ABSTRACT
The most common way for a hero to be an agent in a miracle is by winning a god’s favor to do it. In the Greco-Roman period we begin to see the kind of miracle story in which the hero works a miracle without prayers to a deity. Such stories invite speculation on the source of the power, of course. The narrators of this type of story sometimes offer the interpretation by an internal reference. That is, some allusion to a well-known text might be found in the story, or on the lips of some character.
