunorum militarium salariis emere, cum ipsum nomen a
candelarum lumine inpositum appareat. accessio candelabri talis fuit Theonis iussu
praeconis Clesippus fullo gibber et praeterea et alio foedus aspectu, emente id Ga-
gania eadem ostentante in convivio empta ludibrii causa nudatus atque inpudentia
libidinis receptus in torum, mox in testamentum, praedives numinum vice illud
candelabrum coluit et hanc Corinthiis fabulam adiecit, vindicatis tamen moribus
nobili sepulchro, per quod aeterna supra terras Geganiae dedecoris memoria duraret;
transl. J. Bostock and H. T. Riley.
427 Garland (1995): 45.

166
their owners.428 This opinion is shared by Carlin A. Barton (1993: 168), who as-
serts that human monstrosities could have served as amulets against the evil eye:
Augustus had his Gabba; Domitian, his pinhead; Trajan, his Capitolinus. Emperors, aris-
tocrats, and other prominent people who surrounded themselves with grotesques, fools,
and clowns, did so, in part, to protect themselves […].429

Barton refers to a passage in Plutarch, who describes amulets called προβασκάνια:

And therefore people imagine that those amulets that are preservative [προβασκάνιον]
against witchcraft are likewise good and efficacious against envy; the sight by the
strangeness [ἀτοπία] of the spectacle being diverted, so that it cannot make so strong
an impression upon the patient.430

These amulets were believed to offer protection against envy by diverting or

catching the evil malicious gaze due to their odd appearance (ἀτοπία – ab-
surdity, singularity, strangeness). According to the scholar, a similar function
may have been assigned to human oddities. This question, however, requires a
separate study, whereas my aim was to give a brief sketch of the socio-cultural
background of the Mirabilia, since doubtless the fad for monstrosity influenced
Phlegon in his choice of the subject of his compilation. Now, in order to complete
the image, I will briefly discuss the generic affiliation of Phlegon’s work.

Monstrous Literature: Paradoxographers and Others

Phlegon’s Mirabilia certainly did not spring from nowhere: the ancient literary
tradition of writing about monsters is long and rich. Steven Asma aptly summa-
rizes the genres which dealt with the topic of the monster:
Monsters and fabulous beasts like Cyclopes generally originate in the myths and legends
of poetry and allegory. Homer and Hesiod are probably the earliest fountains of West-
ern monster archetypes (e.g., chimeras, Cerberus, Hydra, Minotaur). But these literary
creatures evolve and new species are added to the list in popular tales of travelers. As
explorers, soldiers, and traders penetrated strange lands, they absorbed local legends
and encountered unfamiliar creatures, bringing all this back to urban Greece and Rome.
Additionally, around the time of Herodotus, travel stories and myths were taken up
by emerging writers of natural history, a budding science of description. These three

428 Ibid.
429 Barton (1993): 168.
430 Plut. Quaest. conv., Mor. 681f–682a: διὸ καὶ τὸ τῶν λεγομένων προβασκανίων γένος
οἴονται πρὸς τὸν φθόνον ὠφελεῖν ἑλκομένης διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς ὄψεως, ὥσθ’ ἧττον
ἐπερείδειν τοῖς πάσχουσιν.

167
 literatures of monsters and beasts – poetry, travel tales, and natural history – continued
to feed each other all the way down to the seventeenth century.431

Asma mentions three genres which took interest in monsters: epic poems, travel
stories and natural history writings. There is another genre, tightly connected
with the last one, that needs to be added to the list: paradoxography, which the
Mirabilia belong to. In general, this genre deals with the occurrence of abnormal
or inexplicable phenomena of the natural or human world. It is said to have been
invented in Hellenistic times by the poet Callimachus, who composed a treatise
which manifested his overall idea and maxim of “singing of nothing unattested”
(fr. 612 Pfeiffer).432 The work, whose title cannot be established, was likely a col-
lection of material gathered by the poet. Callimachus had many followers among
his contemporaries as well as among later authors, who created compilations on
wondrous facts, such as Philostephanus, who wrote a treatise On Strange Rivers
(lost), or Antigonus of Carystus (3rd century BC), known as the author of A Col-
lection of Strange Stories (Ἱστοριῶν παραδόξων συναγωγή), or Apollonius, who
composed Wondrous Stories (Ἱστορίαι θαυμάσιαι). These works are compilations
of either shorter or longer entries concerning unusual facts from the animated
and non-animated natural world, mostly animal- and water-mirabilia and some-
times human biology.433 The Romans were also interested in paradoxographi-
cal works: authors such as Cicero or Varro composed similar treatises, although
both of them are now lost.
It would be wonderful to compare Phlegon’s work with other paradoxograph-
ical writings from imperial times; this is, however, impossible due to the fact
that most of these works have not survived. As for the Greek paradoxographers,
besides Phlegon we know only the name of Protagoras, a geographer of the 2nd
or 3rd century AD whose work on paradoxical facts of the oikumene is referred to
by Photius (Bibl., cod. 189, p. 145b). There is also a compilation, titled On Won-
drous Rumors (Περὶ θαυμασίων ἀκουσμάτων), which was transmitted under the
name of Aristotle, but since the 16th century it has no longer been attributed to
him; its content for the main part is dated to the 3rd century BC,434 although its
final redaction even to the 2nd century AD.435 Tellingly, although it is obvious that
Phlegon is deeply rooted in this tradition, none of the stricte paradoxographical

431 Asma (2009): 27.

432 Wenskus (2007).
433 Ibid.
434 Ibid.
435 Schepens, Delcroix (1996): 427.

168
writings known to us is paralleled to his work with respect to content, since none
of them, unlike Phlegon’s Mirabilia, is devoted exlusively to human oddities, al-
though many sometimes refer to monstrous phenomena in the animal world.
Phlegon has much more in common with an author whose literary output can-
not be labeled paradoxographical, but the content of some of its parts is similar
or even identical with that of the Mirabilia. This author is Pliny the Elder, whose
great work, Historia naturalis, which was published most likely in the seventies
of the 1st century AD, collected much of the knowledge of his age encompassing
such fields as botany, zoology, astronomy, geology, and many others. Book 7 of
Pliny’s work is devoted to human monstrosities which coincide with Phlegon’s
compilation in entire passages that concern multiple or monstrous births, her-
maphrodites, giant bones, amazingly fast maturation, revenants, etc.; we cannot
rule out the possibility that Pliny was Phlegon’s direct inspiration. Doubtless,
they both nourished the oral tradition, as Robert Garland aptly observes:
Reports of persons exhibiting extreme deformity were widely circulated in the classical
world and constituted an oral tradition of enduring popularity which transcended both
local and national boundaries. […] In the Roman world human oddities appear to have
been a matter of public record and were duly inscribed in annals even when they did
not constitute portents.436

The scholar refers only to Pliny, who proves such records of human oddities to
have existed in a passage which is otherwise significant and rich in the context
of our great interest:
The body of Orestes, exhumed on the orders of an oracle, was seven cubits [approx.
3.1 m] tall if the records are to be believed. And indeed, nearly a thousand years ago,
the great poet Homer never ceased to bemoan the small stature of his contemporaries
compared to the men of old. The records do not tell us how tall Naevius Pollio was, but
he was clearly thought to be a prodigy since he was almost crushed to death by crowds
of sightseers.437

Such annals and records as mentioned by Pliny were the sources for his compila-
tion, and likely Phlegon’s too in his work on the Mirabilia. The relationship with

436 Garland (1995): 56.

437 Plin. NH 7.74: Orestis corpus oraculi iussu refossum VII cubitorum fuisse monumen-
tis creditur. iam vero ante annos prope mille vates ille Homerus non cessavit minora
corpora mortalium quam prisca conqueri. Naevii Pollionis amplitudinem annales
non tradunt, sed quia populi concursu paene sit interemptus, vice prodigii habitum;
transl. Beagon (2005).

169
the oral tradition is unquestionable, although it is especially noticeable in the
parts concerning revenants, as was shown earlier.
However, Pliny’s perspective is much wider: book 7 which deals with human
monsters is only a part of his vast encyclopedic work which in total consists of
thirty-seven books purporting to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge;
thus Historia Naturalis’ generic affiliation is revealed in its title, defining it as a
natural history and thus its aim is to be mostly scientific. And although in book
7 unusual phenomena are quoted with evident relish, the entire work also re-
veals interest in many other issues, whereas Phlegon is focused exclusively on
extraordinary phenomena related to the human body as if he wished only to
surprise the reader and to draw his attention by reporting the most marvelous
occurrences. Compared to Pliny, Phlegon appears to be an author whose aim was
merely entertainment, and for that reason he is labeled a paradoxographer.
Such a distinction between both authors and between natural history and
paradoxography is largely true. Nita Krevans, when briefly characterizing the
paradoxographers, aptly claims that “their aim is not the satisfied ‘aha!’ of under-
standing but the round-eyed ‘oh!’ of wonder”;438 Philip Hardie, when comment-
ing on paradoxographical writings, says that “the response called forth from the
reader of these ‘wonder books’ is primarily one of pleasurable amazement, rather
than an incentive to understanding”.439 Both quotations can for good be applied
to Phlegon’s work, which is no doubt a paradoxographical one. However, I would
refrain from considering Phlegon merely an author who seeks pure sensation.
The content of his work, although superficially merely sensational, also has a
deeper meaning as it expresses the author’s perhaps unconscious anxiety about
the condition of the human species, which may be interpreted as a reflection of
a man who lived in the monstrous world of the Roman Empire. Thus, although
Phlegon’s work refers to the paradoxographical tradition, especially via form and
overall idea of collecting extraordinary facts, it refreshes the old form with new
content that better reflects the specific ambience of the author’s times.

Conclusions
At first sight the Mirabilia do not request anything from their reader and merely
provide amusement by offering a fascinating reading which consists of accounts
larded with the grotesque, bizarre and sensational. At the same time the text re-
mains silent, as it has been almost entirely deprived of any commentary; the

438 Krevans (2005): 86–96.

439 Hardie (2008): 14–15.

170
interpretation of strange facts is thus demanded from the reader. These facts are
indeed so odd that, I believe, they always provoke remarks such as “That’s funny!”,
“That’s so weird!”, “What nonsense!” or “Unbelievable!”, but leave nobody indif-
ferent; and they do so also because they concern quite serious matters. Thus,
briefly, I as both a reader and interpreter of the compilation think that Phle-
gon’s aim, i.e. his conscious one, was to amuse and astonish his readers by offer-
ing them a collection of monsters that consisted entirely of extraordinary and
unique cases that referred to the most extreme human phenomena; his other
aim, perhaps an unconscious one, was to raise fundamental questions about the
borderlines between life and death, male and female, human and animal, and, in
general, about the further continuation of the human species.
Phlegon was a man of his times who lived in a monstrous world where every-
body watched, admired, displayed or talked about monsters. He breathed in this
atmosphere, especially as he was a member of the imperial court, from which the
fad for monstrosities had spread. Even if there is no special evidence regarding
Hadrian, Phlegon’s master, the tradition of imperial human oddities collections
had already been well established; monsters constituted an element of the every-
day life of the Roman citizen, at least one from the upper class.
The compilation is therefore yet another manifestation of the fashion for
monsters: it may be regarded as a paper (or, originally, a papyrus) equivalent of
the oddities collections at the imperial court and in rich Romans’ households.
But, above all, the Mirabilia recorded a reality in which monsters proliferated.
Phlegon’s work is a manifestation of the paradoxical yet very human combina-
tion of a fascination with and awe of the monster, which was quite a typical at-
titude to such an ambiguous and unclassifiable phenomenon that was most likely
also shared by the author’s contemporaries. I believe Phlegon should have titled
his Mirabilia simply Monstra or, as he would have preferred, Περὶ τεράτων in-
stead of Περὶ θαυμασίων.

171
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Editions of Phlegon’s Mirabilia

Xylander = Antonini Liberalis Transformationum congeries. Phlegontis de mi-
rabilibus et longaevis libellus […], ed. Guilielmus Xylander [Wilhelm Holtz-
mann], Basileae 1568, pp. 69–97.
Meursius = Phlegontis Tralliani, quae extant, opuscula, ed. Ioannes Meursius
[Johan van Meurs], Lugduni Batavorum 1620.
Franz = Phlegontis Tralliani opuscula Graece et Latine, ed. Johann Georg Frie-
drich Franz, Halae Magdeburgicae 1775 (2nd ed. 1822).
Westermann = Παραδοξογράφοι. Scriptores rerum mirabilium Graeci, ed.
A. Westermann, Brunsvigae – Londini 1839 (2nd ed. 1963), pp. 117–142.
Müller = Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, vol. 3, Parisiis 1849,
pp. 611–624.
Keller = Rerum naturalium scriptores Graeci minores, ed. O. Keller, vol. 1, Lipsiae
1877, pp. 57–84.
Jacoby = FGH, vol. 2b, Berlin 1929, pp. 1169–1196 [text]; vol. 2d, Berlin 1930,
pp. 845–848 [commentary].
Giannini = Paradoxographorum Graecorum reliquiae, ed. A. Giannini (Classici
greci e latini. Testi e commenti 3), Milano: Istituto Editoriale Italiano 1965,
pp. 169–219.

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Brodersen = Phlegon von Tralleis. Das Buch der Wunder, ed. and transl.
K. Brodersen (Texte zur Forschung 79), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft 2002.
Stramaglia = Phlegon Trallianus, Opuscula de rebus mirabilibus et de longaevis,
ed. A. Stramaglia (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teub-
neriana), Berlin – New York: De Gruyter 2010.

Translations without the Greek Text

Blandi = Flegone Tralliano, Dei mirabili, transl. S. Blandi, in: Storici minori volgar-
izzati ed illustrati, vol. 3, Milano 1829, pp. 55–209.
Braccini and Scorsone = Flegonte di Tralle, Il libro delle meraviglie e tutti i fram-
menti, transl. T. Braccini, M. Scorsone (Nuova Universale Enaudi), Torino:
Enaudi 2013.
Ferwerda = Phlegon van Tralles, Wonderbaarlijke verschijnselen – Mensen die
lang hebben geleefd – Olympiaden, transl. R. Ferwerda, Budel: Damon 1994.
Gómez Espelosín = F. J. Gómez Espelosín, Paradoxógrafos griegos. Rarezas y mar-
avillas, Madrid: Biblioteca Clásica Gredos 1996, pp. 165–195.
Hansen = W. Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels, Exeter: University of
Exeter Press 1996.

Editions of ancient authors

Aeschines: Eschine, Discours, ed. and transl. V. Martin, G. de Budé, vol. 2, Paris
1928.
Anthologia Palatina: Anthologia Graeca, ed. H. Beckby, 2nd ed., 4 vols., München:
Heimeran 1965–1968.
Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae: Aristophanis Fabulae, ed. N. G. Wilson (Oxford
Classical Texts), vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007.
Aristoteles, De generatione animalium: Aristotelis de generatione animalium, ed.
H. J. Drossaart Lulofs (Oxford Classical Texts), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.
Diodorus: Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, ed. and transl. F. R. Walton (Loeb
Classical Library), vols. 11–12, London: Heinemann – Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press 1957–1967.
Empedocles: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels, W. Kranz, 6th ed., vol. 1,
Berlin: Weidmann 1951.
Eusebius, Chronicle: Eusebii Chronicorum libri duo, ed. A. Schoene, J. H. Peter-
mann, 2 vols., Berlin 1866–1875.

187
Herodotus: Hérodote, Histoires, ed. P.-E. Legrand (Collection des Universités de
France. Série grecque), 9 vols., Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1932–1968.
HA: Historia Augusta, ed. and transl. D. Magie, vol. 1–2, London – New York
1921–1924.
Homer, Iliad: Homeri Ilias, ed. T. W. Allen, vols. 2–3. Oxford 1931.
Homer, Odyssey: Homeri Odyssea, ed. P. von der Mühll, Basileae: Helbing &
Lichtenhahn 1962.
Juvenal: D. Iunii Iuvenalis Saturae sedecim, ed. J. Willis, Stuttgardiae et Lipsiae:
Teubner 1997.
Livy, book 27: Titi Livi Ab urbe condita. Libri XXVI–XXVII, ed. P.G. Walsh
(Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), Lipsiae:
Teubner 1986.
Livy, book 31: Titi Livi Ab urbe condita. Libri XXXI–XL, ed. J. Briscoe (Biblio-
theca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), vol. 1, Stuttgar-
diae: Teubner 1991. Martial: Martial, Epigrams, ed. and transl. D. R. Shackleton
Bailey (Loeb Classical Library), 3 vols., Cambridge, Mass. – London: Harvard
University Press 1993.
Pausanias: Pausaniae Graeciae descriptio, ed. F. Spiro, 3 vols., Lipsiae 1903.
Philostratus, Vita Apollonii: Flavii Philostrati Opera auctiora, ed. C. L. Kayser, vol.
1, Lipsiae 1870.
Photius: Photius, Bibliothèque, ed. R. Henry (Collection des Universités de
France. Série grecque), 8 vols., Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1959–1977.
Plautus, Stichus: T. Macci Plauti Comoediae, ed. G. Goetz, F. Schoell., vol. 6,
Lipsiae 1896.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History: C. Plini Secundi Naturalis historiae libri XXXVII,
ed. L. Ian, C. Mayhoff, 5 vols., Lipsiae 1892–1909.
Pliny the Younger, Letters: C. Plini Caecili Secundi Epistolarum libri novem; Epis-
tolarum ad Traianum liber; Panegyricus, ed. M. Schuster, Lipsiae 1933.
Plutarch, De curiositate: ed. M. Pohlenz, Plutarchi Moralia, vol. 3, Lipsiae 1929.
Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales: ed. C. Hubert, Plutarchi Moralia, vol. 4, Lipsiae
1938.
Plutarch, Theseus: Plutarchi vitae parallelae, ed. K. Ziegler (Bibliotheca scripto-
rum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), vol. 1.1, Lipsiae: Teubner 1969.
Proclus, In Platonis rem publicam commentarii: Procli Diadochi in Platonis Rem
publicam commentarii, ed. W. Kroll, 2 vols., Lipsiae 1899–1901.
Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory: M. Fabii Quintiliani Institutionis Oratoriae libri
XII, ed. L. Radermacher, V. Buchheit (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et
Romanorum Teubneriana), 2 vols., Lipsiae: Teubner 1971.

188
Scholia in Aelium Aristidem: Aristides, ed. W. Dindorf, vol. 3, Lipsiae 1829.
Scholia in Theocritum: Scholia in Theocritum vetera, ed. K. Wendel, Lipsiae 1914.
Seneca, Letters: L. Annaei Senecae Opera omnia, ed. O. Hense, vol. 3, Lipsiae 1938.
Suda: Suidae lexicon, ed. A. Adler, 4 vols., Lipsiae 1928–1935.
Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: C. Suetoni Tranquilli Opera, ed.
M. Ihm., vol. 1, Lipsiae 1908.
Tacitus, Annals: P. Corneli Taciti libri, qui supersunt, ed. H. Heubner (Bibliotheca
scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana), vol. 1, Stuttgardiae:
Teubner 1983.
Tertullian, De Anima: Q. Septimi Florentis Tertulliani De anima, ed. J. H. Waszink,
Amsterdam: Meulenhoff 1947.
Theocritus, Idyllia: Theocritus, ed. A. S. F. Gow, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press 1952.
Tzetzes, Chiliades: Ioannis Tzetzae Historiae, ed. P. L. M. Leone (Pubblicazioni
dell’Istituto di filologia classica, Università degli studi di Napoli 1), Napoli:
Libreria Scientifica Editrice 1968.
Zenobius: Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum, ed. F. W. Schneidewin, E. L.
von Leutsch, vol. 1, Gottingae 1839.

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