This introductory chapter examines the scope and range of wonder and the marvellous between Homer and the Hellenistic period, explores the significance of ancient conceptions of wonder in the modern literary critical tradition and outlines this book’s theoretical underpinnings and the scope and content of the subsequent chapters.

This concluding epilogue consists of three diverse case studies which both sum up many of the main continuities and differences in the treatment of wonder in Greek literature and culture from Homer to the early Hellenistic period and simultaneously point towards some further directions for the study of wonder in antiquity and beyond.

This chapter further examines the ambivalent position that wonder occupies in Athenian culture in the late fifth and early fourth century BCE. It explores the place of wonder in Plato’s dialogues and offers a new reading of the Republic’s famous Cave Allegory through the specific lens of wonder to open up new perspectives on both the dialogue itself and on Plato’s broader conception of what philosophy is and what it does. Moreover, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the evidence for thaumatopoiia/thaumatourgia (marvel-making/wonder-working), a form of Greek performance tradition, and examines the uses of marvel-making in Xenophon’s Symposium to examine more fully the relationship between wonder and philosophy in this period.

This chapter examines the range, scope, generic roots and poetics of Hellenistic paradoxographical collections. The cultural context surrounding the production of the first paradoxographical collections in Ptolemaic Alexandria is thoroughly explored. The relationships between paradoxography, wonder and previous traditions of Greek ethnographic writing and contemporary Peripatetic scientific writing are outlined through the examination of Antigonus of Carystus’ Collection of Marvellous Investigations, Ps. Aristotle’s On Marvellous Things Heard, Herodotus’ Histories, Callimachus’ Aitia and Aristotle’s biological writings.

This chapter examines the significance of wonder in ancient conceptions of music, choral song and dance. The essential role of wonder in ancient religious thought as an effect which often accompanies epiphanic encounters between gods and humans and which naturally arises within the ritual space created by song performance is explored. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes is examined as a case study in which the rich relationship between music, semata (signs) and thauma in the Greek imagination is particularly evident. This chapter also discusses the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the Odyssey and the story of Arion in Herodotus’ Histories.

This chapter focuses on the increasingly ambivalent attitudes towards wonder which arose in Athens in the late fifth and early fourth century BCE. The chapter begins by examining Aristotle’s thoughts about the connections between wonder, language and rhetoric. The perceived power of rhetoric and language to create effects of wonder which destabilise previously clearly drawn boundaries and cultural oppositions is then explored further through examinations of the place of marvels and the marvellous in Aristophanes’ Birds and Thucydides’ History. The association between wonder, Athens and Athenian imperial power in this period is also explored.

This chapter focuses on the increasingly ambivalent attitudes towards wonder which arose in Athens in the late fifth and early fourth century BCE. The chapter begins by examining Aristotle’s thoughts about the connections between wonder, language and rhetoric. The perceived power of rhetoric and language to create effects of wonder which destabilise previously clearly drawn boundaries and cultural oppositions is then explored further through examinations of the place of marvels and the marvellous in Aristophanes’ Birds and Thucydides’ History. The association between wonder, Athens and Athenian imperial power in this period is also explored.

This chapter explores the complicated relationships between visual, verbal and textual wonder in the Greek literary tradition. Thauma is shown to be an important term of aesthetic response by the beginning of the fourth century BCE. The place of thauma in Greek traditions of poetic ekphrasis is examined. The transition from the conception of a marvel as a purely visual object or as an oral report to the sense of a marvel as something which is written down is explored through texts from Plato, Alcidamas, Homer, Theocritus and Posidippus.