So weird, so wonderful
Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome by Paul Chrystal (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Reviewed by Johnna Ryan
If you were a citizen of ancient Greece, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome would ultimately be an encyclopedia of mystical creatures you might encounter, completely legitimate medical practices, and gossip about the wilder members of society. Now, as a citizen of the current age, those wild figures may still be just as unusual, but those creatures are hardly believable and many of those medical practices are best left avoided.
Paul Chrystal is a well-established author in the world of Classics. He describes his new book, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome, as essentially “Horrible Histories for adults.” In the preface, Chrystal describes his qualification for inclusion, “quite simply been that the pieces are absorbing and enchanting, curious, unbelievable, comical, astonishing and sometimes just plain daft” (14-15). The book is filled with stories, descriptions, and tidbits of all kinds, including how the ancients believed one could heal the pain of a scorpion sting: “you should sit on a donkey, facing backwards towards the tail, because this transfers the pain to the donkey and makes it fart” (16). This massive collection of miscellany, with seventy-three chapters across 456 pages, is accompanied by a subtle communication of the ancient Greeks and Romans as real people.
To pique the reader’s curiosity, Chrystal sets the tone from the beginning with a number of “important questions.” The questions of the ancient Greeks and Romans are the point. For example, “Why do all animals have an even number of feet?” or “Why are lions scared of hens, especially white ones?” (16). Miracula is a series of darts thrown at the reader’s mind, aiming for the reader’s curiosity. Miracula has more detail than anyone would ever need to know about the Ancient Classical world. This includes the obscure: How did the ancient Greeks and Romans think tattoos could be removed? Why, “by smearing on them a mixture of very sharp vinegar and the stuff that sticks to the inside of a chamber pot,” of course (16).
The authors that Chrystal utilizes and quotes are extensive, and not exclusively the typical Homer, Plato, and Virgil. If number of sources correlates to quality, then Miracula is pure gold. Chrystal backs up almost every story or fact with a quote from a classical text. Readers excited by Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey may be newly interested in reading classical sources. If so, Miracula offers an expansive reading list, with dozens of less familiar Greek and Roman texts, all sources for Chrystal’s crazy stories.
Yet even with familiar topics and figures, Chrystal takes an unfamiliar approach. The Olympian gods do not receive the spotlight, as they typically do in so much discourse regarding ancient Greece, and the emperors are not the main focus of passages about ancient Rome. Socrates is one of the most famous philosophers from ancient Greece. He is a household name and figure of legend, known as the Father of Western Philosophy. But rather than focusing on Socrates’s lessons or his famous method, Chrystal chooses to focus on his dancing. Chrystal begins a chapter with a quote from Xenophon’s Symposium: “A friend of Socrates then tells the group that he had stopped by his house early in the morning, and found him dancing alone. When questioned about it, Socrates happily confessed to solo-dancing on a regular basis” (255). Building on this scene, Chrystal paints a new picture of Socrates, grounding it in the identity of a simple man who was caught dancing alone in his house. This adds unexpected layers to our typical understanding of Socrates. We may see him differently with the image of “a Socrates who solo-dances for joy and exercise, so unlike the Socrates we know from Plato” (255).
Despite its length, this book is easy to pick up. In fact, a reader could open the book to almost any random page and find a good passage to begin with. Eleven large sections range from “The Military and War” to “Superstition and the Dark Arts” within the ancient Greek and Roman world. His system of choosing which tidbits to include has been effective, as no page should fail to interest the reader. The book includes the extremes of horrifying and exciting.
In the stories and excerpts that Chrystal scatters throughout the book, some of the images he depicts of the ancient Greeks and Romans are downright shocking. And yet, many of these outrageous stories were oddities in their conception. People rarely pause to explain the simple and the mundane. What everyone knows, or what is assumed everyone knows, is barely worth recording. After all, “Our writers would much rather tell us of the day the sky turned green than inform us that most days it was blue (or grey, if they lived in Britannia)” (Philip Matyszak, 12). The book where a single ship deals with major catastrophes is far more interesting than a log of how many ships returned home safely, easily demonstrated by the Odyssey.
While Chrystal’s book is a wealth of interesting knowledge, it is worth noting that not all readers will enjoy all of it. Squeamish readers may not appreciate the chapters on “Sex and Sexuality” and “Torture.” For those who find these aspects of ancient culture surprising or unpleasant, there are plenty of inoffensive chapters like “The Graeae: The Oldest Triplets the World Has Ever Seen.” There is no chronological order to the book, so readers can skip the sections without consequence other than missing out on the facts.
One of the most enticing aspects of Miracula is the continuous flow of information. Chrystal’s stories go beyond the average myth collection, yet the book serves as an excellent introduction to the material. Chrystal never assumes that the reader is familiar with anything. He explains common topics, such as the role of gods like Zeus or Jupiter, while introducing less common content. While the content of the book is aimed at those already familiar with the classical world, Chrystal ensures that his text is approachable for those that may be less familiar. Though he never does answer the ancient question of “why is it that people can’t tickle themselves,” a query that continues to this day (21).
Johnna Ryan, an Anglophile, is a poet and writer in South Florida studying English. She is an editor, reader, writer, and critic, sometimes all at once. She can often be found in the wild, either at coffee shops sampling outlandish teas or loitering at her local library, and she has more books on her TBR than room on her bookshelf.
