Palaephatus

Palaephatus

Palaephatus (Ancient Greek: Παλαίφατος) was the author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, the paradoxographical work On Incredible Things (Περὶ ἀπίστων (ἱστοριῶν); Incredibilia), which survives in a (probably corrupt) Byzantine edition. This work consists of an introduction and 52 brief sections on various Greek myths. The first 45 have a common format: a brief statement of a wonder tale from Greek mythology, usually followed by a claim of disbelief ("This is absurd" or "This is not likely" or "The true version is..."), and then a sequence of every-day occurrences which gave rise to the wonder-story through misunderstanding. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Palaephatus has received more than 106,461 page views. His biography is available in 16 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 15 in 2019). Palaephatus is the 3,908th most popular writer (down from 3,865th in 2019).