Mice’s Livers: Wonder Prodigies and Meteorology in Paradoxography

The present paper intends to examine the relationship between meteorological phenomena and their impact on earth, through the paradoxographical point of view. Firstly, as the paradoxographical context is peculiar in its making, I will try to show how a meteorological paradoxon is fabricated, by comparing the passage of a paradoxographer’s treatise to parallel passages of the same fact coming from other literary sources (mainly Aristotle). Secondly, I intend to investigate how the movement of the moon created meteorological phenomena, such as the flux and reflux of water, and the impact that these phenomena had on vivid creatures (mice, sea-urchin, ants) and on the physical world (the detroit of Euripus or of Messine). My final conclusion, through the examination and the comparison of indicative passages, will focus on the evaluation of these facts : more precisely, whether they somehow contributed to scientific development or whether they just reflected traditional or local beliefs.