ABSTRACT
Miracle stories as we call them, were plentiful and popular in the Greco-Roman world, and we find them told by persons from simple as well as elite backgrounds in the extant sources. Unlike the witty apophthegms or chreiai, however, miracle stories had little status as a “form.” They were not the subject of examination, memorization and imitation in the classroom as were the famous wisdom stories of the greats. 1 Theon’s teacher manual defined the form of the chreia as
a concise statement or action which is attributed with aptness to some specified character or something analogous to a character, 2
but there is no one from Greco-Roman antiquity who even comments on the form expected of a miracle story.