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Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome
Astonishing, humorous and shocking tales from ancient Greece and Rome.
Both humorous and shocking, Miracula is filled with astonishing facts and stories drawn from ancient Greece and Rome that have rarely been retold in English. It explores ‘the incredible’ as presented by little-known classical writers like Callimachus and Phlegon of Tralles. However, it offers much more: familiar authors such as Herodotus and Cicero often couldn’t resist relating sensational, tabloid-worthy tales. The book also tackles ancient examples of topics still relevant today, such as racism, slavery and misogyny. The pieces are by turns absorbing, enchanting, curious, unbelievable, comical, astonishing, disturbing, and occasionally just plain daft.
An entertaining and sometimes lurid collection, this book is perfect for all those fascinated by the stranger aspects of the classical world, history enthusiasts, and anyone interested in classical history, society and culture.
Both humorous and shocking, Miracula is filled with astonishing facts and stories drawn from ancient Greece and Rome that have rarely been retold in English. It explores ‘the incredible’ as presented by little-known classical writers like Callimachus and Phlegon of Tralles. However, it offers much more: familiar authors such as Herodotus and Cicero often couldn’t resist relating sensational, tabloid-worthy tales. The book also tackles ancient examples of topics still relevant today, such as racism, slavery and misogyny. The pieces are by turns absorbing, enchanting, curious, unbelievable, comical, astonishing, disturbing, and occasionally just plain daft.
An entertaining and sometimes lurid collection, this book is perfect for all those fascinated by the stranger aspects of the classical world, history enthusiasts, and anyone interested in classical history, society and culture.
- GenresHistory
472 pages, Hardcover
Published June 23, 2025
6 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Paul Chrystal
156 books10 followersPaul Chrystal attended the Universities of Hull and Southampton where he took degrees in Classics. For the next thirty-five years he worked in medical publishing, much of the time as an international sales director for one market or another while latterly creating medical educational programmes for the pharmaceutical industry. He worked for companies such as Churchill Livingstone, Wiley-Blackwell, CRC Press, Academic Press and Elsevier.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 13, 2026
Across antiquity, there were many curious beliefs languishing in Hellenistic Greece and Rome. Concepts and rituals pressing constantly against the edges of daily life as people became preoccupied with the noisy, anxious and endlessly inventive world around them. Miracula gathers a cornucopia of strange oddities, portents, grotesque monsters (monstrum) and miracles that classical authors such as Pliny The Elder recorded diligently. I was howling at some of Chrystal’s findings.
Chapters full of deliciously unsettling anecdotes that remind us just how porous the ancient world was to the miraculous. Remember people back then demanded interpretation. The boundary between the sacred and the absurd was so thin it may as well have not existed. Dip in anywhere in this book and you emerge with something uncanny. the Greeks and Romans were just as thrilled, terrified and delighted by the inexplicable as we are. Miracula covers a lot of ground and I have learnt so much from the Ancients in all their wild, unsettling glory ✨
Some of my favourite learnings:
Medicine 💉: Greek physician Dioscorides wrote that as a cure for gout it was advised that you stand on a black eel on the water’s edge until the numbness has moved up to the knee. Riding a donkey backwards was suggested to heal a scorpion sting and chicken droppings could remedy the ingestion of poisonous herbs and mushrooms?? Ok Dio 🍄🟫
Literature 📜: Photius believed that Homer was actually an imposter and The Illiad” and “The Odyssey” were stolen from a woman from Memphis named Phantasia. Before that it was thought that Helen Of Troy appeared to Homer by night and commanded him to write an epic poem on the famous expedition 🏛️🏺
Mythology 🐦🔥: in Pliny’s Natural History, he records the existence of centaurs as historical. Beings that were half-man, half-horse were real in his eyes. One born in Saguntum in the year that the city was destroyed by Hannibal, and one captured in Arabia and sent to Claudius Caesar (Roman emperor 41-54 A.D. Pliny claimed to have seen this magical creature himself, smothered in honey. Roman writers frequently used the language of monstra and portenta to describe bodies that didn’t conform to the norm ✨
Chapters full of deliciously unsettling anecdotes that remind us just how porous the ancient world was to the miraculous. Remember people back then demanded interpretation. The boundary between the sacred and the absurd was so thin it may as well have not existed. Dip in anywhere in this book and you emerge with something uncanny. the Greeks and Romans were just as thrilled, terrified and delighted by the inexplicable as we are. Miracula covers a lot of ground and I have learnt so much from the Ancients in all their wild, unsettling glory ✨
Some of my favourite learnings:
Medicine 💉: Greek physician Dioscorides wrote that as a cure for gout it was advised that you stand on a black eel on the water’s edge until the numbness has moved up to the knee. Riding a donkey backwards was suggested to heal a scorpion sting and chicken droppings could remedy the ingestion of poisonous herbs and mushrooms?? Ok Dio 🍄🟫
Literature 📜: Photius believed that Homer was actually an imposter and The Illiad” and “The Odyssey” were stolen from a woman from Memphis named Phantasia. Before that it was thought that Helen Of Troy appeared to Homer by night and commanded him to write an epic poem on the famous expedition 🏛️🏺
Mythology 🐦🔥: in Pliny’s Natural History, he records the existence of centaurs as historical. Beings that were half-man, half-horse were real in his eyes. One born in Saguntum in the year that the city was destroyed by Hannibal, and one captured in Arabia and sent to Claudius Caesar (Roman emperor 41-54 A.D. Pliny claimed to have seen this magical creature himself, smothered in honey. Roman writers frequently used the language of monstra and portenta to describe bodies that didn’t conform to the norm ✨
January 4, 2026
One of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while. Great coffee table book to have guests open at random and read a bizarre and depraved fact about the ancient world
October 27, 2025
reviewed by Trish Palmer for Bluewolf Reviews and New South Books
PAUL CHRYSTAL
Paul Chrystal has an astonishing knowledge of little-known ancient texts that were often boring and long winded. He has taken the essence of these texts and found humorous, extraordinary and amazing facts and retold them here. There is a great deal of fun and eyebrow raising to be had on reading this off beat and bizarre book Miracula.
At the beginning of each chapter the topic is revealed and the attitudes and social norms held by the Greeks or Romans is shared. What were the attitudes to slavery or torture then?
An early chapter discusses writings on agriculture. Some of the tips given suggest that you don’t plant on the 6th day of the month, but it is fine for the birth of boys. Gelding of kids and lambs hurts less then.
The chapter on Medicine is quite hair raising. As a cure for gout it was suggested you stand on a black eel on the water’s edge until the numbness has moved up to the knees. A poultice for an abscess had to be applied by a naked virgin with the required signs on her body. Big ears meant insensitivity, square ears meant bravery, while various kinds of dung were recommended for ailments.
In the chapter, “The death of Pyrrhus,” we are told that a mother watching her son fight the Greek champion was worried that Pyrrhus would defeat him. She seized a roof tile and threw it at the Greek and crushed his vertebrae. Her son was victorious. This is acknowledged as History’s best aimed tile. When the king of Persia invaded Egypt he ranged before his front lines’ cats, dogs and ibis, knowing that the Egyptians would do nothing to harm these sacred animals.
There are so many fun facts and stories to delve into in Miracula that will keep you entertained for hours and make you ponder days long gone, along with their weird and
PAUL CHRYSTAL
Paul Chrystal has an astonishing knowledge of little-known ancient texts that were often boring and long winded. He has taken the essence of these texts and found humorous, extraordinary and amazing facts and retold them here. There is a great deal of fun and eyebrow raising to be had on reading this off beat and bizarre book Miracula.
At the beginning of each chapter the topic is revealed and the attitudes and social norms held by the Greeks or Romans is shared. What were the attitudes to slavery or torture then?
An early chapter discusses writings on agriculture. Some of the tips given suggest that you don’t plant on the 6th day of the month, but it is fine for the birth of boys. Gelding of kids and lambs hurts less then.
The chapter on Medicine is quite hair raising. As a cure for gout it was suggested you stand on a black eel on the water’s edge until the numbness has moved up to the knees. A poultice for an abscess had to be applied by a naked virgin with the required signs on her body. Big ears meant insensitivity, square ears meant bravery, while various kinds of dung were recommended for ailments.
In the chapter, “The death of Pyrrhus,” we are told that a mother watching her son fight the Greek champion was worried that Pyrrhus would defeat him. She seized a roof tile and threw it at the Greek and crushed his vertebrae. Her son was victorious. This is acknowledged as History’s best aimed tile. When the king of Persia invaded Egypt he ranged before his front lines’ cats, dogs and ibis, knowing that the Egyptians would do nothing to harm these sacred animals.
There are so many fun facts and stories to delve into in Miracula that will keep you entertained for hours and make you ponder days long gone, along with their weird and
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews