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Product details
- ISBN 9780859894258
- Dimensions: 148 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 1997
- Publisher: Liverpool University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The Book of Marvels, a compilation of marvellous events of a grotesque, bizarre or sensational nature, was composed in the second century A.D. by Phlegon of Tralles, a Greek freedman of the Roman emperor Hadrian. This remarkable text is the earliest surviving work of pure sensationalism in Western literature. The Book is arranged thematically: Ghosts; Sex-Changers and Hermaphrodites; Finds of Giant Bones; Monstrous Births; Births from Males; Amazing Multiple Births; Abnormally Rapid Development of Human Beings; Discoveries of Live Centaurs. This volume also contains and Introduction and commentary on the texts, as well as translations of fragments of two other works and a translation of Goethe's well-known vampire poem, The Bride of Corinth, which was inspired by Phlegon's Book of Marvels.
William Hansen is Professor of Classical Studies and Folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He is an expert on Greek and Roman folklore and the leading Phlegon specialist in the English-speaking world.
