Apollonius the Paradoxographer lived in the 2nd century BCE, during the Hellenistic period. He is known only through his surviving work and his epithet, which identifies him as a writer of marvels and wondrous tales. Internal references to historical figures like Magas of Cyrene and Arsinoe II support this dating, placing him within the flourishing genre of paradoxography.

His sole extant work is the Historiae Thaumasiae. This prose collection comprises 51 brief chapters detailing paradoxical phenomena concerning animals, plants, minerals, and customs, compiled from earlier authors.

Apollonius is a key representative of Hellenistic paradoxography. His compilation preserves summaries of marvelous accounts from earlier, often lost, sources like Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Callimachus. The work is a valuable source for understanding the transmission of knowledge and the Hellenistic scholarly fascination with the natural world's wonders, exemplifying the period's encyclopedic tendencies alongside authors like Antigonus of Carystus.