The starting point of my research is Callimachus who is repeatedly credited with the invention of paradoxography, a claim which will be examined more closely in my thesis. Paradoxography is the writing on wonders both in terms of natural phenomena as well as man-built structures, which seems to have been popular from Hellenistic times onwards up to Byzantine times.
In my research I am trying to piece together the references to the paradoxographical prose works Callimachus wrote such as his Collection of wonders of the whole world according to places with his poetic fragments in order to gain a more complete understanding of this popular 'genre' during Callimachus' time and beyond. This involves a study of Callimachus' often historical sources next to the consultation of later paradoxographical collections often dating up to Byzantine times which have preserved originally Callimachean material.
