(W.v. Harris, Brooke Holmes) Aelius Aristides Betw

INTRODUCTION
wv. lIARRrs
Aelius Aristides' Embassy Speech to Achilles (Oration XVI) seems at first

reading a ham-fisted piece of work. It takes the form of a speech aimed
at assuaging the wrath of Achilles with Agamemnon, like the speeches
that Homer gives to Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax in Iliad IX. I But
unlike the clever speeches of Odysseus and Phoenix, it would have been
much more likely to inflame Achilles than win him over: 'you seem to
hate your fellow-countrymen', says the fictitious orator, 'and fear battle
too' (sect. 6). Aristides, however, was not attempting to put himself in
the place of a Bronze-Age prince or an archaic poet-though he was
attempting as so often to live in the past and to take his audience there
with him-, but to demonstrate with maximum cleverness the lack of
logic, from his own point of view; in Achilles' behaviour; and in this aim
he more or less succeeded. The subtle understanding of furious anger
that was demonstrated by Aristides' contemporary Galen was not the
sophist's forte, but it was not his interest either.
The Embassy Speech to Achilles can serve rather well as an introduction
to some of the investigations that are carried forward in this book. In
the first place, it shows Aristides in his literary context. The speech
displays of course an intimate knowledge of Homer-and no overt
interest in anything that had been written since Homer's time about
the wrath of Achilles or about anger more generally (between the lines,
however, one can see that Aristides, though he avoids anachronism,
was familiar with the cliches about moderate anger that were part
of the Greek and Roman cultural patrimony). So what was Aristides'
relationship to archaic and classical Greek literature? Not simple, for
while it is obvious that knowledge of the poetry of that era was a
cultural marker, in fact the cultural marker, of an educated Greek, there
I As to how Aristides came to be writing on such a theme, see Kindstrand 1973,

215---216. According to Behr 1968, 95, the 'substance' of this declamation is 'the impor-
tance of fame', but that is an eccentric judgement.
2 W.V. HARRIS
was emulation involved ('modesty', as Raffaella Cribiore observes later

in this volume, 'was not an attribute of Aristides'), and individual taste
too.
The studies grouped in the first part of the book are concerned
above all with the sophist's intimate mental connection with the literary
and mythical traditions of the Greeks. What does the pattern of Aris-
tides' citation of the archaic poets mean, and what in particular does
it mean that he so generously cites Pindar (Ewen Bowie's culminating
question)? How, in flattering the Athenians, is he to deal with the truth-
loving and unavoidable Thucydides, who was willing to show them at
their worst (Estelle Oudot's theme)? Were the great classical myths still
important, still viable, in the world of the Second Sophistic, and how
could they be adapted for contemporary use (the questions answered
here by Suzanne Said)? In this context too we can place Glen Bower-
sock's discussion of Aristides' detestation of the pantomimes, those solo
performers who brought much of the repertoire of the classical theatre
before the Antonine public.
Another striking feature of the Embassy Speech to Achilles, especially
if you come to it fresh from Homer, is its repeated reference to the
Trojan War as a conflict between the Greeks and the 'barbarians': 'if
you must be permanently angry, I would say that it should be with the
barbarians, our natural enemies' (sect. 4) (the latter trope reappears
in sect. 26). 2 In the Iliad Odysseus and Phoenix speak of the harm
that Achilles has done the Achaeans by his withdrawal, but Homer
never of course calls the Trojans barbarians;" Aristides applies the
term to them seven times in a few pages and concludes his speech on
this note. That will seem banal. But there is more: it will have been
a sleepy Greek listener or reader who never for a moment thought
that Aristides might be alluding to the Romans in the guise of their
Trojan 'ancestors', especially since, as Laurent Pernot points out in
detail in his contribution to this book, both Aristides and his public
were accustomed to the practice of 'figured speech'.
At all events, Aristides' thoughts and feelings about Rome and its
empire were more complex than used to be realized when 70 Rome (Or.
2 The 'barbarians' had been the 'natural enemies' of the Greeks, at least for many,
since Pi. Rep. V.47oc, if not earlier.
3 The Carians are barbarophonoi in ii.867. This difference between Homer and
Aristides has often been noticed: see for instance Boulanger 1923, 274.
INTRODUCTION 3
XXVI) was taken at face value. The third part of this volume-the
papers by Pernot, Francesca Fontanella and Carlo Franco-accordingly
considers the political aspects of his writings. 300 years after the annex-
ation of provincia Asia the Greeks were still not wholly reconciled to their
subordinate though privileged role." Plutarch had warned a young man
elected to office in a Greek city that for crossing their Roman rulers,
'many' had suffered 'that terrible chastiser, the axe that cuts the neck'
(Praecepta rei gerendae 17 = Mor. 813£). Who could be at ease in such
a situation? But Greek attitudes gradually changed: every individual
had his point of view; but Celsus Polemaeanus represents one stage,
Plutarch another, Aristides yet another, Lucian and Cassius Dio still
others.
There are two other important elements in Aristides' identity (and
here I leave behind the Embassy Speech to Achilles), apart of course from
his main identity as an orator and a sophist.' These two elements,
closely connected with each other, are his religiosity and his status as
an invalid." We have mainly concentrated both of these topics in the
second part of the book, holding that with Aristides the personal is to
some extent prior to the political.
We have called this whole collection Aelius Aristides between Greece,
Rome, and the Gods in part because the clearest element in Aristides'
personality is his religiosity, and an important part of his preferred
identity consisted of his devotion to Asclepius. Pernot, in the footsteps
of Bowersock, reminds us how Aristides used this identity as a means of
squirming out of office-holding, but no reader of the Sacred Tales could
doubt that the devotion was real as well as convenient. It suited both
Aristides' narcissistic personality'<-well brought out by Dana Fields,
though she avoids the term-to believe that he was a favourite of
the gods and of Asclepius in particular. No better indication of his
4 Going against a recent trend, C.P. Jones 2004 has, however, argued with respect
to the cultured Greek intellectuals of this age that their 'supposed Hellenic patriotism,
sometimes assumed to be equivalent to Hellenism, is a chimaera', Hellenes being only
one of their identities (14).
5 On the propriety of calling Aristides a sophist, a label he would have rejected, see
among others Flinterman 2002, 199.
6 In fact Aristides' religiosity comes out in xvi.ze.
7 For a justification of the use of this concept with respect to Aristides see Andersson
and Roos 1997, 31-38. For some further quite adventurous discussion of narcissism in
second-century Asia Minor see Kent 2007.
4 W.V. HARRIS
religiosity could be found than his conviction that Asclepius constantly

sent him messages in his dreams, even when the god did not appear in
his own person. B
Aristides was evidently led to Asclepius by his preoccupation with
his health, a preoccupation that has been variously diagnosed. He is
customarily spoken of as a hypochondriac, but without knowing more
than we can really know about his actual health such a judgement is
scarcely possible." Galen saw Aristides as physically weak. 10 Many have
speculated about his ailments and their possible psychological origins.
In recent times this interest has recast itself in the language of the body.
Brooke Holmes observes that 'biographical-diagnostic approaches to
Aristides have given way to studies that situate him within his cul-
tural and historical milieu', and that trend, which gathered strength in
the 1960s (Behr, Bowersock), continues. To some extent, however, her
paper, and also those of Janet Downie and Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis,
combine the two approaches. It is certainly a challenge to know how
to interpret Aristides' writing about his own physical condition, given
the complexity of the cultural traditions that were at work and the
author's own idiosyncrasies. Holmes turns a sceptical eye to modish
1990S chatter about 'bodies becoming texts', seeking-as I understand
it-to show how Aristides tried to use his dreams to interpret his med-
ical condition, and how he thought that 'archiving' an immense num-
ber of dreams would help him. 'The body is... written into stories that
are first staged in dreams then recorded in the archive. By interpreting
these stories, Aristides is able to act on the body in such a way as to
restore it to a primeval state of harmony'.
No reader of the Sacred Tales can fail to be struck by the author's deep
interest in one particular physical activity, namely bathing. Where does
this tendentially luxurious interest fit in the austere life and complex
self-presentation of the hard-working rhetor? Janet Downie's paper on
this subject brings out, perhaps more than any other in this volume, the
complexity of Aristides' personality.
A central feature of that personality was overweening conceit.
Fields's paper, by means of a contrast with Plutarch, shows us the depth
B On this practice of his see Harris 2009, chapter I.

9 'He was not merely a hypochondriac. However, he treated his illnesses with the
same care as a hypochondriac', Andersson and Roos 1997,37.
10 See the Arabic text cited by Behr 1968, 162, Bowersock 1969, 62, and byJones at
the beginning of his paper.
INTRODUCTION 5
and the significance of this conceit, and serves as a transition from his
self-presentation to his views about and position (or non-position) in
politics. We come back, as always, to the world of competitive oratory.
And it was to Aristides the orator that most contemporaries, and
most later readers until the twentieth century, reacted. The last part
of this volume concerns itself with some of these reactions, from the
contemporary admirer Phrynichus (Christopher Jones), via his greatest
late-antique emulator Libanius (Raffaella Cribiore), down to Byzantine
times when, as Luana Quattrocelli shows in our final chapter, the only
objection to him seems to have been his devotion to the wrong god.
There is much more to investigate. Swain, for example, has written
that Aristides 'enjoyed enormous popularity for his rhetorical prow-
ess',11 and it would be worth enquiring further into what such pop-
ularity meant in Greece in the second century, with large auditoria
in vogue but no democracy in the old sense in sight. More should
also be said about Aristides' religious experience (another concept that
is contested)-and on this we look forward to the forthcoming book
by Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis. But as for actually empathizing with the
humourless rhetor;" that may be beyond us.
11 1996, 254.
12 Janet Downie detects 'ironic humor' in the dream description in Or. xlvii.rq. But
see on the other hand xxviii.qg and the whole ofxxix Concerning the Prohibition rifComedy,
among other passages.
CHAPTER ONE
ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC,

ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY
EWEN BOWIE
This paper investigates Aristides' quotations of and allusions to early

Greek lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry. One reason for its restriction
to these poets is that I have been looking at their citation and other
ways they are drawn upon in a number of imperial Greek texts.' But an
equally important reason for the exclusion of other early poetry, above
all of Homer, Hesiod and other hexameter poetry, is because its inclu-
sion would undoubtedly have raised issues that would have required
a much longer paper. The London doctorate of 'T.K. Gkourogiannis,
entitled Pindaric Qyotations in Aelius Aristides, completed in 1999, regis-
tered the presence in Aristides of 253 citations of the Iliad and 93 of
the 04Jssey.2 This is a far larger number than Aristides' quotations of
tragedy or comedy, where Gkourogiannis documented 45 for Aristo-
phanes; 26 for Euripides; 16 for Sophocles; IO for Aeschylus; and five
each for Eupolis, Cratinus and Menander. In some respects the pro-
portion of these quotations between Homer, tragedy and comedy show
Aristides to be not dissimilar to other authors writing in this period, or
to what we know of readers' habits from papyri," though the frequency
of Aristides' citation of Menander is rather low, and of Aristophanes
rather high: this is partly because of his extensive exploitation of Aristo-
phanes for Athenian history in Oration 3 (which has some 16 citations),
partly, I suspect, because Aristides was drawn, or was made by his tutor
Alexander of Cotiaeum, to read Aristophanes with due care and atten-
tion in order to beefup his Atticism.'
! In Athenaeus, Bowie 2000; in Plutarch, Bowie 1997 and forthcoming (b); in

Philostratus' Apollonius in Bowie forthcoming (a); in Stobaeus in Bowie forthcoming
(c).
2 Gkourogiannis 1999.
3 Kruger 1990.
4 For Aristophanes in other authors of the period, see Bowie 2007.
10 EWENBOWIE
What, then, emerges from an examination of this relatively narrow

range of poets? On the one hand there is a huge preponderance of
citations of Pin dar, a phenomenon to which I shall return. Pindar apart,
however, Aristides' citations of early lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry
are perhaps surprisingly few. They are set out in my Table, and it is
on the basis of the evidence presented there that I offer the following
observations.
Aristides undoubtedly knows the names of Sappho and Alcaeus
(Or. 32.24).5 Of Alcaeus, however, he cites only two phrases: one is
an apparently well-known gnome (aV()gE~ yag :lt6A.LO~ :lt1Jgyo~ agE{,LO~,
fro II2.1O Voigt) at Or. 3.298 and Or. 23.68 (cf Or. 25.64);6 the other
is the idea of shooting arrows in the dark, EX 'tou ~6qJo'U 'tOl;E{,OV'tE~ xa't'
'AAxaLov (fr. 437 Voigt) at Or. 2.264 (our only source for this fragment).
It is possible that Sappho fro 34 Voigt is cited at Or. 1.II in the phrase
OEATJv'r]v aO'tEgE~ EyxAeLo'UOLv, but since Aristides ascribes it to 'some
poet' (:ltOL'r]'ttl~ o.v et:ltOL 'tL~) he may not be citing Sappho at all, or he
may not realise that it is she whom he is citing. That makes it hard
to assess his claim at Or. 18.{ to cite Sappho in the phrase 'destroying
the gaze' (ou ()LaqJ'fteLgov 'ta~ O'IjJEL~, w~ EqJ'r] La:ltqJw): editors have created
Sappho fro 196 Voigt from this, but as Campbell noted it may be some
sort of recollection offr. 31.II Voigt.' Fr. 193 Voigt may also not deserve
the status of a separate fragment, since the reference at Or. 28.51 to
Sappho boasting to some women thought to be fortunate, EU()aL!10VE~,
that the Muses had made her really fortunate and that it was she
who would be remembered after her death, may be a reference to
either fro 55 Voigt, fro 65 Voigt or fro 147 Voigt. Whatever the intended
reference of Or. 28.51, however, these three places do yield at least two
citations of Sappho.
There are also what seem to be several citations of Aleman. At
least three of these are at Or. 28.51-54, where he is simply called 'the
Laconian poet', as he is also at Or. 41.7 in the citation of fro 56 Page,
and in the citation of a hexameter, fro 107 Page, at Or. 2.129 (though
here the description 0 'tWV :ltag'frEvwv E:ltaLVE't'r]~ xat o{,!1~o'UAo~ ... 0
AaXE()aL!16vLO~ :ltOL'r]'tTJ~ makes it quite certain that Aristides believed
5 Aristides' works are cited from the edition of Lenz-Behr 1976-1980 for Orations
1-16 and from the edition ofKeil 1898 for Orations 17-53.
6 Our other sources for this poem are papyrus fragments of the first century A.D.,
the scholia on Aes. Pers. 352 and Soph. Oed.Tyr. 56, and the Suda s.v. UQT]'LOL A 3843.
7 Campbell 1982, 185 n. 2, on fro 196.
ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY II
himself to be citing Aleman, despite the metre of the line). For two
citations in Oration 3 (fr. ro8 Page at Or. 3.294 and fro 164 Page at Or.
3.82) we have only the scholiast's evidence that the poet is Aleman,
Overall, however, it is clear that Aristides has some recollection of
and use for Aleman, and in this he is comparable, for example, to
Plutarch.
In his citation of other poets, however, I have been struck by the
difference between Aristides and some other writers of this period.
There are indeed some references to the Palinode of Stesichorus, which
was clearly quite widely known, but only one phrase which might be
a quotation, fro 241 Davies at Or. 33.2 f-tE'tELI.u be btl ihEQOV :ltQOOLf-tLOV
xu'ta L'tT)OLX,oQOV. 8 As for Simonides, there are two citations in Oration
28 which may be from his melic poetry, and at Or. 31.2 Aristides shows
knowledge of, but does not quote, a presumably melic 'frQfjvo~ for a
dead Thessalian patron Antiochus (fr. 582 Page), but there is nothing
from Simonides' melic or elegiac poetry associated with the Persian
wars, despite the exploitation in Oration 28 of Persian war epigrams, to
which I shall shortly turn.
But of other melic poets there is hardly a trace: no Ibycus, no
Anacreon, no citation or even mention of Bacchylides, and although
Timocreon is named (Or. 3.612) his poetry is not cited. Of the elegists
no use is made of Theognis, and although Tyrtaeus' role in early
Spartan history is twice mentioned (Or. 8.18; Or. 11.65), there is no clear
indication that Aristides knew his poetry. 9
One case, however, may point to the issue simply being one of
citation rather than of knowledge. That is the case of Archilochus.
Although there is nothing that is certainly a verbatim citation, Aristides
mentions Archilochus several times by name, and the reference at Or.
3.6II to the various people whom he vilified (EAEyE xuxw~)-his friend
Pericles, his enemy Lycambes and a man perhaps called Charilaus-
suggests that Aristides knew a number of Archilochus' iambic poems
8 As I shall argue elsewhere the phrase ll.UTU TOV ~Tl]olxoQov seems to be a reference
to a poetic trope and not to be a way of marking the expression ~ETEL~L lIE btl ETEQOV
1tQOOl~LOV as a quotation.
9 Other early poets named but not quoted are Philoxenus (in connection with
Dionysius at Or. 3.391) and (less remarkably!) Arion (Or. 2.336 and 376) and Terpander
(Or. 2.336; Or. 3.231 and 242; Or. 24.3). It is just possible that Semonides of Amorgos is
the source for Or. 2.166, where Aristides quotes two iambic lines, to illuminate which
the scholiast cites Eur. fro IIIO Nauck, though cf Semonides fro 1.1---2 West.
12 EWENBOWIE
(i.e. the poems from which fro 124 West, fro 167 West and fro 172 West
are drawn, or other poems involving Lycambes now entirely lost). So,
too, the reference a little later in the same speech to 'the apes of
Archilochus' ('AQXLAOXOlJ :lti:tl'T]XOL, 3.664), points to knowledge of at least
one of Archilochus' animal fables, perhaps of the fable told in frr. 185-
187 West (which almost certainly provided him with the cunning little
vixen, aA.w:ltTJ~ ... xEQ~aA.fj, of 3.676).10
It would therefore certainly be unwise to infer from Aristides' failure
to quote an archaic poet that he did not know any of that poet's work,
or indeed from his failure to mention a poet by name that neither poet
nor poetry were known to him. Moreover it is probably inappropriate
to think, as I initially did, in terms of comparison with the whole range
of writers of this period. Each of these writers has his own agenda,
and the two texts that are our most prolific sources of poetic quotation,
Plutarch and Athenaeus, can each be explained differently. Plutarch
uses poetry to reinforce various types of argument in the so-called
Moralia, but Plutarch's citation is at its most frequent in Oy,aestiones
Convivates, largely, I would guess, because of their sympotic frame. The
frequency of citation is much lower in the Lines." Athenaeus in his
Deipnosophistae has invented a gathering in which he and his personae
loquentes---or indeed loquaces-are keen to adduce evidence for their
arguments from an ostentatiously wide and sometimes recondite range
of poetry. A quite different agenda drives Pausanias the periegete, hence
the remarkable range of his poetic quotation, which includes some very
rare figures. If Aristides is compared only with those second- and third-
century figures to whom his rhetorical activity brings him closer, Dio of
Prusa, Maximus of Tyre and Philostratus of Athens, he begins to look
less odd. The following paragraphs set out some aspects of these three
writers' habits of quotation for comparison.
10 'Almost' certainly, because the lion, UVtL AEOvtO~, of Or. 3.676 cannot easily be
accommodated in the poem of frr. 185-187West. Note that Dio contrasted Archilochus'
vixen with Homer's lions at 55.IO.
11 See Bowie forthcoming (b).
ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY 13
Dio qf Prusa
Dio mentions Sappho twice in the second Kingship Oration, at 2.28 and
64.3, but he never quotes her poetry. 12 The passage at 2.28 is that where
Alexander, in dialogue with Philip, pronounces the poetry of Sappho
and Anacreon unsuitable for princes, and commends instead Stesi-
chorus and Pindar, and above all Homer, whom he judges preferable
to Tyrtaeus. Later in this work (2.59) Dio has his character Alexan-
der quote six lines of a Spartan embaterum which the scholiast plausibly
identifies as a poem of Tyrtaeus; and at 2.62 Dio presents him as quot-
ing, albeit with disapproval, Anacreon's I I -line prayer to Dionysus, the
Nymphs and Aphrodite to secure him the current object of his desire,
Cleobulus, fro 357 Page." Alcaeus, Aleman and Ibycus are not men-
tioned at all by Dio. Stesichorus' Palinode is referred to at 2.13 and in
the Trojan Oration, 11.41 (arguably merely paraphrasing Plato Phaedrus
243a); his widely cited 'IALO'll 3tEQOL£ is commended at 2.33 ('t'~v aAwow
oux ava~Lw£ E3tOLrjOE 't'fi£ TQoLa£) in support of his claim to a prince's
attention;" the point there made that he imitated Homer is repeated in
Oration 55, On Homer and Socrates, 55.6-7.
The same point is made there about Archilochus, and Archilochus
does indeed do rather better at Dio's hands than the poets I have so far
mentioned. Later in Oration 55 Dio refers to the vixen of Archilochus
(55.ro: 't'~v 'AQXLA.OXO'll aAo>JtExa), presumably a reference either to frr.
172-181 West or to frr. 185-187 West. In the first Tarsian oration, Oration
33, Dio picks out Archilochus as a paradigm of an outspoken critic, the
role that he himself is adopting towards the people of Tarsus. He shows
knowledge of the secondary tradition about Archilochus' poetic gifts
and his death (33.12), comparing and contrasting him with the praise-
poet Homer. A little later, at 33.17, he cites the first two lines of four
tetrameters, fro 114 West, on the better type of general, O't'Qa't'T]y6£, then
paraphrases lines 3 and 4 in a way that suggests he had a text slightly
different from that cited by Galen. Finally he invokes Archilochus again
near the end of the speech (33.61).
12 [Dio] 37.47 quotes a line of Sappho, fro 147 Voigt, which may indeed be the
reference of Aristides Or. 28.51 (see above), but this speech is generally agreed to be
by Favorinus, not by Dio.
13 Dio is indeed our only source for the full text of this fragment, which may be a
complete poem.
14 For citation of this poem in imperial Greek sources see frr. 196-204 Davies, and
for its highlighting on Tabulae Iliacae, Horsfall 1979.
EWENBOWIE
Oration 60, Nessus or Deianeira, opens with a report of criticism of

Archilochus for having his Deianeira deliver an almost epic narrative
(Qa'ljJw60uouv) of her wooing by Achelous at the very point at which
she is the victim of sexual assault by Nessus (fr. 286 West). Dio seems
to know this poem and discussions of it, and his remarks are a valuable
clue to its identification as one of Archilochus' now well-documented
narrative elegies. 15 Dio Oration 74, On Mistrust, also seems to know fro 173
West, though I suspect that his relation of it to Archilochus' prospective
marriage to a member of Lycambes' family arises from his familiarity
with the secondary tradition and not from a careful reading of the
poem.
Maximus of Tyre
Maximus has an especially large number of citations of Anacreon and
Sappho, concentrated in and prompted by his four Dialexeis on Eros
(18-21 Trapp). Some 15 fragments of Sappho are cited in one para-
graph of Dialexis 18, viz. 18.9, and these are Maximus' only citations
of Sappho. The same paragraph has four of Maximus' citations of
Anacreon. Anacreon is also mentioned in Maximus' list at Dialexis
37.5 of poets whose poetry either calmed or excited their audiences-
Pindar, Tyrtaeus, Telesilla, Alcaeus and Anacreon. He has no citation
of Alcaeus, and neither citation nor even mention of Aleman and Iby-
cus, or of the elegists Callinus, Mimnermus and Theognis. Solon is
mentioned several times, but not for his poetry. The one citation of
Stesichorus, opening Dialexis 21.1, OUX E01;' E't1)!!O£ Myo£, ascribed by
Maximus to the poet of Himera, 6 'I!!EQuto£ 'toLTJ'tT]£, in words that
assign it to his Palinode, may well be taken from Plato Phaedrus 243a. The
Palinode is, of course, the only poem of Stesichorus of which Aristides
shows knowledge. Simonides also gets only one citation, the phrase
XUAE:1tOV Eo{}A6v E!!!!EVaL, i.e. fro 542.13 Page, at Dialexis 30.1, where Max-
imus ascribes it to an old song, XaLa :n:UAUWV ~o!!u: this too may well
come from Plato, in this case from Protagoras 339c. There is no men-
tion of Bacchylides, but as with Aristides, albeit to a much lesser extent,
there is some use of Pindar: perhaps the reference to Etna in Pythian
1.20 at Dialexis 5.4 and Dialexis 41.1; perhaps Pythian 3.1ff. for Chiron at
15 See Bowie 2001.

ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY IS
Dialexis 28.1. But there is only one verbatim citation, that of fro 213
Snell-Maehler, as the introductory text of Dialexis 12, the subject of
which is whether it is right to commit injustice against somebody who
has done so to onesel£ In this case Maximus seems very likely to have
used a text of Pindar, since the earlier quotation which may have drawn
the passage to his attention, by Plato in Republic 36Sb, constitutes only
two of the four lines cited by Maximus.
Like any author, of course, Maximus can come up with surprises: in
his case the surprise is the citation of the first two lines of Ariphron's
Paean to Hygieia, PMG fro 813 Page, described as an uQXaLov {lolla and
not attributed nominatim to Ariphron."
Philostratus if Athens' Apollonius

In his Apollonius Philostratus' chief poetic intertext is Homer, and there
are also several citations of or allusions to Attic tragedy, especially to
Euripides. Again lyric and elegiac poetry is rare. Archilochus figures
twice: a reference to his 'shield' elegy, fro S West, at 2.7.2, and to his
elegy addressed to Pericles on the occasion of the death of friends at
sea, fro 13 West, at 7.26.2: in both cases the poet is named. Sappho's
poetry is mentioned at 1.30, but nothing is quoted, nor is there any
verbatim allusion. Pindar is twice cited: at 7.12.4, Pythian 1.10-13 is
paraphrased (the lyre charms Ares), and at 6.26.2 Philo stratus refers to
a poem mentioning a i'laLIlOlv that watches over the source of the Nile
(fr. 282 Snell-Maehler), Again, as with Archilochus, Pindar is named
each time. The same locus, 6.26.2, has the only certain mention of
Stesichorus, predictably of his Palinode, referred to by precisely this title:
Stesichorus himself is called simply uV~Q 'IIlEQaLo£.17 The final lyric
intertext of the Apollonius, as in the case of Maximus, is a surprise:
at 3.17.2, Sophocles' Paean to Asclepius (PMG fro 737a Page)."
16 For the resurrection of Ariphron's Paean in the second century A.D. see Bowie
2006, 85--86.
17 4.II.S may also derive from the Palinode.
18 For a fuller discussion of the citations in Philostratus' Apollonius see Bowie forth-
coming (a); for discussion of Sophocles' Paean in the second century A.D. see Bowie
2006, 84-85'
16 EWENBOWIE
Aristides
After these comparisons the thinness of the harvest from Aristides looks
less surprising. Moreover it seems that one category of his compositions,
I-tEAE'taL, is one in which citation of the poets was unusual. Aristides of
course makes extensive use of the Iliad for his Embassy to Achilles (Oration
16), but understandably he does not cite any of Book g-Book 9 had not
been composed at the dramatic date of Oration 16! Or. 8.18 and Or. 11.65
refer to Tyrtaeus as a poet sent by Athens to help Sparta, but none of
his poetry is quoted. Appeals to Athenians never cite Solon; those to
Thebes never cite Pindar. I take this to be a feature of the genre, and
think that this view is supported by the absence of poetic quotation in
Polemo's two surviving I-tEAE't'aL.
Where, then, does Aristides quote early poetry, and what is the basis
of his choices? The speeches in which quotation abounds are Orations 2,
3, 28 and 45. 19 Oration 28 is a special case to which I shall return. Orations
2 and 3 are attacking Plato and philosophers in defense of rhetoric, and
it might be suggested that Aristides' habit of citation is something he
has caught from philosophical writing.
Oration 45, to Sarapis, may be Aristides' earliest extant work, perhaps
from April 142 A.D. 20 Here too a special explanation can be offered.
In this Oration Aristides is setting out his case that prose has as strong
a claim as poetry to be used for hymns to the gods: as has been well
argued by Vassilaki, Aristides tackles this task first by citing poetry, and
prominently Pindar's poetry, in order to criticize it, and then moves on
to use allusion to the poets to achieve mimesis of poetry"
In each case, however, we see the phenomenon that stands out in
Aristides' citation of early poetry; his preference for citing Pindar. Often
Pindar is the only early poet to be cited. Only twice are there speeches
where another poet is cited and Pindar is not: in Or. 18.4, the monody
for Smyrna, Aristides names Sappho and seems to paraphrase her (see
19 Perhaps Oration 20 should be added, but the presence of three Pindaric citations is
hardly enough.
20 For the date of Oration 45 see Behr 1981,419. Behr's notes there (op. cit., 420-422),
show how much citation from Homer is also to be found in this speech (and, at Or.
45.18, an allusion to Ariphron PMC fro 813 Page; cf above on Maximus of Tyre). Our
other candidate for Aristides' earliest surviving work is The Rlwdian Oration 25, for whose
Aristidean authorship see]ones 1990. For an analysis of Aristides' procedures in Oration
45 see Russell 1990, 201-209; Pernot 1993a, II, 642-645; Vassilaki 2005.
21 Vassilaki 2005, unfortunately unaware of Russell 1990.
above); the speech's only other poetic allusion is to Odyssey 6.231, which
follows closely in Or. 18.4 and is not signalled. In the very short Oration to
Heracles, at 40.6, Aristides' phrase 'tOUi; vouou; 'tOLi; O:ltAOLi; oUY'KEQavvui;
mqy allude to the expression in Solon fro 36.15 West, 0J-t0ii ~LTjV re 'Kat
bL'KTjV ;uvaQJ-tooai;, a line that it is clear from Or. 28.138 that he knew;
but that there is an allusion here is far from certain.
The big question, then, is 'Why Pindar?' It is a question to which
there can be no certain answer." The citations attest Aristides' good
knowledge and admiration not only for the epinicia but for several
works of Pindar in other genres too. And within the epinicia he shows
no knowledge of the Nemeans. To me the most persuasive explanation
is that Aristides responded to Pindar's praise of the importance of
outstanding natural capacities, which Aristides was convinced that he
himself had, and of the importance of sustained effort in realizing these
capacities, something Aristides was also more than ready to apply. Such
praise could also be found in Bacchylides and, doubtless, already in
epinicia of Simonides that we have lost: but no ancient critic questioned
Pindar's poetic superiority. Dio in his second Kingship Oration picked
out his AaJ-t:ltQo'tTj'ta 'tiii; cpuOEWi; (2.33), and his supremacy was affirmed
unhesitatingly by Longinus' On the Sublime:
'tL M; EV JlEAEm JlUMOV av Elvm BUXXUAihT]~ EAOLO Tl mV()uQo~, XUL EV
'tQUyq>()L~ ~IOlV 0 Xtoc Tl vi] dLa ~o(POXAfj~; EJtEL()i] ol JlEV (i()LCX:7t'tOl'tOL xaL
EV 't<p yAUqJlJQ<p miv'tT] XEXUMLYQUqJT]JlEVOL, 0 be mV()uQo~ XUL 0 ~OqJOXAfj~
o'tE JlEV olov :n:uV'tU E:n:L<pAEyoum 'tfj qJoQQ., a~EvvuV'tm ()' UA6yOl~ :n:OMUX~
xaL:n:L:n:'toumv u'tuxEO'ta'tu.
Take lyric poetry: would you rather be Bacchylides or Pindar? Take
tragedy: would you rather be Ion of Chios or Sophocles? Ion and Bac-
chylides are impeccable, uniformly beautiful writers in the polished man-
ner; but it is Pindar and Sophocles who sometimes set the world on
fire with their vehemence, for all that their flame often goes out without
reason and they collapse dismally. (Longinus, On the Sublime 33.5, Trans.
D.A. Russell)
The last comment of Longinus also gives us a hint of why Pindar might
seem an especially kindred spirit to Aristides. The phrase 'their flame
often goes out without reason and they collapse dismally' could well
have been spoken of the early part of Aristides' own career.
22 For other respects in which Aristides shared the outlooks and ideas of Pindar cf
Vassilaki 2005, 331-335.
18 EWENBOWIE
This may, or may not, be a satisfactory account of why in citing lyric

poetry Aristides often looked no further than Pindar. The speech where
he clearly does look much further is Oration 28, :7tEQL 'tOu :7tuQuqJt}eYllu'tO!;,
Concerning a Digression (usually translated Concerning a Remark in Passing).
The speech purports to have been provoked by a criticism made of an
incident when Aristides, in the middle of delivering an oration in praise
of Athena (our Oration 37, in Keil's view), departed from his text to voice
some praise of himself and his own eloquence. His aim in Oration 28 is
to amass canonical classical precedents for self-praise. In doing so he
moves fairly systematically through Greek literature: Homer the poet at
section 19; Hesiod at 20-24; gods and heroes as presented in Homer at
25 to 48; Apollo's oracles at 48; Sappho at 51; Aleman at 51 to 54. Then
at 55 to 58 he offers five quotations from Pindar (see my Table).
These quotations are followed by several citations of which the first
are explicitly ascribed to Simonides, and the following six are presented
as if Aristides believes that they are also from Simonides. The problems
raised by this sequence may be of more interest to the investigators
of the transmission of Simonides' epigrams, and of the existence of a
Sylloge Simonidea, than they are to scholars working on Aristides, but the
problem casts light on how Aristides may have operated in seeking out
appropriate poetic quotations, so I shall review it briefly.
At Or. 28.60, after reminding his audience of the 'moderation of
Simonides' ('ttlV yE 'tOu ~LllwVL()01J oWqJQomJV'I]V, Or. 28.59), Aristides cites
two fragments of elegiac poetry that could be either from an elegy or
from an elegiac epigram (Simonides fro 89 West2), and must have been
thought by Aristides to be by Simonides:
I-tvtil-t!l b' oihLVU qJTJI-tL ~LI-tWVLb!ll.ooqJUQLtELV
and then
6ybW'ltoV'tUEtEL:rrmbl AEW:rrQE:rrEO~.
This pentameter also appears as the sixth line of Further Greek Epigrams
'Simonides' 28, part of a couplet quoted by Plutarch On Whether Old
Men Should Engage in Politics 3 (Mor. 78sA):23 the full six lines of this
poem are cited first by Syrianus on Hermogenes (Rabe, 86), where
their author is not named.
23 Page ad loe. does not note the appearance of 28.6 at fro 89.2 West.
Then at Or. 28.63 Aristides cites Further Greek Epigrams 'Simonides' 21

and 38. His citation of ,Simonides' 21 is a version of the two-liner on
the batde of Marathon quoted by Lycurgus at lO8-lO9: the first line
is the same, 'EJJ..~vwv :7tQ0!1Uxo'iivtEi; 'A'frTjVULOL MUQU'fr&VL. In Aristides,
however, the second line, the pentameter, runs EX'tELVUV M~~wv EWEU
!1'UQLli~ui;, whereas in Lycurgus it is XQ'UooqJoQwv M~~wv EOLOQEOUV
MVU!1LV. Page (1981, 229) was surely right to argue that Lycurgus'
version is to be preferred, and that it may have been inscribed beside
the Soros on the plain of Marathon. 'Simonides' 38 is a couplet on the
fallen at Byzantium (for the problem of its date see Page 1981, 253):
Aristides is the only source for this epigram.
Next, at Or. 28.64, Aristides cites the eight lines of ,Simonides' 45,
a poem he was to quote again almost twenty years later, at Or. 3.140-
141. These eight lines are also known from Diodorus Siculus 11.62.3
and Anthologia Palatina 7.296: among other indications that the epigram
is indeed from the fifth century E.G. is its imitation in an epigram
inscribed at Xanthus in Lycia at the end of that century"
The next citation follows immediately, at Or. 28.64: it is of the first
line and the opening of the second line of the four-line version of
'Simonides' 3 that was current throughout antiquity, from IG I 334 and
IG 12 394 through Herodotus 5.77.2 to Diodorus Siculus lO.24.3 and
Anthologia Palatina 6.343 (see Page 1981, 191-193):25
l!tIvw Bouordrv xaL XaAXLMwv (\al-LaaaV'tE~
:ltat(\E~ 'A'Ih]vaLwv
At Or. 28.65 Aristides moves from Attic examples, which he concedes

might be overheated, to Doric: first he cites 'Simonides' 22a, known
from Herodotus 7.228.1 and also found in Diodorus 11.33 and Antholo-
gia Palatina 7.248; then 'Simonides' 12, of which the first couplet is
known from Plutarch On the Meanness ofHerodotus 39 (Mor. 870E) and
Anthologia Palatina 7.250. Aristides, however, is our only source for lines
3-6.
This substantial sequence concludes with a taunt by Aristides to his
critic: 'So this is the right time for you mock these men as loqua-
cious corpses who do not know how to remain calm' (WOLE wQu om
OXW:7tLELV uii'tovi; Wi; MoMOXUi; 'tLVai; VEXQOVi; 'Kat OUX etM'tai; ~O'UXLUV
24 TAM 1.44.1 = Kaibel Ep.Gr. 768 = CEG 888.

25 IG 12 394 has the line order 3-2-1-4.
were grouped according to their metrical category (as for example in

editions of Archilochusj."
Conclusions
Conclusions can be briefly stated. Aristides' knowledge of early Greek

lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry cannot be demonstrated to range as
widely as that of some of his contemporaries, but he probably knew
much more than he chose to quote, and it was only for particular
purposes that he quoted these (or other) poets liberally in his work. Of
the poets of this and indeed oflater periods it is above all Pindar whom
he cites most often, partly, I argue, because he saw a kindred spirit
in his occasionally flawed brilliance. When it was needed, however, he
could amass citations from poets whom he hardly mentions elsewhere,
like Simonides and Solon in Oration 28, apparently enjoying access to a
collection of Simonides' poetry comprising elegiac, epigrammatic and
perhaps lyric poetry, and to an edition of Solon's poetry that had at
least trochaic tetrameter and iambic trimeter poems.
26 Note too that the iambics quoted in Ath. Pol. 12.5 (= fro 37 West) would also have
suited Aristides' purpose but are not quoted by him here, though he does quote fro 37.9-
IO West at Or. 3.547.
22 EWENBOWIE
Citations by speeches in the numerical order of the editions of Lenz-Behr and Keil: an
asterisk indicates that Aristides is our only source for the fragment:
Orn. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

fro 76.2 (DithAth.3)
@401, also?@9 &
12427 [also @Or.
8.21, Or. 20.13]
2 437V@*464 107P@*129 259W@406 01.2.94-96 @109
(a shot in the 01. 9.27-29 &
dark) 100-102 @11O Py.
2. 94-96 @230 Py.
8.95 @148 fro 38
(?Persephone hymn)
@*1l2 [also @
Or. 3.466] fro 31
(?Zeus hymn) @
*420 fro 81 (Dith.
2)+fr.169.16-17
@229--230 fro 169
1--6 @26 28
3 112V 29@298 108P@2943o 124W, 167W & fro 37 @*37 (+~
164P@82 31 172W or an-other fro 38 (?Persephone
Lycambes poem hymn) @* 466 [also
@611 185-187W @Or. 2.112] fr.32
@664&?676 (Zeus hymn) @ 620 32
fro 95 @191 [also
@Or. 42.12] fr.260
@478 33
4 Is. 4.48 (66) @27
8 fro 76.2 (DithAthen.3)
@21 [also @ Or.
1.401, Or. 20.13]
17 01.1.37 @3 Py.
3.43@4
not EQELOJ.lU.
27 EQUJ.lU
Extent and form are those of the citation in PI. Gorg. 484b, but lines 16-17 are
28
cited by Aristides at 229.
29 Also known from ~ Aes. Pets. 352 and Soph. O.T. 56, P. Berolin. 9569 (first century
A.D.)
30 Aristides in the first instance is quoting Plato (whom he names) Laws 705a: the
scholiast on Aristides cites Aleman I08P in comparison, as does Arsenius for the similar
proverb (Apostol. Cent. 2.23 (ii 271L-S)).
31 Aleman, according to the scholiast, but not named by Aristides.
32 Also Plut, de I}th. or. 6 (Mor. 397A), animo procr. 33 (Mor. I030A).
33 P. Harris 21=1113 SM.
Sappho Simonides Solon Stesichorus

34V@1l Pal @128, 166
Pal@234
582P at 97 34 lW @ 549 35 5W@ Pal@557

45FGE@140, 54736 37.9-10W @
[also @Or. 547 cf. 548
28.64]
Pal@8
34 Widely known, e.g [Plut] reg. et imp. apoph. 207C, IG 14.2136.

35 The Salamis, cited Pluto Solon 8.2.
36 Cited Pluto Solon 18.5, Popl. 25.6, cf. Solon 25; [Ar.] Ath.Pol. 12.1.
24 EWENBOWIE
Orn. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

18
20 01. 1.26-27@? 19
fro 75. 14-15 (Ditk.
Athen. 2) @ 21 [also
@ Or. 46.25] fro 76.2
(DitkJ1then. 3) @13
[also @401, Or. 8.21]
21 01. 1.26-27 & 49
@10
23 112V@68 37 Py. 9.95 + ~ @36
24 01.7.58-68?@50
25 112 V@6438 01.7.54-68 @29
01. 7.49-50 @ 30
26 fro 329@p9
27 fr.l08al
(Hyporchemata) @2
[also @Or. 33.1]
28 30P@*51 01. 2.94-96 @55
106P & 148P fro 52£. 1-6 (Delph.
@*54 Paean 6) @58
fro 194.1-3 & 4-6
@*57 fro 237 @*56
37 Also known from ~ Aes. Pers. 352 and Soph. O.T. 56, P. Berolin. 9569 (first century
A.D.)
38 Also known from ~ Aes. Pers. 352 and Soph. O.T. 56, P.Berolin. 9569 (first century
A.D.).
39 C£ ~ cod. Paris. 2995, Hermes 48 (1913) 319.

196V@440
5W@1441
193V at 51 (?= 89W2 @* 60 42 21

55,65 or 147) FGE@63 4338
FGE@*6345
FGE@ 64, also @
Or. 3.140-141]44
3.2-3FGE@6445
22a FGE @65 46
12 FGE [= Plut.de
rna Hdt. 39, AP
7.250] @66 47 PMG
947a&b @67. 48
34.6-7W and 36.3-
27W extensively @
137-14049
40 IILaljYlh;LQov 'ta~ O\jJEL~: or is this a recollection of 3UI and lO5(a)?

41 Cited Pluto Solon 18.5, Popl. 25.6, cf Solon 25; [Ar.] Ath.Pol. 12.1.
42 Line 2 = 28.6 FGE.
43 But Aristides cites a different pentameter from Lycurgus in Leoer. lO8-lO9: E'K'tELvav
M~lIwv EVVEU ~uQLUl\a~ instead of XQuompoQwv M~lIwv EO'toQEoav Mva~Lv. For the
problem, FGE, 225-231.
44 = AP 7.296= Diod. Sic. II.62.3.
45 = Hdt. 5.77-4-
46 = Hdt. 7.228; cf Page 1981, 228.
47 Aristides offers two couplets following the single couplet in Plutarch and AP.
48 Stesichorus: Wilamowitz 1913, 150ff. with n. 3; Orsini and Bergk thought Simoni-
dean, contra Boas 1905, 95.
49 Citing explicitly from the Tetrameters and from the Iamboi.
26 EWENBOWIE
Orn. Aleaeus Aleman Archiloehus Pindar

30 01.9.27@16
31 fro 136a (?Threnoz)
@*12
32 fro 129.7 (Threnoz)
@34
33 fr.l08al-3
(Hyporchemata) @1
[also Or. 27.2]
34 01. 1.25, 44 @25
Py. 3.83 @8 fro 182
@* 5 fro 226 @*5
36 fro 201.1 @112 50
37 fr.146 51
38 ?fr. 33e-d @12
39 01.7.7@16
40
41 56P@7 fro 99 @*6 fro 283
@?6
42 fro 95 @12 [also
@Or. 3.191]
43 fro 35a@*30
44 ?fr. 33c5 @ 14
45 01.3.11-14 & 26,52
01. 6.43 & 50 @3
01.6.99,7.44 @25
01. 8.47 @3 Py 6.11
@13Py 8.2, 9.39
@24 Py 9.39 @24
Py 9.68,12.1 @33
Isth, 3.70, Isth,
4.52 @3 fro 52 £.5-6
(Delphi Paean 6) @3
fro 52h (Delos Paean
7).13-14 or Isth,
8.62 @13 fro 150.1
@3 fr.dub 350-353
@*3 fr.dub 354-355
@*13
50 The first of three lines quoted by Strabo 17.1.19, 802C.

51 Also P1ut. QC 1.2.4 (Mor. 617C), ~ THorn. Il. lOO.
528@*2
Pal @ 2=* fro 24lP
?36.15-16W @6
EWENBOWIE
Or n. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

46 fro 75.14-15 (Ditk.
Athen. 2) @ 25 [also
@Or. 20.21]
50 01.2.1 @ 31
?fr. 52.35 (Abdera
Paean) @42 Is. 8.92
@45, cf Or. 45.13
52 For a list of Pindaric reminiscences in Oration 45 (arranged by section and includ-

ing her own proposals, which I accept here) see Vassilaki 2005, 336-337.
(ref. to Dioscuri
story) 510P
@36
CHAPTER TWO
AELIUS ARISTIDES AND THUCYDIDES:

SOME REMARKS ABOUT THE PANATHENAIC ORATION*
ESTELLE OunOT
'We did not choose the task of writing a jejune history, of narrating the
deeds of the city (...). But we chose to mention its most famous actions
in war, and as far as possible to omit none of the city's good qualities.
This cannot be, if we discuss each point fully, but only if we omit no
category of praise'. 1
This assertion comes in the middle of the Panathenaic Discourse of Aris-
tides. If Plato is clearly, for this orator, the most debated author from
the classical Greek past, as is clear from the three Discourses where
he defends rhetoric-especially against the criticisms of the Gorgias2-
history too really falls into his field of thought.
His relation to history was shaped by his rhetorical training which,
especially thanks to the progymnasmata, gave him a very precise and deep
knowledge of historians," above all Herodotus, Thucydides, Ephorus,
Diodorus, and led him finally to write meletai like the Leuctran Orations
and the Sicilian Orations:' I have chosen to focus this paper on the
way Aristides reads, uses and rewrites the History of Thucydides-
Thucydides who, according to the rhetor, 'seems to excel by far the
other writers of history not only in the power and dignity of his expres-
sion, but also in factual accuracy' (... o£ ou f.LOVOV 'tfi 'tWV Mywv bUVUf.LEL
• I should like to thank Professors Ruth Webb and William Harris for improving
the English translation of this paper.
1 Panathenaic Oration 230; cf. also sect. 90. We follow the structure drawn up by
F.W Lenz and CA. Behr (Leiden, 1976-1980). We generally follow Behr's translation,
sometimes slightly changed.
2 Or. II (To Plato: in Difence ofOratory), Or. III (To Plato: in Defence cfthe Four); Or. IV (To
Capit~. Pernot 1993b,322-327.
3 Nicolai 1992, 297-339. On the use of history in the progym:nasmata themselves.
Bompaire 1976; Anderson 1993,47-51; Webb 2001, 301-303.
4 More exactly On Sending Reinforcements to Those in Sicil;y (pernot 1981). See for
example Russell 1983, 112-115; Gasca 1992a and 1992b.
ESTElLE OUDOT
xul osuvomn, u'A.M xul 'tft 'twv :1tQuy!-t<i'twv UXQL~eL~ :1t'A.EL<TtOV :1tQOEXELV
'tWV OVYYQUqJEWV 60xEi:).5
The best way to evaluate the relationship between the rhetor of
the Second Sophistic and this very significant intellectual figure" is
probably to examine it through the Panathenaic Oration. Indeed, this
work stands out for several reasons. Firstly, this long celebration of
Athens-a speech delivered in the city, during the Panathenaic festival,
probably during the reign of Antoninus Pius or of the joint rulers
Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus7-is, for the most part, a historical
narrative." Aristides plans to prove the essential qualities of Athens (her
UQELaL), which appear to be original (they pre-existed the birth of the
Athenians) through the city's actions (:1tQa~EL~, EQYU).9 By choosing this
way (which is a manner of adjusting the topic),'? Aristides gives a real
history of the city, from the mythical autochthony up to Macedonian
conquest, and therefore it is not surprising that Thucydides' narrative
(including remembrance of the Persian Wars, the 'Fifty-Years' period
and the Peloponnesian War) corresponds in many ways to Aristides'
Panathenaic Oration. 11
5 Or. III (To Plato: in Difence qf the Four). 20. Cf also section 23, on the reliability of the
historian's portrait of Pericles: 'He reports this, not to press a personal quarrel, nor are
all these references for the use of his argument, nor for a single proposition, but in his
history and narrative he simply thus reports the truth, as when he narrates the invasion
of the Peloponnesians or any other event of his time.'
6 C£ for instance Sacred Tales Iv. 14-15, one of the many occasions where the
god Asclepios encourages Aristides to practice oratory: 'While I rested in Pergamum
because of a divine summons and my supplication, I received from the god a command
and exhortation not to abandon oratory. It is impossible to say through the length of
time whatever dream came first, or the nature of each or the whole. It bifitsyou to speak
in the manner qfSocrates, Demosthenes, and Thucydides... '. See, for example, Schmitz 1999.
7 Behr (1968,87-88 and 1994, §8) suggests the year AD 155,while Oliver (1968,32-
34) comes down to the year 167, basing his conviction both on Eleusis' destruction by
the Costoboci in 170('the tone in which Aristides discusses the wars and festivalswould
have been irritatingly false soon after the shocking sack of Eleusis', p. 33) and on the
significance of the word VLKyJ which could reflect the military successes of Lucius Verus
over the Parthians in 164-165. Follet (1976, 331--333) implicidy agrees with the overall
argumentation of Oliver, but corrects the date to 168 (333n. 2): it must be an even year,
given the changes in the calendar introduced by Hadrian.
8 Sections 75-321 (out of 404 sections) are devoted to historical deeds of Athens:
mythical times (78--91), Persian Wars (92-209), wars in defence of the Greeks (210-227),
Peloponnesian war (228--263), wars against the Greeks (264-313), war against Philip of
Macedon (314-316), epilogue of the deeds performed in war (317-321).
9 Oudot 2006.
10 Pernot 1993b, 325.
11 Two scholars have investigated the historical sources of Aristides' Panathenaic Ora-
tion: Haury (1888), wishing to improve A. Haas' conclusions, according to which Aris-
AELIUS ARISTIDES AND THUCYDIDES 33
But the reason why this particular discourse is to be studied is deeper.

Indeed we may wonder how such an encomium of Athens, which is
based on the continuity of the Athenian virtues, can deal with Thucy-
dides' historical analysis describing the development of Athens' hege-
mony. How to deal with all the debates in Thucydides about the nature
of Athenian aQX~? Moreover, this question cannot fail to take another
element into account: in Thucydides' work, Pericles' funeral oration
clearly serves as an archetype for Aristides-a text to which he alludes
several times in his discourse." Pericles' oration is significant, first, by
setting a topic and a division into three periods which Aristides takes
up again and adapts. But above all, this is significant because, in some
way, Pericles and Aristides intend to do the same thing-that is to
explain Athens' excellence--in Pericles' case on the basis of the char-
acter ('CQO:ltOL) and the behaviour of the inhabitants," in Aristides' case
on the basis of the original qJUOL~ which is embodied in the city's char-
acter and can be seen through its actions. In other words, both mean
to explain the sense of the history of a city through its people's national
character. So we read, on the one hand, of the controversial hegemony
of Athens, which Thucydides deals with at length, on the other hand, a
structural model for praise. Such are the two conflicting aspects of what
the historian's work means for the Panathenaic Oration of Aristides.
To begin with, I would like to consider sections 322-329, which
represent a turning point in the oration." In general, we can note that
tides would draw his historical knowledge only from the works of authors who have
come down to us, concluded that Aristides' main source of information was Ephorus-
a conclusion which was convincingly disputed by Beecke 1905.
12 See for example the cutting remark in section 4, where Aristides, reviewing the
writers who in the past claimed to speak properly of Athens, mentions the authors of
funeral orations: ol /)f; EV 'tOL~ E:7tL'taljJLOL~ A.6Yo~ 'tWV aJ'to1'}aVOvtooV EvLou~ J'tQoOELQT]Xamv.
Blot {)E ot xav 'to'lJ'to~, OUX ro~ VO!LL~E'tm, {)ul 'twv J'tQa;Eoov ~A1'}OV, aM' E'tEQav hQaJ'tovto,
{)ELcravtE~, E!LOt {)OXELV, EM't'tou~ YEvEcr1'}m'twv J'tQaY!La'toov, oux E;oo !LEV nou cruYYVW!LTl~
Aa130vtE~ ljJo13ov, aM' o~v oiitrn J'tOAAOii 'tLVO~ EMTloav J'tEQt J'tav'toov yE 'twv uJ'taQXov'toov
'tfj J'tOAEL {)te;EA1'}ELv ('others, in their funeral orations, saluted some of the dead. And
among these some did not carry their narrative through the deeds of the city as
is customary, but went another way, in fear, as it seems to me, of being inferior to
their theme, but in this way they were far from recounting all of the city's attributes').
C£ Thucydides 11.36.4: 'The military exploits whereby our several possessions were
acquired, whether in any case it were we ourselves or our fathers that valiantly repelled
the onset of war, Barbarian or Hellenic, 1 will not recall, for 1 have no desire to speak
at length among those who know' (transl, C.F. Smith).
13 Thuc. 11.36.4.
14 See the structure of the discourse (a draft whose grounds are the kephalaia) in
Pernot 1993b,324.
34 ESTElLE OUDOT
the speech is divided into two main parts---deeds in peacetime and

deeds in wartime-which are both meant to illustrate the boundless
philanthropia of the Athenian people. But now we come to a transition
from this historical part to the praise of the Attic language. This passage
is a real turning point in the oration, and certainly, as].H. Oliver said,
'the key passage of the whole oration':" Athens' superiority, as Aristides
suddenly says, is not one of a historical kind, which would be based
upon her political and military rule. Therefore, all that takes place
before in the speech-namely the first two thirds of the discourse-
is, somehow, entirely erased. No, Athens' real superiority is actually
based on her dialect, and on everything that is connected with the Attic
tongue, that is eloquence, literature, education, a form of life «HaL'ta)
and a set of specific values.
This text is all the more interesting, in that it appears to be a real
manifesto against Thucydides, and I would like to show that Aristides
distinguishes himself from the historian on two levels. Firstly, the ora-
tor plans to define Athens' dunamis in contrast with Thucydides, and
secondly, broadly speaking, while bringing history and encomium face
to face, Aristides implicitly ponders over the right literary form to deal
with Athens in the imperial era. In other words, how is Athens' mem-
ory to be dealt with within the Roman Empire?
At section 322 Aristides explicitly puts an end to the strictly historical
part of his work:
And enough about these matters. But I shall not stop before I discuss a
subject which, as far as we know, no one has mentioned up to this time
in these public recitals of praise. 16 For it seems to me as it were improper
to praise actions with speech and then to omit mentioning the part of
speech itself (Kol ya.Q WO:n:EQ ou ttqJ.L'tov J-tOL qJULVE'taL A6yo~ 'to.\; :n:QU!;EL\;
KOOJ-tOUV'tu 'tOU KU't' uu'tOU\; 'tOU\; A6you\; J-tEQOU\; :n:UQEAttELV 'tT]V J-tVELUV)Y
You alone of mankind have erected 'a bloodless trophy' (UVULJ-tUK'tOV
'tQo:n:mov), as the expression goes, not by defeating the Boeotians, or
Lacedaemonians, or Corinthians, ... but the whole human race---and
you have won an honoured and great victory for all time, not like
15 Oliver 1968, 14.

16 See sections 4-5 of the Proem where Aristides evokes the different kinds of works
that failed to speak worthily of the city.
17 This sentence again echoes the Proem (section 2), where Aristides claims that
there cannot be a more fitting way to honour Athens, which provides the right 'foster-
ing of studies and oratory' ('tQoqJfj~ 'tfj~ m~ aA.T]i}cii~ Kui}UQa~ KUt [)LUqJEQ6v'tOJ~ avi}Qum:ou,
'tfj~ EV !!u'lh1!!um KUt MyOL~), than by using eloquence itself
the disputed battle at Tanagra.l" nor, by Zeus, like that at Marathon,

which was an outstanding success, but a victory truly suited to mankind,
continuous (w~ aAT]tl'oo~ 'tT]V :n:QE:n:ouauv avtl'Qwmp %UL I)LT]VE%i'j) ... For all
the cities and the races of mankind turned to you and your form of
life, and dialect ('i\:n:uam yaQ ut :n:OAEL~ %UL :n:av'ta 'to. 'tOOV avtl'Qw:n:wv yEVT]
:n:Qo~ u!J.ii~ %UL 'tT]V U!J.E'tEQUV I)Lm'taV %UL qJWVT]V a:n:E%ALvE). [323] And the
power of the city is not contained in the establishment of garrisons, but
in the fact that all men of their own accord have chosen your ways and
enrolled themselves as far as possible into the city, praying that their
sons and they themselves may have a share in the beauty which is yours
(%UL ou qJQOUQUL~ ey%utl'EmT]%ULm~ ~ MVU!J.L~ 'ti'j~ :n:OAEW~ auvEXE'tm, aAM
:n:aV'twv eSE:n:hT]I)E~ 'to. U!J.E1:EQU TIQT]!J.EVWV %UL da:n:mouV'twv EUU'tOiJ~ w~
I)uvu'tov'tti :n:OAEL, auVEUXO!J.EVWV %UL :n:maL %UL EUU'tOL~ 'tOil :n:uQ' U!J.LV %UAoil
!J.E'tUAU~ELV).
And a little further on he writes:

[326] You Lacedaemonians and all other Greeks, I say that every day
this proof of the city's victory is still confirmed by you yourselves and
especially by the first men among you; they have abandoned their native
dialects and would be ashamed to speak in the old way even among
themselves with witnesses present. And all men have come to accept
this dialect, in the belief that it is as it were a mark of education. [327]
This I call the great empire of the Athenians, not two hundred triremes,
or more, not Ionia, or the Hellespont, or the regions in Thrace, which
have changed their rulers countless times (Tuu'tT]v eyw 'tT]V !J.EyaAT]V aQXT]v
%UAOO 'tT]v 'Atl'T]VULWV, OU 'tQL~QEL~ I)LU%OaLU~ ~ :n:AELOU~ oM' 'lwvLuv, oM'
'EAA~a:n:oV'tov oMe 'to. e:n:L eQg%T]~, a !J.UQLOU~ !J.E'tU~E~AT]%EV &QXoV'tu~).
According to Aristides, the real dunamis of Athens is by no means based
on a geographically limited area, gained through a small-scale victory
over three of her nearby neighbours. Her empire is not a military
one, one which could be quantified through the number of triremes
and which would be maintained by garrisons, an empire subject to
changes (metabolaz) and, finally, a time-limited one. In fact, this picture is
completely reversed: Athens' victory is no longer a limited one, but
is now universal, both in time (it is permanent and unceasing) and
in space (all peoples are concerned). Moreover this new kind of rule
settled down peacefully-with 'bloodless trophies'-and acts upon the
whole human race as a gravitational force does, without constraint.
18 C£ section 220. See Thuc. 1.107-109 and Diodorus XI.80.2-6. Haury based
himself on the discrepancy between Aristides and Thucydides on the battle ofTanagra,
among others, to state that the rhetor uses Ephorus (Haury 1888, 22). This thesis
overlooks the conscious rewriting Aristides undertakes of Thucydides' historical work,
which we attempt to demonstrate in this article.
ESTElLE OUDOT
In the perspective of this paper, what matters is the expression ~ M-

VUI1LI; 'tfjl; :n:aAEwl;, as it is used in section 329: 1\ll of your oratory in
all of its forms and that which others have written in your tradition is
excellent; and almost all orators, who have been fully successful among
the Greeks, have been successful through the power of the Athenians'
(UA:n:UV'tEI; M ol MyOL ~La. mrvnov 'tWV EL~WV ol :n:ug' UI1LV agLO'tOL xut
oUI; ol :n:ug' UI1WV E:n:OLTJOUV, oXEMv ol ~La. :n:uV'tWV EV "EAATJOL VLXtlOUV'tEI;
<i:n:uV'tEI; 'tfi 'tWV 'Ath)VULWV ~'UVUI1EL VEVLXtlXUOLV). Athens' 'power' clearly
stands out as a central point of Pericles' famous argument in Thucy-
dides' Book II. Concluding a first step of his argument, the Athenian
statesman declares that Athens is 'the school of Hellas', that the Athe-
nians are a sort of a comprehensive person able to perform all kinds of
actions, 'with versatility' (EU'tgU:n:EAWI;), and he goes on to say: 'That this
is no mere boast inspired by the occasion, but actual truth, is attested
by the very power of your city, a power which we have acquired in
consequence of these qualities' (Ked WI; ou Mywv EV 't<p :n:ugaV'tL xal1-
:n:OI; 'tU~E l1iiAAOV 11 Egywv aAtll'tELU, uu'tf] ~ MVUf.LLI; 'tfjl; :n:aAEwl;, ilv a:n:o
'tWV~E 'tWV 'tga:n:wv EX'tTJOUI1El'tu, OTJI1ULVEL).19 The dunarnis of Athens is
then clearly portrayed as a military and political one;" it is power over
allied peoples, and it has to resist the enemy. This power is above all
based on Athens' naval forces," it has 'compelled every sea and every
land to grant access to the daring [sc. of the Athenians]', and has 'ev-
erywhere planted everlasting memorials (I1VTJI1ELU aL~Lu) both of evil and
of good',"
Now in Pericles' oration, the power of Athens illustrates a definite
Athenian virtue-audacity (tolrna): 'Nay rather you must daily fix your
gaze upon the power of Athens ('tf]V 'tfjl; :n:6A.Ewl; MVUI1LV xul't' ~I1EgUV
Egycp l'tEWI1EVO'UI;) and become lovers of her, and when the vision of her
greatness has inspired you, reflect that all this has been acquired by
men of courage ('tOAI1WV'tEI;) .. .'.23
19 Thuc. 11.41.2.
20 Cf also 11.41.4 and 43.1, and besides, for example, 1.72.1; 1.93.3; I.II8.2; 1.121.3;
11.62·3; 11.64.3; 11.65·5; V.44·1; V.95· 1; VI·76.1; VI·92·5; VII-4 2.2; VII.77-7·
21 Thuc. 1.121.3. See also 11.62.2-3.
22 Thuc. 11.414-
23 Thuc. 11.43.1. C£ also 1.144.4: Pericles recalls to his fellow-citizens that their
fathers 'by their resolution more than by good fortune and with a courage greater
than their strength beat back the Barbarian and advanced our fortunes to their present
state' (yvOOf.lTI re ltA.EOVL ~ 'tUXTI 'Kut 'tOA.f.lTI f.lE[~OVL ~ c'\lJVUf.lEL 'tOV re ~uQ~uQov UltEOOauV'to
'Kut E'; 'tUc'\E ltQo~yuyov uiJ'tu) (transl, C.F. Smith).
Boldness ('tOA.!J.u) is one of the main virtues praised by Pericles in his
funeral oration. He dwells on the remarkable way his fellow citizens
put this quality into practice. As their bravery ('to EihlJ1JXOV) is innate,
they can be bold, while avoiding tiring physical training (Q<;t{}U!J.L<;t !J.UA-
AOV t) novcov !J.EAE-tU),24 living instead unconstrained (avEL!J.EvWl; ()LaL'tW!J.E-
VOL),25 because they are able to think and argue (AoyLO!J.ol;) and decide
(XQLOLl;).26
Such a portrayal of the Athenians is both foretold and confirmed
in the speech delivered by the Corinthians in front of the Spartan
Apella in Book I-this text is well-known to Aristides, who quotes
it verbatim in the second Leuctran Discourse," The Corinthians depict
Athenian activism and vigour as dangerous to other peoples. Pericles'
speech is thus mirrored in this famous antithetical presentation, where
the Athenians are depicted in contrast with the idle and procrastinating
Lacedaemonians. According to the Corinthian envoys, the Athenians
are fundamentally aggressive and innovative (they are VEw'tEQonOLoL),28
they are prone to imagine new projects (EnLVOijOaL 01;ELl;)29 and high-
risk actions, they are not reluctant to move (ano()1]!J.1]'tUL).30 And the
Corinthians conclude thus: 'Therefore if a man should sum up and
say that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to let
other men have it, he would simply speak the truth' (... wmE EL 'tLl;
UU'tO'Ul; 1;UVEAWV qJUL1] nEqJuxEVaL Ent 't{fl !J.tl'tE UULOUl; EXELV ~OUXLUV !J.tl'tE
LOUl; aAAoul; aV{}Qwnoul; Eav, OQ{}Wl; av dnOL),31
The issue at stake now is whether the new meaning of Athenian
dunamis in the Panathenaic Oration (that is, the dunamis of the logoi, the
cultural empire of Athens) corresponds to a new interpretation of the
behaviour of the Athenian people."
24 Thuc. 11.3904-
25 Thuc. 11.39.1. Cf. also 1.6.3.
26 On the development of Pericles' analysis through his discourses, cf. de Romilly
1947,9g-136.
27 Or. XI1.60.
28 Thuc. 1.70.; cf. also I.I02.3.
29 Ibid.
30 Thuc. 1.70.4.
31 Thuc. 1.70.9. See also the arguments used by the Corinthians to urge their allies
to bring help to the Potidaeans: 'Vote for the war, not fearing the immediate danger,
but coveting the more enduring peace which will result from the war. For peace is more
firmly established when it follows war, but to refuse to go to war from a desire for
tranquillity is by no means so free from danger' (1.124.2) (transl. C.F. Smith).
32 In the Panathenaic Oration, the Athenian people is generally viewed as one person,
with a unity of character and endowed with a consistency both of acts and convic-
ESTElLE OUDOT
Boldness and bravery (av6QEtu, EU'IjJUXLu, xUQ'tEQLu, 'tOAJ-tU)33 can be

found throughout Aristides' discourse, but these virtues are in a way
always neutralised," for they are systematically linked with terms falling
within the semantic field of kindness, clemency (emEtxELu),35 even tem-
per (:n:Q<;lO'tTji;),36 piety (EU<Jl~~ELU),37 generosity (J-tEYUAO'IlruxLu),38 and justice
(6LXaLOOUVTj).39 All these virtues are both crowned and summed up by
philanthropia (a term which Thucydides does not use).
In fact, in the whole Panathenaic Oration, the nature of the city and
her inhabitants is twofold and, far from cancelling one another out,
these two aspects complete each other in order to form a full and
perfect wisdom (oorptc). I would like to consider, by way of illustration,
the account of an event which took place during the year 48r Be,
when the Athenians, in the congress at the Isthmus, yielded the naval
leadership to the Peloponnesians: 'When the Athenians had shown
such great enthusiasm for the safety of all men, and made such a
great contribution to the common need, and were all-important (...),
[they added] such even temper (:n:Qc;,xo'tTji;) and nobility (J-tEyuAo'IjJuXLu),
so that they conceded to others a formal leadership, and did not
argue the matter (...). How can such conduct fail to prove that they
tions (for example, Pa:nathenaic Oration 308: 'It will be obvious that the Athenian people
in their remarkable decisions has taken up the character of one man, the best one'-
a
lpuvt']aE'taL yaQ, IlEV 6LUlpEQOV'tW~ E~OllAEvau'to, EVO~ av6Qo~ ~ttEL XEXQT]IlEVO~ 'tou ~EA
rtorou), In a general way, the city of Athens is endowed by Aristides with an ~tto~ (for
example 138, 223) and a lpvau; (8-10, 15, and 255-when Athens had to face the maOLa:
in the nature of mankind the city was diseased, but it was cured by its own nature; see
also 301-306 ('t~v 'tWV 3tQUYlla'twv lpVOLV), 3II).
33 f\V6QEla: 81-82 (where Aristides says that he just showed 'proofs, chosen from
ancient examples, both of courage and of generosity', 'tUll'tL IlEV ovv XOLVU 6ElYIlU'tU,
03tEQ E'GtOV, av6QEla~ rs XUL lpLl..avftQw3tlu~ 1J3tUQXE'tW 'tWV aQxulwv E!;ELAEYIlEVU), 107
(av6Quyuttla), 196, 203, 213, 222, 257, 345, 393· Ell1jJllXla: 89, 133, 134, 160, 244, 257·
KUQ'tEQlu: 145, 154, 233, 317. TOAIlU and related terms: II4, 127, 133, 138, 159, 223, 250,
254, 256, 3 17.
34 See for instance sect. 89 (lpLAuvftQw3tlu and E1J'ljJllXlu), sect. 196 (the actions of the
city are the 'demonstration of justice and true courage' ... 3tQo~ 6LXULOcrVVT]~ xUL 3tQo~
av6QELU~ E3tl6EL!;LV aAT]ttLvii~ ...); 213 ((}WIlT] and IlEyuAO'IVllXlu), 257 (E1J'ljJ1lXla and E3tLElxELU),
345 (av6QElu and lpLAuvttQw3tlu).
35 Sections 8, 81, 136, 257, 303, 308, 390, 392. This is precisely one of the three
feelings, along with pity and delight in eloquence, identified by Thucydides' Cleon as
being the most dangerous to Empire: see 111.40.2-3; Rengakos 1984, 58-65.
36 Sections 8, 137, 149, 372, 396. There is only one occurrence in Thucydides, in
Iv.108.3, describing the Spartan Brasidas at Amphipolis.
37 Sections 154-155, 192, 372.
38 Sections 23, 67, 77, 92, 137, 142, 154, 179, 213.
39 Sections 45, 48, 81, 177, 195, 196, 227, 282, 293, 306--308, 313, 348, 361, 388.
AELIUS AR1STIDES AND THUCYDIDES 39
already possessed every kind of wisdom and were the best of all men
... ?' (137).40 Another example is provided by the way Aristides alters
one of Thucydides' explanations of how the Athenian empire reached
its highest point. In an answer to the Corinthians, the Athenians of
Thucydides justify their power successively by reference to fear (MOI;),
honour ('U!!tl) and later self-interest (wqJEALa)Y In the Panathenaic Oration,
the Athenians, acting like a single man, likewise, 'have followed the
imperatives of empire' ('rfi 'tfjl; uQXfjl; uxoAou{h1aal; uvuyxU), but as soon
as possible they 'in generosity, have voluntarily dispensed with the fear
of empire' (qJLA.avftQW:ltL~ be 'to 'tfjl; uQXT)1; ()E()OLXOI; EXWV !!EttElI;...) and
behaved with the greatest equity and moderation toward all (:ltAELO'tcp 'tep
XOLVep xat !!E'tQLCP :ltQOI; a:ltav'tal; XQT)au!!Evol;).42 Moreover, their military
dunamis is even supplanted by a force of a different kind. After Athens'
defeat before Syracuse, Aristides downplays the heavy losses of the
Athenian army, speaking instead of a renewed force, consisting of a set
of moral qualities: 'It was not like a city deprived of its power, but one
which now had acquired more. The calmness of their behaviour, their
moderation, and the disciplined life which they chose so as not to make
any shameful concessions could not be convincingly described' (... Kat
't~v !!EV 'tQO:ltWV dixOALav xat aWqJQolJ'livT)V xat 'tUSLV ()LaL'tT)I;, ijv V:ltEQ 'to'u
!!T)()EV atOXQov auyxwQfjaaL :ltQOELAOV'tO, oM' av eLI; uSLWI; EIJtm).43
In fact, what is left of the portrait which Thucydides draws of the
Athenians, in the Panathenaic Oration of Aristides? What has become of
Pericles' fellow citizens?
40 See for instance sects. 174-176, 196, 213, and especially 252-256 (where Aristides
makes use both o[,;oA.I-lu and OOOljlQOmJVIl to rewrite the episode of the Thirty in 404-
403BC-oudot 2003)' Cf also sects. 344-345: 'Consider also matters of warfare, the
city's personal struggles, and those in defence of others; and again the successes at
home and further those abroad, both in Greek and barbarian territory. And will you
speak of the courage or the generosity which is inherent in the wars themselves? For
just as all the segments of a single spring, no matter how many the parts into which you
divide it, flow back to one another and are combined, so the wars fought through the
need of those who asked for help and the advantages deriving from knowledge combine
with the city's benefactions, and the city's activity on behalf of itself as those who asked
for help combine with the wars'.
41 Thuc. 1.75.3and 76.2.
42 Panathenaic Oration 308 (drawing upon Thuc. 1.77.3-4). On this text see Sard 2006:
the way in which Aristides deals with Melos and Skione is influenced by the portrait
of the 'enemies of the Roman order' (MacMullen 1966). Aristides emphasizes the
responsibility of the rebels and blames for their hubris 'those who made the action
necessary' .
43 Panathenaic Oration 234.
40 ESTElLE OUDOT
The Athenians of the Panathenaic Oration are no longer the vigorous and
conquering nation which is depicted in Thucydides' historical work. If the
Athenian people is of course the most sharp-minded (o;{rtEQol;),44 Aris-
tides immediately adds that this people is also the most even-tempered
(:n:QUO'tEQOl;, sect. 396).45 And how could Aristides speak about the Athe-
nians as an innovative people, when the whole oration emphasizes the
permanence of their national character throughout their whole history?
The word VEW'tEQO:n:OLOl; naturally does not appear, and Aristides even
reverses an event reported by Thucydides in Book I.
This event took place in 46SBC when the rebels on Ithome tried
to rise up against Sparta. The historian relates how the Lacedemo-
nians first called on the Athenians for help, but dismissed them at
once, 'fearing their audacity and their revolutionary spirit ()eLOuV'tEl;
'tow 'A:61'JVULWV 'to 'tOA.I-"TjQov xut VEW'tEQO:n:OLLUV) ... They thought that
if the Athenians remained, they might be persuaded by the rebels on
Ithome to change sides' (1-"'1'] n, ilv :n:uQUI-"eLVWVOLV, u:n:o 'tow EV 'Hho-
I-"n :n:ELO'frEV'tEl; VEW'tEQLOWOL). Then Thucydides adds: 'It was in conse-
quence of this expedition that a lack of harmony in the relations of the
Lacedaemonians and the Athenians first became manifest'.46 Aristides,
however, relates this event in a completely different way and rewrites
Thucydides' text: we are told that the reason why the Lacedaemoni-
ans no longer fear the rebels on Ithome is that the ~thenian people
were present under arms, confident in their courage and fearful for the
Lacedaemonians as if for their own safety... This action put an end to
the current fears of Lacedaemonia, and enabled the Lacedaemonians
later to punish the Perioeci' Y
44 The rhetor is well acquainted with the Thucydidean portrait of the Athenians as
an active people which rejects every kind of idleness or inertia (Thuc. 1.70 and 11-40), as
we can read in Or. XII, one of the Leuctran Orations: 'There is an old saying that you (sc.
the Athenians) are the quickest of all to decide upon and to carry out what is best. And
this is clear both from your decrees and from the contests in which you have always
engaged. And you alone, as I believe, have a law which has provided an indictment for
inertia, so that no one may indulge in untimely idleness or neglect, or call slothfulness
a case of minding one's own business' (XII. 60).
45 Panathenaic Oration 396; see also section 348: 'And I shall add, the wisest, cleverest,
soundest, and most just generals also are from this city ... ' (:n:Qocrlh]ow I'lE lIui :n:uQa. 't'ij(1)e
lIui <TtQu'tT]yoi ooqxirmrot lIui O~1J'ta'tOL lIui UmpUAE<Ttu'tOL lIui 1)LlIaLO'ta'tOL...).
46 Thuc. 1.102.3 (transl, C.F. Smith).
47 Panathenaic Oration 222. Aristides also keeps silent over what follows: the Athenians
felt so offended that they broke the alliance they had entered into with the Spartans
against the Persians (Thuc. 1.102). See also Diodorus XI.63-64.3 and Plutarch, Gimon
16-17·
AELIUS ARISTIDES AND THUCYDIDES
Finally, Aristides agrees that the Athenians are unable to be calm, just
as in Thucydides' history, but according to him this is not 'because
they regard untroubled peace as a far greater calamity than laborious
activity', but on the contrary because they care for general peace:
'Athens realized that the Greeks had no safety and security (uacpuAELuV
xut aw'tTlQLuV) if it should shut them up and keep them at home, or if
it should ask nothing of them, or they should do nothing in their own
behalf But if they should drive the barbarians as far as possible from
Greece, in this way Athens thought that all would have the best and
fullest peace (oihw~ qlE'tO UQLO'tTjV xut xutl'uQav ~aux.Luv a:7tUOLV eawtl'm),
and it judged well and with a regard for how matters stood. For it
is generally true that they alone are most fully at peace who show
that they do not desire to remain entirely at peace' (f,tOVOL yaQ O)(.EMv
O-o'tOL xutl'uQw~ ~aux.u~ouOLV, OL'tLVE~ o.v ()EL;WOL f,t1) :7tuV'tw~ ~aux.Luv ayELv
()EOf,tEVOL).48
It is natural therefore that Aristides' narrative of the Pentakontaetia
period and the Peloponnesian War is strongly opposed to the histo-
rian's. The Athens of Aristides never appears aggressive or repressive;
it never acts out of revenge. Thus Athens is reluctant to intervene mili-
tarily against the Greeks, although they are both ungrateful and jealous
of her 'extraordinary actions'. It only tries to keep their rebellion under
control ('tq> XLVOUf,tEVOU~ XU'tUO)(.EtV) and, when compelled to wage war
against them ('tq> :7tOAEf,tElV uvuyxuatl'Elau), 'seeks no advantage when
she is victorious' (O'tE EVLXTjaE, f,tTj()Ev :7tAEOV ~Tj'tfJam).49 Such is the overall
pattern of the relations between Athens and its allies throughout Aris-
tides' celebration of the city.
Athens is above all a nation that helps victims and when the ora-
tor cannot avoid speaking of Athenian attacks, he explains that the
city's behaviour is beyond the simple dichotomy between attacker and
defender, since it is able to invent a new kind of war ('tQhov :7tOAEf,tOU
O)(.fJf,tU):50 'a counter-attack against those who first plotted hostilities,
with the freedom of action of the aggressor and the just cause of the

49 Panathenaic Oration 228. C£ also a litde before, sect. 225: 'It presented one piece
of evidence as an equal proof of its superiority both in war and in native goodness, its
belief drat it must wage total war against the barbarians, but against the Greeks must
fight simply to the point of attaining superiority'.
50 Panathenaic Oration 194. See, on the opposite, Thuc. 11.36.4, where Pericles clearly
mentions two kinds of wars, the one waged to acquire possessions, and the others
waged to repel attacks.
ESTElLE OUDOT
defender' (ro 'WLI; :1t:QO'tEQOLI; E:1t:L~OVAEUOaOLV UV'tE:1t:EA.{tEi:V alJ'tOUI;, EAEV-

tl'EQL<;1 J.LEv 'tft 'tWV uQ)(.6V'twv, chxmooUvTI 6E 'tft 'tWV UJ.LVVOJ.LEVWV XQWJ.LE-
VOVI;).51
Aristides even goes a step further. Paradoxically, Athens in the Pana-
thenaic Oration uses wars to give advice about peace and concord, be-
cause she constantly acts out of philanthropia. 52 In fact, that is precisely
how she is a true model (paradeigma) for others. Consider for example
how Aristides deals with the government of the Thirty Tyrants and the
return of the democrats." This text is particularly significant, because
it presents Athens' deeds as part of a pattern of behaviour. Aristides
here praises Athens for the specific way she overcame the crisis and
got out of these times of troubles by decreeing the amnesty: 'She not
only bore more gracefully her defeats in war than others their suc-
cesses, but she also settled her troubles at home in such a way that
all mankind had a definition of moderation (oQov oWqJQooUVTjI;) and no
one later could discover a better arrangement than theirs'.54 As a proof
both of moderation and daring (aJ.La oWqJQOOUVTjI; rs xat 'tOAJ.LTjI;... ()EL-
YJ.Lam),55 Aristides reports as an extraordinary fact that 'when they had
struggled against those in the city, and had opposed the Lacedaemoni-
ans, and held the Piraeus (...), the assembled democrats at once came
ready for battle and almost at the same time to make terms, as if each
side were going to wage war on behalf of one another, and not them-
selves alone'.56 What follows in Aristides' text recalls Pericles' funeral
51 Panatlzenaic Oration 195. See also sect. 318: 'The city has waged four kinds of war,
to define them generically: its own personal wars; wars on behalf of the general welfare
of Greece; wars on behalf of those who in particular desired aid; and among those who
desired aid are people by whom the city had been wronged and against whose former
conduct it could complain'.
52 Gasca 1992 .
53 See also the discrepancy between Thucydides and Aristides in the accounts they
give of the Sphacteria episode. According to the orator (sect. 277), 'the city made peace
and sent back the Lacedaemonians, whom it had captured, without harming them,
as if it were enough to have conquered in virtue (... W<J:1tEQ uQxouv uQE"tfi VEVLXTjXEvm).
But those of the Lacedaemonians who were in the Hellespont (...) slaughtered on the
spot the Athenians whom they had captured by the ruse of the naval batde-and I
say no more-, although they had an example from home of the city's behaviour
toward unfortunates (...xaL "tau"ta UltUQX0V1:01; "tou ltaQa()ELy~a"t01; au"toi£; OLXO'frEV, OLa
ltEQL "tOi!l; ()u<TtuxiJaaV1:al; 1] ltOALI; E<TtLv)'. But Thucydides puts forward other reasons:
the Athenians acted in this way 'for bargaining purposes', to use ].H. Oliver's words
(Thuc. IV:4I.I).
54 Panatlzenaic Oration 253.
55 Panatlzenaic Oration 254.
56 Panatlzenaic Oration 255. See also Or. XXIII (Concerning Concorrf): 'When they reached
oration: 'Indeed', Aristides says, mentioning the money the Lacedae-

monians lent to the Thirty, 'we could not discuss the internal affairs
of the Lacedaemonians. For they kept these concealed. 57 But the city,
beside arranging its own affairs in this way in the presence of many
witnesses, also became a model for other people'," that is to say the
famous paradeigma to which Pericles alludes in II.37.!. This then enables
Aristides to show the Athenian model spreading abroad and the city
teaching its own history as an example of homonoia: 'Later she cured by
her actions and counsel the masses of the Argives when they were sick
with faction. For she reconciled them by sending to them and remind-
ing them of her own history'. 59 'Clearly the Athenians alone among all
have administered both the private and the public affairs of the Greeks.
For they not only thought that they must save the Greeks from their
enemies, but also that they must reconcile them when they were sick
with faction at home'. 60
We must of course read this work within the contemporary politi-
cal framework of the Roman Empire. Through Athens' history, Aris-
tides offers two patterns of political behaviour. On the one hand, he
uses the city as a paradigm of the perfect ruling power, a power which
avoids being aggressive, but works through gentle attraction.s'Athens
cares for general freedom and peace, as the Romans do in the Roman
this point offortune, that the popular party went off in exile because of the faction, then
they were in the worst condition. Again when upon the return of that party they voted
an amnesty, they enjoyed the best reputation and once more were almost as they were
in the beginning'.
57 C£ Thuc. 11.39.I.
58 Panathenaic Oration 260: Kal!-l~v AmtE/)aL!-lOVLOL !-lEv oJtw~ W!-lo..ouv aM~AOL~ oux uv
EXOL!-lEV El.:n:ELV· EXQUJt1;OV YUQ' ~ I)E JtOA~ JtQo~ 'tip 'ta mpE'tEQa au'tii~ oihw i}EO'fraL !-lE'ta
JtOMIDV !-laQ'tuQwv xal 'to~ UAAO~ JtaQu/)ELY!-la xa'tEO'tI'].
59 Panathenaic Oration 261: To youv ~QyElwv JtAiii}o~ vooonv UO'tEQOV taaa'tO xal EQYcp
xal Mycp. IIE!-l\jJaaa yaQ w~ au'tou~ xal ilJto!-lv~aaaa 'tIDV Eau'tfj~ /)L~AAal;E. This allusion
remains obscure, but Aristides may refer here (as later in section 271 and in Or.
XXIY.27) to what is called the clubbing of aristocrats at Argos by the mob, which
took place in 370. On these events, see Diodorus XV.57.3 - 58 and Plutarch, Precepts of
Statecrafl 814B.
60 Panathenaic Oration 262: <I>aLvoV'taL 'tOLVUV o!-lolw~ 'tu re OLXELa xal 'ta XOLVa 'tIDV
'EM~VWV JtoAL'tEuaU!-lEVOL !-lOVOL 'tIDV UAAWV. Tou~ re yaQ "EAAT]Va~ ou !-lOVOV EX 'tIDV
JtOAE!-lLWV .poV'to /)ELV QUEO'fraL, aMa xal voaouV'ta~ EV ail'tOL~ aJtaMu't'tELV, au'tOL'tE xal
JtQo~ 'tou~ El;w JtOAE!-lOU~ xal JtQo~ 'ta~ OLXOL /)uaxoAla~ JtaQEaxEUaa!-lEVOL XQELTIOV EAJtL/)o~
EWQIDV'tO.
61 For example Panathenaic Oration 56 (cf. Thuc. 1.2.6). Compare Roman Oration 60-61
('All come together as into a common civic center, in order to receive each man his
due').
44 ESTElLE OUDOT
Oration:" But on the other hand, for the rhetor, Athens is also the
model of the Greek subject city within the Empire, because it is able
to cure its domestic troubles and therefore Roman forces do not have
to be brought in. This means that Aristides here, leaving Thucydides
aside, meets Plutarch, particularly his Precepts qf Statecraft. In this work,
Plutarch gives the young Menemachos advice about the way to keep his
city peaceful and obedient: the officials in the cities must not 'foolishly
urge the people to imitate the deeds, ideals and actions of their ances-
tors', if they are 'unsuitable to the present times and conditions' (8I¢).
But, as Plutarch says, 'there are many acts of the Greeks offormer times
by recounting which the statesman can mould and correct the charac-
ters of our contemporaries, for example, at Athens by calling to mind,
not deeds in war, but such things as the decree of amnesty after the
downfall of the Thirty Tyrants' (and, as another example) 'how; when
they heard of the clubbing at Argos, in which the Argives killed fifteen
hundred of their own citizens, they decreed that an expiatory sacrifice
be carried about in the assembly' (8I4B).
Thus, to come back to Thucydides, we see that Aristides reverses the
historical picture of Athens in two ways. Firstly, its real power resides
in its language and culture and, secondly, when Aristides deals with its
'hegemonic' past, Athens is put forward as a model of concord. And
therefore we may, I think, to some extent imagine the Panathenaic Oration
as a reply to Thucydides' historical work.
This seems all the more likely when we consider another way in
which Aristides takes a different stand from that of Thucydides. To
illustrate this, I would like to come back briefly to the text with which
I began this paper. According to Aristides, earlier encomia of Athens
were a failure, because, whereas orators praised 'actions with speech'
(A6yOL£ ,;a£ JtgaSEL£ xocuouvrc), they omitted mentioning the topic of
speech itself." Pericles, in the funeral oration, is not concerned-at
least, not at first sight-with the praise of Athens' oratory. Indeed, he
begins by asserting the inferiority of words (logoz) compared to actions
(erga). According to him, what counts is that the glory of the celebrated
men is based on two external criteria: the orator's ability to speak and
the knowledge and wishes of the audience." This is not the place, of
62 C£ for instance Panathenaic Oration 227 (contra: Thuc. 111.10.3-6) and the Roman
Oration, especially 6g-71; 97; 103.
63 Panathenaic Oration 322. Cf also section 2.
64 11.35. 2 •
course, to examine the very subtle use Pericles makes of this opposition
throughout his oration before finally dismissing it. But what matters is
that Aristides, here too, makes a complete reversal: by asserting that
the power of Athens lies in her logoi (her language, her literature, her
culture), he goes beyond Pericles' position. The logos now represents
the best deed (ergon) of Athens and it is precisely this that he plans
to celebrate. From now on, there exists the perfect identity between
form and subject which Pericles longed for. And thus a part of the
prooemium of the Panathenaic Oration becomes clearer: 'It is reasonable
to present here a speech on this subject and to honour the city in a
fitting way. For it has chanced that other means of showing gratitude
are just, yet not directly proper to the matter, but that this alone can
be called a genuine means of expressing thanks for your kindness. For
the expression of thanks for oratory delivered by means of oratory is
right in itself but also first of all confirms the name given to this kind of
speech. For it alone is, in the literal sense, the eulogy' ('H yaQ imEQ Mywv
MyQ.l YLYVOf.tEVTj XUQL~ ou f.tOVOV 'to OLxmov eXEL f.tE'fr' EU'lJ'tfi~, aAM xat
't~v a:7to 'tov Myo'lJ :7tQ6nov E:7tWV'Uf.tLUV ~E~moi:' f.tOVTj YUQ EO'tLV aXQL~w~
EVAOYO~). 65
Thus oratory is really revalued against history. According to Aris-
tides, history is not relevant when dealing with Athens. Indeed it is
unequal to what is essential in Athens' soul, because, according to the
rhetor, it is only concerned with the accurate narrative of actions."
In fact true accuracy (axQL~ELU) is reached by making a selection from
among the deeds of the past and by choosing those which are suitable
to illustrate a quality peculiar to the object. The main thing is to 'omit
no category of praise' (f.tTjOEv doo~ EUqJTjf.tLU~ :7tuQuAd:7tELV)Y
65 Panathenaic Oration 2. See also sect. 329: 'As if nature had foreseen from the start
how far in its actions the city would excel all the others, it created for it an oratory
of commensurate value, so that it might be praised by means of its own advantages
.. .' (XU'tElJ%EUliou'tO uu'tfi :n:Qor; u!;lav 'to'ur; Myour;, tVU uu'ti] re xoouotro u:n:o 'twv euu'ti'jr;
uym'}wv...). Loraux 1993, 268-269; Cassin 1991-
66 See for example sect. 229: 'Further, as we have said, we did not choose the task
of writing a jejune history, of narrating the deeds of the city (ou auYYQucpi'jr; EQYOV 'Il'LAi'jr;
:n:QOELAOIlEftu uqJllYELai}m 'tu :n:E:n:QUYIlEVU 'tfi :n:OA.EL), for even that speech would extend
into the following penteterid. But we chose to mention its most famous actions in war,
and as far as possible to omit none of the city's good qualities (uMu'twv IlEv xu'tU 'to'ur;
:n:OAEIlOUr; :n:QU!;ElllV 'tur; YVlllQLlllll'tU'tUr; El.1tELV, 'tWV b' u:n:UQX0V1:111V uyuftwv 'tfj :n:OAEL, xuft'
OOOV buvu'tov, Illll)Ev :n:UQUAI.1tELV). This cannot be, ifwe discuss each point fully, but only
if we omit no category of praise' (Tuii'tu b' EmLV oux o.v btU :n:UV1:111V Exumu AEYlllIlEV,
uM' o.v IlllbEv E1'Ior; EUCPlllllar; :n:UQUAEl.n:lllIlEV).
ESTElLE OUDOT
So oratory alone has the legitimacy to speak about Athens, and

Aristides, on this point too, wants to reply to Thucydides.
As the historian says, it is impossible 'as to the events of a still earlier
date' (than the Persian wars) to get 'clear information on account of
lapse of time' (aa<pwl; EUQELV <'lux XQovou :n:A:fj'frol; u6'UvU'tOV),68 and, 'to
describe the state of affairs of early times, it is difficult to credit any and
every piece of testimony' (:n:uvrl E~fjl; 'tEXI-tTJQLq> :7tLO'tEiiam).69 Thucydides
accordingly dismisses the poets and logographoi-a term Aristides could
apply to himself-who have composed accounts 'with a view rather
of pleasing the ear than of telling the truth' (e:n:l 'to :n:Qoauywyo'tEQOV
'tfi uXQouaEL ~ UATJ'frEO'tEQOV).7 o Thucydides wants his historical method
to be 'adjudged profitable' (WqJEALI-tU XQLVELV) and not thought of as 'a
prize-essay to be heard for the moment' (uywvLal-tU el; 'to :n:uQUXQfjl-tu
UXOVELV).7 1
The Panathenaic Oration of Aristides attempts to reply to these two
main points. First, it is because the beginnings of the city are not clear
or easily comprehensible that Aristides can make use of the topos that
he does not know where to begin. 72
Furthermore, speaking about Athens, Aristides aims at pleasing the
ear as well as telling the truth. In other words, he plans to reconcile the
two criteria which Thucydides contrasted. That is what he explains in
a text which is part of what is called the 'second prooemium' within
the long account of the Persian wars." Here Aristides clearly plays with
Thucydides' words: 'I see indeed that my speech is becoming long and
that it is no longer easy after what has already been said to speak to
please or to win my audience (ou Q<;l<'lLOV QV :n:QOl; TJ<'lOVf]V 01hE uu'tOV ihL
ElJtELV 01hE 'tUXELV uxouovrwv), just like a second contestant who enters
after the first has distinguished himself However, I did not undertake
these arguments to entertain (ou 'ljJuXUYWYLal; XUQLV), but to show truth-
fully the worth of the city (I-tE'ta UATJ'frelul; 'tf]V 'tfjl; :n:OAEWl; U~LUV), so that
I shall do more wrong by slackening than I shall cause annoyance by
speaking'." The word uYWVLO'tT]l; clearly recalls the Thucydidean word
uywVLl-taU, just as 'ljJUXUyWyLU recalls 'to :n:Qoauywyo'tEQOV. In this way he
68 Thuc. 1.1.2.
69 Thuc. 1.20.1. Marincola 1997, 95-117 (esp. 95--g7).
70 Thuc. 1.21.1.
71 Thuc. 1.22.4.
73 Panathenaic Oration 185-188.
rehabilitates the Athenians, whom Thucydides' Cleon had described as

'overcome by the pleasure of hearing, like the audience of the sophists'
(... uxoi'j\; ~6ovfj ~aaw!-tEvOL xaL oorpurrdrv 'frEa'taL\; EOLXO'tE\;).75
Thus Aristides' Panathenaic Oration attempts a double reversal ofThu-
cydides' work: imperial Athens of the fifth century-which is depicted
by the historian as an increasing power-is now the model of a pacifism
aimed at universal concord. The Panathenaic Oration offers the structured
vision of the relations between the ruling power and the ruled cities,
which is precisely the one promoted by Rome. Besides, while offering a
new definition of Athens' dunamis, Aristides first excludes Athens from
history, using the empire described by Thucydides as a metaphor. Being
an essence, Athens exists before coming into historical times. In fact
for Aristides Athens has no beginnings: because it is by herself an
uQX~, it serves as a first principle." Therefore the history of Athens
cannot be a chronological one, for its function is to illustrate values
which always recur and are continuously confirmed. Thus it is not
surprising that Aristides does not mention any evolution in Athens'
supremacy-neither decline nor progress. And when the city, in the
Panathenaic Oration, finally comes into the historical frame, Aristides
makes clear that this chronology is provided by Rome, presented as
the last of the five world empires: 'Under the empire at present existing,
which is in every way the best and greatest, Athens has precedence
over all the Greek race, and has fared in such a way that no one
would readily wish for its old state instead of its present one' ('E:JtL
M 'ti'j\; :JtClv'ta UQLO't11\; xaL !-tEYLO't11\; 'ti'j\; VUVL xa'frEO't11xULa\; 'tu :JtQEO~Ei:a
:Jtav'to\; EXEL 'tau 'EAA11VLXOU xaL :JtE:JtQaYEv olhw\;, roO'tE !-ttl QQ.6LW\; av
'tLva aiJ'tfj 'tuQxaLa UV'tL'tWV :JtaQov'twv O1JVE";aa'frm).77 Therefore, in the
unit made up of the Panathenaic Oration and the Roman Oration, Aristides
works out an overall view: Athens' history is now fixed as a logical
whole and her values are to be 'historicized' by Rome. In the Roman
Oration, Greeks are shown as foster-fathers, whom the Romans take
75 Thuc.11.38.7.
76 Oudot 2006.
77 Panathenaic Oration 335. See also section 332: 'The present empire of both land and
sea-and may it be immortal-is not unwilling to adorn Athens as a teacher and foster-
father, but so great are its honours that now the only difference in the city's condition is
that it does not engage in serious affairs (ou 3tQUYJ,lUTEUETaL). But for the rest, it is almost
as fortunate as in those times when it held the empire of Greece, in respect to revenues,
precedence, and the privileges conceded by all'.
ESTElLE OUDOT
good care 0£78 But meanwhile they take over from the Greeks, putting
into practice the very values brought forward by the Athenians of the
Panathenaic Oration.
There is one last issue I would like to emphasize briefly. From a more
general viewpoint, the Panathenaic Oration is likely to be read as one of
those works of the Second Sophistic period that meditate on the most
suitable literary form to deal with Athens. Thus, in some ways, Aris-
tides' thought comes close to Strabo's own questions about the right
way to describe the space and the stones of Athens. In Book 9 of his
Geograplry, he states that the city cannot be depicted because she is
too famous and too celebrated (u!1vou!1evwv re 'Kat ()La~OW!1evwv). He
is therefore afraid of making a real digression (E'K:7teoELV 'tfj~ :7tQotl'eoE-
w~). 79 The Acropolis, he says, needs either the mention of one of its
monuments or the exhaustive description made by a periegete, but in
no case a geographical account." Later, Dionysius Periegetes, in his
Description ofthe T#Jrld, even brings this picture to the highest point of
abstraction. For a topographical or architectural mention, he substi-
tutes a literary locus." referring to the discussion between Socrates and
Phaedrus, and more exactly to the mythological event which, in Plato's
dialogue, prompts the discussion of the respective powers of talking and
writing," Athens is no longer a geographical place, but a weighty cul-
tural reference. And Plutarch's declamation upon the glory of Athens,"
questioning whether the city's fame is due to her statesmen and gener-
als or to her historians, poets or orators, also comes into this discussion.
Through the Panathenaic Oration, both by itself and in connection with
the Roman Oration, Aristides takes part in the hotly debated question
of Athens' essence. For him, the city's identity is now purely a cul-
tural one and her past is now a rhetorical matter. Thus historiogra-
phy's hegemony falls away, as if it were no longer of any use. The
true mirror of Athens is not that of the historian any longer-and
78 Roman Oration 96. See, for example, Swain 1996, 274---284; Pernot 1997,33-40.
79 IX.I.I6 C396: 'However, if I once began to describe the multitude of things in
this city that are lauded and proclaimed far and wide, I fear that I should go too far,
and that my work would depart from the purpose I have in view' ('Allu YUQ Et~ JtAii{}o~
E~Jti.m:OlV TWV JtEQL Tii~ JtOAEOl~ TUUTT]~ U~V01J~EVOlV TE ltULIlLU~OOl~EVOlV OltVW JtAEova~ELv,
~~ lJ1J~~fi Tii~ JtQO{}ElJEOl~ EltJtElJELV ~v YQuqJT]v) (transl. H.L. Jones).
80 Ibid.
81 Namely the Ilissos river 'where Boreas carried offOreithyia' (v. 423-425).
82 Oudot 2004.
83 On the Fame of the Athenians (IIoTEQov 'A~VULOL ltUTU JtOAE~OV ~ ltUTU lJOqJLUV EV-
1l0;6TEQOL) (345C-351C).
there, Aristides may address the contemporary issue about the worth
of the relationship between history and rhetorical praise" which is
reflected in Lucian's treatise How to Write History. In the part of the
treatise devoted to advice, after recalling Thucydides' famous asser-
tions" and setting the historian's concern against the orator's, Lucian
describes the ideal historian's mind through a striking comparison: 'Let
him bring a mind like a mirror (... xa't6:lt'tQq> EOLxu'iav :ltaQaoxecrf}w 't~v
yVW!1TJv...), clear, gleaming-bright, accurately centred, displaying the
shape of things just as he receives them, free from distortion, false
colouring, and misrepresentation'. 86 Aristides uses the same image at
the end of the Panathenaic Oration, but now the mirror which is perfectly
suitable to Athens is of course eloquence itself: 'Men anywhere on earth
must of necessity think of oratory and of the Athenians simultaneously
and they would never expel from their soul the city's image (xat !1TJM-
nors Ex~aAEi:v av EX 'tii~ '¢ux.ii~ 'to EL()WAOV, WO:ltEQ EV xa't6:lt'tQq> 'to'i~ A.6-
YOL~ E!1~A.E:ltOv'ta~), perceiving it in oratory as it were in a mirror'."
84 See for example Marincola 1997, 75-76; Zimmermann 1999; Pernot 2oo5c.
85 How to Write History 42: 'Thucydides says he is writing a possession for evermore
rather than a prize-essay for the occasion, that he does not welcome fiction but is
leaving to posterity the true account of what happened. He brings in, too, the question
of usefulness and what is, surely, the purpose of sound history: that if ever again men
find themselves in a like situation they may be able, he says, from a consideration of the
records of the past to handle rightly what now confronts them' (transl. Kilburn).
86 How to Write History 50 (transl. Kilburn).
CHAPTER THREE
ARISTIDES' USES OF MYTHS
SUZANNE SAiD
An exhaustive study of Aristides' mythology' would require a full book,

such as S. Gotteland's Mythe et rhetorique on the mythical examples in
Attic orators or A. GanglofPs Dion Chrysostome et les mythes. For myths
appear not only in full narratives but also in passing allusions, com-
parisons, examples. They may be criticized or interpreted allegorically.
They serve as mere ornaments or may be drastically recast to suit the
needs of the time. In this paper, I will only be content with merely
giving some sense of Aristides' various ways of handling myths.
I start with an examination of the occurrences of muthos, muthologema,
mutheomai and muthodes, which suggest a rather critical attitude towards
mythology. Then I focus on the Heracles myth, distinguishing between
its rhetorical uses and the transformation of its content according to
imperial ideology. This myth is indeed the most prominent in Aristides'
speeches. Heracles is not only celebrated in a hymn, he also appears
in other settings: hymns celebrating other gods (Athena, the sons of
Asclepios, Sarapis) or sanctuaries (Eleusis), the panegyric of Athens and
the celebration of the reconstruction of Smyrna, meletai (Orations 5 to 16:
OnMaking Peace with the Athenians [8], 70 the Thebans [9 and 10], Leuctrian
Speeches [II and 12]), sumbouleutic speeches (70 the Cities on Concord),
self-defense (Concerning a Remark in Passing [28]), and a scathing attack
(Against those who Burlesque the Mysteries ifEloquence [34]). This exceptional
presence may be explained not only by the popularity of the hero in
the Greek world, but also by his place in imperial propaganda. In
the kingship speeches of Dio, the appeals to the precedent of Heracles
have justly been regarded as complimentary to Trajan, who made him
into his favorite hero." This may also be the case for Aristides, since
the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius was also fond of the hero and
1 On Aristides and myths, see Pernot 1993a, II, 762-772.

2 Durry 1938, 108, Desideri 1978, 356 n. 61,Jones 1978, II7-II8,Jaczynowska 1981,
636; Moles 1983, 270, Moles 1990, 323 n. 86.
SUZANNE SAID
had himself portrayed as Heracles." To conclude, I analyze Aristides'

rewriting of the Prometheus myth. For it provides the best illustration
of an ideological recycling of a classical myth.
I. Muthos
In Aristides' speeches muthos is not always the antonym of logos.' The

two words may be associated.'
It is not only used for what we call 'myths' such as 'the tale of the
Pamphylian Er' and the myth of the Gorgias,6 but also for fables? or
reports of impossible phenomena by a geographer such as the Mas-
salian Euthymenes," reports which are like 'the tales told by the nurses
to their children when it is bedtime."
'Myth' may be praised as a cryptic discourse that prevents the unini-
tiated from understanding a sacred truth.'? But usually Aristides uses
muthos, muthologema, and muthodes in order to remind his audience that
the characters" or the events" which he mentions are 'fabulous' or
'wonderful'." He contrasts the making of 'myths', that is the stories
concerning the gods, with the narratives of human deeds and wars."
Like the historians, he may also use muthos in opposition to history.
In the Panathenaic Oration he opposes 'the Erichthonii, the Cecropes',
that is 'the fabulous element (-ta f.Lut}w6T])' to 'the trophies on land and
sea', that is to historical victories." In the Letter to the Emperors concerning
3 Lenz 1964, 228.

4 E.g. 4. 23: mutlws is the equivalent of logos.
5 21.$ 36.9$ 46. 17.
6 26.69 and 2.348.
7 34.3.
8 36.85'
9 36.96.
10 28.II3. In the Hymn to DioT£YsOS the story of Dionysos bringing Hephaistos up to
heaven is interpreted as a 'riddle' (U'LvLyItU) whose point is clear: 'that the power of the
gods is great and invincible, and that he could give wings even to asses, not only to
horses' (4I.7).
11 The Phaeacians (25. 40) or the Gorgon (1. 128), lasos, Kriasos, Crotonos and
Phoroneus (2.7).
12 27.18: the tale (ltui}oAOYTlItU) about the Trojan wall; 21.5: the tale (ltiii}ov) about the
Theban wall; 25.29: the tales (ItUi}OAOYliItU"tU) about the birth of Rhodes raised by the
gods as a gift to the Sun; 2.207: the tale (ltiii}o~) of the Sown-men.
13 22.2.
14 45-4-
15 1.354.
ARISTIDES' USES OF MYTHS 53
Smyrna, he distinguishes between Theseus, the mythical founder of

Smyrna, and its historical founders, Lysimachus and Alexander," In the
Eleusinian Oration, he sets the return of the Heraclidae as the beginning
of historical times, when he opposes 'the things which go back to myth'
to 'what happened later on, after the Heraclidae have returned to the
Peloponnesus'," as did Ephorus, who began his universal history with
the return of the Heraclidae." In the second Smyrnean Oration,19 after
comparing what happened to Smyrna, which, once destroyed, is now
superior to itself, to what happened to Pelops, who, once taken from
the cauldron and put together anew; became even more beautiful,
he completes the mythical simile with another one, which must be
believed since it belongs to history, for Athens, after its destruction by
the Persians, became even larger and 'expanded on every side'.
In agreement with rhetorical treatises," Aristides often indicates his
distancing from the myths by introducing them with 8 ()~ lpaOL,21 M-
yO'UOLv,22 MYE'taL,23 f.L'Ul'toAoyOUOL,24 or W~ Myo~.25 But once he validates
a 'myth' by quoting the poets as reliable witnesses and pointing out
their consensus.P In the Panathenaic Oration, he dismisses with the adjec-
tive muthodes the most ancient Athenians myths." In his speech 70 Plato
in Difense if Oratory, he not only puts the tale of the Sown-men into
inverted commas ('just as they say the Sown-men did'), he also adds a
skeptical comment, 'if the myth hints at this'," and then introduces the
myth of Prometheus by way of an excuse: 'if a myth must be told'.29
Even in the hymns, where myths are a given in the pars epica, Aris-
16 19-4-
17 22.4-5: xul 'til !-lEv d~ !-lu'frou~ avf]xoV'tu 'tOLUU'tU. 'til II' UO'tEQOV 'HQuxAELllwv d~
IIEA01tOVV1]OOV XU'tEA'frOV'tOOV.
18 Diod.Sic. 4.1.3.
19 21.l(}-II: !-lV1JO''!h100!-lm II' ELXOVO~ ou !-lu'frcbllou~. aAA' avuyxuLU~ 1tLO'tEUom.
20 Menander Rhetor I. 339, 2-IO, and Ps-Aristid. Rhet. 2. 13. I 1tEQl'twv !-lu'froollwv.
OUl( IhL l\yEvEm. aM' on AEyE'tm yEvEa'frm. See johrens 1981, 52, and Pernot 1993a, II,
763 n. 189.
21 37.3; 38.12; 40.2; 41.4.
22 41.6,8.
23 1.87;37.9; 14;38.IO.
24 34.59; cf johrens 1981,52.
25 38.II; 41.1.
26 46.7-8.
27 1.354: 'The Erichthonii, the Cecropes, the fabulous stories ('til !-lu'frwll1]), the shar-
ing of the crops'.
28 2.207: EL c'iQu xul 6 !-lu'fro~ mum uLvL't'tE'tm.
29 2.394: EL liE IIEi: xul!-lu'frov AEyELV.
54 SUZANNE SAID
tides sometimes expresses some reluctance to use them. In the Hymn to

Athena, he introduces the usual mythical part with a cautious sentence:
'If these matters must be mentioned in detail and the myths must not
be neglected (Et M bEL 'Kat 'tmv EV !J.EQEL !J.VT]<rllijVaL 'Kat LOUe; !J.v{toue; !J.T]
a'tL!J.UOaL), let us attribute to her olive oil, a health-giving drug, which
appeared through her agency"? and concludes by opposing the elusive
language of the myths to what can be said openly." In the Hymn to Her-
acles, he concludes his narrative of ancient myths with a dismissal: 'But
why should one speak of ancient stories?'32 In the Isthmian Oration regard-
ingPoseidon he uses a rhetorical question to dismiss the most famous leg-
ends of Corinth: 'Why should I mention Sisyphus, Corinthus the son
of Zeus or Bellerophon the son of Poseidon or any other of the heroes
or demigods? Or again those who afterwards invented weights, scales,
measures, and the justice inherent in these, and the story of how this
city built the first ship, not only the trireme, but even Argo itself... Or
again the deeds on land, the so-called wings of Pegasus ... and he who
first dared to ride him, the flying knight?'33 For 'these are old and fabu-
lous stories'. 34 Later on in the same hymn, he introduces the story of the
two gods, the child and his mother, with a cautious warning 'whether
this part of the speech should be called a tale or a myth'.35 The suffer-
ings of Ino Leucothea and her son, as well as the ordeals of the gods
and the stories which portray Ares in chains, Apollo as a hired servant
or Hephaistos cast into the sea are also quickly dismissed, since 'this is
neither a holy or a pious story, especially when one is speaking about
the gods. We must banish this tale (Myov) not only from the Isthmus
and the Peloponnesus, but also from all Greece'." The tales portraying
Heracles dancing among the Lydians or killing his wife and his children
are denied any plausibility" as well.
The hymns to Sarapis, to Athena and to Heracles also criticize poetic
myths in nearly identical terms. In the hymn 70 Sarapis the orator
makes fun of the privileges of the poets who are allowed to 'put to
use on each occasion whatever sort of subjects they wish, although
30 37.11 ; C£]ohrens 1981, 85.

3l 37.27: El yae IIEi x.u-raMcruvtu 'toiJ~ !-lu'frou~ Ei.n:Eiv EL~ 'to !-lEcrOV 'to. 'tfj~ 'frEOU.
32 40 . 12.
33 46. 29.
34 46.3°: aUa 'tUU'tu !-lEV :n:ut..ma x.ui!-lu'friiillT].
35 46.32: EL'tE Myov EL'tE !-lu'frov xe~ cpavm.
36 46.33. See Kindstrand 1973, 213.
37 34.59: &. 'tL~ av :n:EL'frOL'tO EQ cpeoviiiv;.
they are untrue and sometimes implausible and without substance at

all (iJ:n:o'frE(JeL~ ... , oihe aA.TJ'freL~ oihe EVL<rte :n:L'frUVa.~), if one should wish
to view it properly'. 38 He proposes a definition of poetic topics which is
indeed very close to the rhetorical definition of muthos as a tale which
is neither true nor plausible, as opposed to historia which is true, and to
plasma which is a plausible fiction." In the Hymn to Athena, the help given
by the goddess to Odysseus, Bellerophon, Perseus, and Heracles in his
two descents into the underworld (first to fetch Cerberus and second to
freed Theseus) as well as in his fights against the gods are also presented
as additions invented by poets who wanted to make the impracticable
(ta. a:n:oQorta-ra) practicable and possible (:n:6QL!1U 'Xut ()'UVU'ta.).40 The
same goes for the 'myth' of Orpheus attracting wood and stones, which
is interpreted as an exaggerated ()L' u:n:eQ~oA.fj~) description of his ability
to move men with his music."
This criticism of myths comes together with a criticism of the poets
who 'composed' them ('twv <J'UV'frEV'tWV)42 in the Isthmian Oration. In the
Egyptian Discourse, the poets again come under attack because they
'compose fabulous tales (!1v'fro'U~ ... (J'Uv'freLvm)' and use these forgeries
as embellishments: they cannot be reliable witnesses." So it comes as
no surprise if the Massalian geographer who told muthoi about Libya
and was both charming and unreliable is said to be like a poet."
'Myth' even becomes, like 'dream', a metaphor for anything non-
existant such as the daily and nightly amusements of young men of his
age for the serious Eteoneus," or the wars for those who enjoy the Pax
Ramona." After an earthquake, Smyrna and Rhodes, which were utterly
destroyed, are said to have become mere 'myths'." This is the reason
why Aristides, who introduced the story of Prometheus as a muthos,48
concludes it by saying, 'Let our myth end with a conclusion I think in
no way dishonorable. From the matter itself it is clear that this is no
38 45.1.
39 See the texts collected by Barwick 1928.
40 37.23.
41 34.45.
42 46 .33.
43 36.II2. See Kindstrand 1973, 212.
44 36.96.
45 31.9.
46 26.70: EV dAAw~ I-lu{}wv 'ta~eL.
47 20.6 and 25.31.
48 2.394: eL I'lE I'lei: Kat l-lu{}OV AEyeLv.
SUZANNE SAID
vain myth or dream, but factual reality (oux aAAw~ I-tu'fro~ mu'ta oM'
ovaQ, UAA' v:ltaQ),.49 In the same way Dio, after introducing in the first
Kingship Oration the story of Heracles as a muthos, corrects himself
and calls it a sacred and sound tale (A.6yo~) which has only the form of
a myth."
However Aristides, while often giving a plainly negative value to
muthos,51 makes lavish use of mythical allusions in his speeches, for myth
was a necessary adornment of a figured style. Moreover its flexibility,
which is far superior to that of history, makes it into an indispensable
tool for the orator, as demonstrated by the various explanations of the
deification of Heracles. In the Hymn to Athena, it is of course Athena
'who clearly enrolled Heracles as a god among the gods'." But in
the Panathenaic Oration, it is Athens alone which is said to be the first
'to establish for Heracles temples and altars'" (a version also adopted
by the meletai delivered by Athenian orators)," whereas in the Hymn
to Heracles the Athenians are preceded by Apollo, who 'immediately
proclaimed the establishment of temples to Heracles and that sacrifices
be made to him as a god' and 'revealed it to Athens'. 55 Aristides
may also give a new twist to an old myth in order to make it more
appropriate to his purpose. The Athenian hero Theseus was usually
said to have modeled himself on Heracles." But in his praise of Athens,
Aristides makes Athens into a role model (:ltaQui'lELYl-ta 'tou ~Lo'U) for
49 2.4 0 0 ; see also 48-42.

50 1.49: el 6' uQu ltiHI'Ov EthiAOL; 'tLVa axoucraL. ltuUov 6£ LEQov xul UyLfj Myov OX'l']ItU'tL
ltui}O'IJ AEy0ItEVOV.
51 Kindstrand 1973, 204.
52 37.2 5.
53 1.5D-51; 52: 'all the gratitude which Heracles received from other men came
from the city. For all men, in imitation of her, agreed upon what was just'; 360:
'The Athenians were the first Greeks to regard [Heracles] as a god' and 374 'they
[Heracles and the Dioscuri] were the first strangers to whom the city revealed its sacred
ceremonies, while they still lived among mankind, so that it clearly deified those to
whom we now sacrifice'.
54 9. 30: 'we shall omit... how Heracles was the first stranger to be initiated in the
mysteries and how we were the first to establish a temple for him'. IO.36: 'How is
this conduct worthy of Dionysos and Heracles who, although being natives of your
country, were first admired by us'. 11.65: 'when he [Heracles] departed from mankind,
he received first among us [the Athenians] the same honors as the gods'.
55 4 0 . II: Elrfl-u; E;TJyEL'tO VErn; re 'HQUXAEO'IJ; t6QuEcri}aL xul i}UELV w; i}Eip. See also
Isocrates, Philippus 33. Athens is said to be 'HQUXAEL It£V (J'\JVaL'tLaV YEvecri}aL 'tfj; ai}uvucr[-
u;.
56 E.g. Isocrates, Helen 23. Cf. Gotteland 200I, 254-255.
Heracles 'when he formed that resolve on behalf of all mankind', and
his association with the Athenian Theseus becomes a 'clear sign"? of it.
II. The Heracles Myth and Rhetoric
In his speeches, Aristides displays his rhetorical expertise by exploiting

all the possibilities of myth, which may be interpreted literally or sym-
bolically and used as direct argument or as an indirect reference term
in comparisons.
It is only in the meletai that various episodes in the Heracles myth
are used as arguments or examples to be followed by speakers who
capitalize on the archaizing taste of the audience" and hark back to
the most ancient past, while sometimes using the well known rhetorical
device of praeteritio and announcing their intention to leave the myths
out."
In the oration On behalf ifMaking Peace with the Athenians, the Lacedae-
monian who favors showing mercy to the defeated Athenians reminds
his fellow-citizens of their former behavior, how they welcomed the
Heraclidae, who were the ancestors of the Spartan kings, and how Her-
acles, together with the Dioscuri, who were especially worshipped at
Sparta, were the first strangers to be initiated by the Athenians."
In the speech 70 the Thebans concerning the Alliance I, in order to
obtain the Thebans' help against Philip, the Athenians similarly evoke
'all [their] acts which bear on friendship and trust, which cover so
long a period and are so numerous'J" Beginning with the myths, they
recall first the ties of friendship between Athens and Theban gods and
heroes: 'We shall omit how we received Oedipus and how Dionysus
came from you and met with Icarius and the gift which he gave
him and how Heracles was the first stranger to be initiated in the
mysteries and how we were the first to establish a temple for him', 62
then the personal friendships which are the strongest: 'For what is
more glorious than the fellowship of Heracles and Theseus, or what
57 1.35.
58 Bowie 1974.
59 8.18: Em A.EyELV; 9. 30: EUOOfLEV.
60 8.18.
61 9.30 •
62 9.30 •
SUZANNE SAID
more opportune for the Greeks?'63 They conclude by using this former
friendship, also demonstrated by the common campaign waged by
Heracles and Theseus against the Amazons, as an example to be
followed." In a second speech on the same topic, the same argument
is used and reinforced by a reference to the honors given by the
Athenians to the Theban Heracles and Dionysos 'who, although being
natives of your country, were first admired (e'ftaul-tu<J'tl1')oav) by US'.65
The Leuctrian debate, with its five successive speeches pro and con-
tra, provides the best illustration of the flexibility of myth, since the
same episode can be used by two orators to promote two opposite
policies. On the one hand Heracles, as a descendant of Pelops and
an ancestor of the Spartan kings, may be considered as a Spartan.
So the Athenian who speaks in favor of the Lacedaemonian alliance
and reminds his audience of 'many old and more recent deeds' which
the cities share in common beside their joining against the barbarian,
tells how the Athenians shared the mysteries with Heracles before all
other foreigners, and were the first to grant him the same honors as
the gods, when he departed from mankind.P On the other hand, Her-
acles, who was born at Thebes and closely associated with the Theban
Iolaos, may be considered as Theban. Thus, the same argument is used
(together with the reception of the Theban Oedipus) by the Athenian
who pleads for siding with the Thebans, given the ancient connections
between Athens and Thebes."
Myth may be interpreted metaphorically. Accordingly in the Hymn
to Athena, Aristides offers a translation of the tales concerning the help
given by Athena to the most extraordinary exploits of Heracles: 'From
these actions', he says, 'it seems to me that nothing other is signified
than Athena's declaration of her opinion to the gods that they should
decree Heracles a god'. 68
But myth is above all used by Aristides, according to the rules of
epideictic rhetoric," as an appropriate reference in comparisons, and
63 9.32 •
64 9.33: 'tL ofivou I-lLI-l0UI-lE'3a 'to'u~ &QXl]Ylha~.
65 10.3 6.
66 11. 65.
67 12.67.
68 37.25.
69 Pernot 1993a, II, 768: 'les encomiastes aiment a comparer l'objet et les circon-
stances du discours a des figures ou des situations tirees de la mythologie, afin de trans-
ferer a l'objet compare le prestige qui s'attache ala mythologie.'
thus it serves as 'a means for ornatus and pathos'." Thus in the speech
10 Plato: in Defense if the Four, 'some utterly worthless men' (usually
identified as the Cynics) who slander oratory are compared to 'a cer-
tain stage satyr who cursed Heracles, and next hung his head when
he approached'," while Plato, who ranked Callicles and Pericles or
Themistocles together, is like someone who would put on the same level
Iphicles, the mortal son of Alcmene, and his divine brother Heracles."
Conversely, an inappropriate mythical comparison is harshly criticized.
For the anger of a comic poet cannot be likened to the wrath of a great
hero: 'Is it not terrible, 0 earth and gods, for Aristophanes to attempt
to compare his jokes to the deeds of Heracles?'73
Myth may also be used as minus, 'since it is surpassed by the matter
under examination'. 74 When the Athenian orator of the melete 9 wants
to demonstrate to his Theban audience how dangerous Philip is, he
is not content with echoing the commonplace of Athenian rhetoric at
the time of the Persian Wars and assimilating him to the Amazons,
he goes as far as saying that Philip is even more dangerous: 'I think',
he says, 'that they [Heracles and Theseus] would not have chosen
the campaign against the Amazons or any other war, before they had
jointly destroyed this one person, of whom neither the Isthmus nor any
race is inexperienced, but both the earth and the sea are failing as a
source of plunder'.75
Aristides also displays his virtuosity by capping a first mythical com-
parison with another one that is more surprising. Because Plato unfairly
accused Pericles of 'making the Athenians babblers instead of orderly,
he who prevented them from babbling as far as he could', Aristides
in his speech 10 Plato: in Defense if the Four compares him to someone
who would say that 'Heracles accustomed men to be brazen and bold
because he went about using his bow and club, he who in quite the
opposite way ... accustomed all men to be orderly'.76 In fact, according
to Aristides, Pericles himself, if not like Heracles, was at any rate like
70 Lausberg 1998, 197.

71 3.672 •
72 3.644.
73 28.93.
74 Lausberg 1998, 191, quotes Quint. Inst. 8-4-9 (amplijicatio ... , quae fit per compara-
tionem, incrementum ex minoribus petit).
75 9.33. In the same way the helmet and the shield of Diomedes which emitted fire
serve as a foil for the true orators 'from whose very head the goddess [Athena] emits
fire'.
76 3.66-67.
60 SUZANNE SAID
his henchman, 'Iolaos who burnt the heads of the mass, to quote the
comic poet'," a comparison which also vividly bears out the dreadful
character of the mob assimilated to the hydra."
In the speech To Plato: in Defense qf Oratory, the traditional mythi-
cal simile is but a starting point for the elaboration of a surprisingly
baroque comparison. Plato, who assimilates the orators to tyrants-
an assimilation which, according to Aristides, is 'a combination of the
uncombinable' eta U!1LX'tU !1LYVV~)-, is compared to a Heracles, who
'when ordered to slay the N emean lion, instead wrestled with an ass,
and choking it, thought that he was strangling the lion and that he was
doing what he intended'. 79
In the speech Against those who Burlesque the lvIysteries, in which Aristides
pours out abuses against 'those servile fellows, the dancers, the pan-
tomimes, and other charlatans'J? he shows the full extent of his talent.
An imaginary objection based on a mythical precedent, 'Yes, by Zeus,
but Heracles also danced (wQx~au'tO) among the Lydians"! becomes the
pretext of a display ofvirtuosity. The objection is first dismissed because
after all, the story of Heracles dancing among the Lydians is but a
'myth': 'The same writers [who report this story] also tell the following
tale (!1u'froAoyovm) about Heracles, that he murdered his wife and sons
when he was in a condition which is not proper to mention. What sen-
sible person would believe this (&. 'tL~ o.v :7teL'frOL'tO di <jJQoVWV)?'82 Then,
Aristides proposes a dazzling succession of alternative versions which
all give a positive image of the hero. First, he minimizes the importance
of this dancing and gives a positive view of Heracles' motives: 'I cannot
say whether Heracles danced among the Lydians. But if he did, still it
was a single day, out of playfulness and at the same time perhaps in
mockery of the Lydians', then he adds, 'as a fourth argument', that 'he
became no worse a man in the circumstances of his dancing, but he
remained who he was' in order to emphasize the gap between the hero
and these fellows whose burlesque dances (E1;oQXELa'frE) take place 'not
77 3.69.
78 See also 1.128 where a first original simile, just as some of the poets say that
Alexandros took a shadow of Helen, but could not take her, so Xerxes also held the
ground, but did not find the city' is capped first with a bon mot 'but he found it well at
Artemisium and Salamis', and then by a second mythical simile 'and he did not endure
the sight, as it were of some mythical Gorgon, but he was terrified'.
79 2.30 7.
80 34.55.
81 34.59.
82 34.59.
AR1STIDES' USES OF MYTHS 61
among the Lydians, nor for a single time, nor in mockery, nor while
internally sound, but before all mankind, every day'. He caps his criti-
cism with a new mythological comparison of their dances, 'which, not
to mention Heracles, it was not even proper to praise in Omphale'."
III. The Heracles Myth and Ideology
Like his contemporaries, Aristides attempts to recycle the myth of

Heracles and make it into a valid paradigm for his contemporaries.
In his Hymn to Heracles, he suppresses every suggestion of a conflict
among the gods or improper behavior by the hero. He mentions Hera-
cles' first exploit, the killing of the serpents which came up to his swad-
dling clothes," but these serpents are no longer sent by Hera." The
release of Prometheus," as well as the tales of how Heracles relieved
Atlas, brought Cerberus from Hades and Theseus along with him,
wounded Pluto and Hera, and subdued the Giants when he aided the
gods, become a figure of speech invented by poets" and 'a hyperbolic
(OL' iJJtEQBoAii~) way of saying that Heracles has searched through every
land and every sea and has gone to every boundary and every limit
and has neglected nothing beneath the earth nor as far as the heav-
ens'.88 The pyre and what comes before disappear as well. They are
replaced with a more acceptable 'purification'.89
Some famous episodes are reinterpreted and moralized. The excep-
tional length of the night spent by Zeus with Alcmene is no longer
explained by sexual passion, but by his wish 'to infuse into his offspring
the largest and purest possible amount of his nature'."
83 34.60.
84 40.3.
85 Diod.Sic. 4.10.1; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4.8.
86 Similarly Diodorus 4.15.2 suppresses any allusion to Prometheus' disobedience: his
Heracles releases Prometheus by persuading (ltElaa~) Zeus to put an end to his wrath.
87 4°.7: E'X. I'lE 't01J1;IDV ltOLTJ'taL IIQoIlTJ{}Ea~ re 1m' au'tOu AlJOIlEVOlJ~ OlJVE{}Eoav. See Lenz
1964b,226.
88 40 . 8. Significantly, Diodorus (4.15.2) as well as Dio (8.33) suppress any allusion to
a possible rebellion (See Pernot 1993a, 766). In the Panathenaic Oration the tale about the
winged chariot of Triptolemos is also presented as a metaphor: 'Tradition told that the
chariot was winged, because he went everywhere faster than anticipated' (36).
89 4o. lI : EltEI1\i] YUQ UltfjA{}EV E1; uv{}QomIDv 'HQa'X.Afj~ 'X.a{}aQ{}E~ DV AEYE'taL 'tQOltOV.
90 4 0 . 2. See also Diod.Sic. 4.9.2: 'By the magnitude of time he expanded on the
procreation, he presaged the exceptional might of the child who would be begotten.
And in general he did not effect this union from erotic desire (ou'X. EQID'tL'X.fj~ EltL{}\JIlLa~
SUZANNE SAID
The labors are reinterpreted in order to accommodate the needs of

a contemporary audience, as is demonstrated by a comparison with
former rhetorical versions." The mythical Heracles was right from the
beginning a destroyer of monsters. But between the Attic orators and
the historians (Diodorus of Sicily) and orators (Dio Chrysostom and
Aristides) who lived under the Roman Empire the emphasis changes.
When Isocrates in his praise of Helen alluded to Heracles' labors, he
stressed that these feats were 'of no use'" and contrasts them with the
exploits of Theseus, who became a 'benefactor of the Greeks as well
as of his homeland'93 by putting an end to the damages caused by the
Marathonian bull, killing the Minotaur and brigands such as Skiron
and Cercyon, and stopping the violence of the Centaurs." On the con-
trary, Aristides, like Diodorus of Sicily" and Dio Chrysostom'" before
him, displaces from Theseus to Heracles the theme of usefulness and
stresses the civilizing role of Heracles:" 'he found a means of expelling
the Stymphalian birds who were damaging much of Arcadia, as if it
were his duty to liberate (EAEV'ltEQOVV) not only the earth and the sea,
but also the air'.98 He also 'subdued the wild beasts whose multitude
and hugeness prevented most of the countryside from being inhabit-
ed', an achievement closely associated by the conjunction rs ... xaL to
the extermination of the tyrants and the annihilation of robbers on
land and sea." This is complemented by his drainage of the lands
EVE%U) as he did in the case of other women but rather only for the sake of procreation
('ti'j<; :n:mlio:n:OLLa<; XUQLV)'.
91 C£ Gotteland 200I, 235-244, on Heracles in Attic orators.
92 Isocrates 10.24::n:ovou<;, E1; tilv TlIJ-EAAEV ou 'tou<; aAAou<; WqJEAt]OELV.
93 Isocrates 10.25.
94 Isocrates 10.25-29.
95 Diod.Sic. 4. 17.3: 'To show his gratitude to the Cretans, he cleansed the island of
the wild beasts which infested it'; and 4.17-4: 'he subdued Libya which was full of wild
animals, and large parts of the adjoining desert, and brought it all under cultivation
(E1;T]IJ-EQWOEV) ... Libya which before that time had been uninhabitable because of the
multitude of wild beasts which infested the whole land, was brought under cultivation
(E1;T]IJ-EQIDOU<;) by him and made inferior to no other country in point of prosperity'.
96 Dio 5.23; 17+ In 75.8, Dio compares the civilizing power of the law (ou'tO<; 6 Ti]v
i}UAUUUV %Ui}ULQWV. 6 'tl]V yfivTiIJ-EQOV :n:OLmv) to Heracles the civilizer (The true king in
the third oration is also portrayed as a civilizer,XIDQUV T]IJ-EQWOEV [127]).
97 T]IJ-EQowlE1;T]IJ-EQOW: Diod.Sic. 4.8.5; 17.4 (2 ex.); 2q; 29.6 (Iolaus); Dio 1. 84:
[Heracles] 'tOu<; UVT]IJ-EQOU<; %ul :n:OVT]Qou<; UVi}QID:n:OU<; E%OAU~E.
98 40.5. C£ Diod.Sic. 4.13.2: 'the extraordinary multitude of birds which destroyed
the fruits of the country roundabout'; and Dio 47.4: Heracles chased the birds 'to keep
them from being a nuisance for the farmers in Stymphalus'.
99 40.4. See Dio 5.21, 8. 34.
that were 'oppressed by rivers or lakes (oou !-tEv :lto'ta!-tO>v QEU!-tUOLV Tj AL-
!-tVaLi; E:ltLl~~E'tO)'lOO and his transformation of dry soils into fertile ones by
irrigation. 101 This portrait of Heracles as a destroyer of both monsters
and tyrants, who cares for justice and punishes the unjust is echoed in
other speeches of Aristides!" and before him in the Universal History of
Diodorus!" and the speeches ofDio Chrysostom.'?'
But in Aristides' Hymn as well as in Dio,105 as opposed to Isocrates
and to the declamation 10 the Thebans I, where the orator plays the part
of a contemporary of Demosthenes and praises the hero for the help
given to the Greeks,106 the setting of Heracles' exploits is enormously
enlarged and becomes coextensive with the universal Empire of Rome.
When Isocrates celebrated Heracles in his Philip, he extolled his phi-
lanthropy and his goodwill towards the Greeks"? and made him into
the first champion of panhellenism. By making an expedition against
Troy, which was in those days the strongest power of Asia, his Heracles
had put an end to wars and factions among the Greeks and brought
the cities together. lOB In Aristides, Greece is but a starting point: The
hero moves from Thebes, where he killed the serpents and relieved
the Thebans from the tribute paid to the Orchomenians, and Greece,
which he 'purified' (E%(HhlQE),109 to the whole human race."? In other
speeches as well, Heracles' philanthropy is no longer directed only
toward the Greeks,1l1 but also toward barbarians and mankind in gen-
eral.!"
At the same time, Aristides recasts his Heracles into a world emperor
through the use of a vocabulary permeated with precise allusions to
100 See also Diod.Sic. 4.18.6 (the draining of the region called Tempe).
101 40.5.
102 2.227; 38.II, 17.
103 Diod.Sic. 4.17.5: ~1J{}oM>yoiiOL II' ulJ"tov lIuI ronro ~LOii(JaL lIUt ltOA.E~ij(JaL TO yEVOr:;
TIDV UYQLmV ih]QLlOV lIUt ltUQUV6~lOV uvlIQIDv. Diodorus' narrative systematically empha-
sizes the injustice and the hubris of Heracles' adversaries: 4.ro.3; 12.5; 15.3; 17.5; 19.1;
21.5·
104 Dio 1.84; 8.31.
105 E.g. Dio 1.60.
106 9.3 2.
107 Isocrates 5.II4: T~V IjJIAUVi}QlOltLUV lIUt T~V EUVOLUV i]v ELXEV ELr:; "tOur:; "EMT]VUr:;.
lOB Isocrates 5.1II-II 2. See Gotteland 2001, 239-244.
109 40.3.
110 40.5.
111 E.g. Isocrates 5. II4.
112 1.52; 3.68, 276. See also Dio 1.60, 63, 84; 5.21, 23.
SUZANNE SAID
contemporary political values. This transformation was already well

on the way before Aristides. In his history Diodorus described Her-
acles campaigning like a Roman general, Il3 and in the first Kingship
Oration, Dio rejected the mythical Heracles destroyer of monsters
in favor of the political destroyer of tyrants,"! called him a 'king'115
and gave him an army, 'for it was not possible to sack cities, over-
throw tyrants and give orders to everyone everywhere without mili-
tary force' .116 Similarly Aristides, in the Hymn, alludes to the univer-
sal 'empire' ()'UvumELu) of Heracles established 'by blending law with
the force of the arms'!" and portrays it elsewhere as a 'protection'
given to all men. liB The tragic hero, who rid the world of destructive
monsters and matched crude violence with greater violence, has been
tamed and transformed into a government official: Aristides calls him
a 'prefect (U:ltuQXo~) of the region beneath the lunar sphere'j!'? assim-
ilating him to the governor appointed by the emperor to rule over a
region."? The portrait of Heracles as an embodiment of restraint, pro-
created by Zeus 'so that human affairs might be properly ordered',121
put in charge of restraining the behavior of the cities either by laws
or by force of arms.!" and accustoming all men to be orderly and to
abide by the laws'" clearly conveys the same message and demonstrates
the integration of the mythical hero into a Roman order guaranteed
by an emperor who is accordingly given by Aristides the title of %00""1]-
L~~.124
113 Diod.Sic. 4.17.1.

114 Dio 1.84. See Moles 1990, 330.
1151.59,60,84;47-4-
116 Dio 1.59, 63.
117 40 . 6: "toiJ~ VOJ.lotJ~ "tOL~ O:ltAOL~ O'UY%EQUVViJ~, roO"tE "tfj~ E%ELVOtJ litJVUO"tEla~ J.lTjliEV EIVUL
J.l~"tE
AUJ.l:ltQO"tEQOV J.l~"tE AtJO"L"tEAEO"tEQOV XQ~O"Uo{}UL.
liB3.276: 'HQU%AEL "tip %OLVip :ltUV"tlOV :ltQoO"tu"t"[j (see also 1.52, :ltQoO"tuO"la). The same
word is applied to Zeus in 43.29, whereas :ltQoO"tuO"la is applied to Rome (26.36, ro8).
119 40.2. In 30.27 Dio, borrowing a metaphor from Spartan institutions, makes Hera-
des (together with Dionysos and Perseus) into a harmost appointed by Zeus.
120 Aristides 50.75: 'prefect of Egypt'. The same word, associated with 'satrap,' is also
applied to the gods appointed by Zeus to rule over the four regions of the universe in
Aristides 43.18, as well as to Athens (1.404).
121 40.2: O:ltlO~ %oO"J.lTj{}ELTj "ta "tiiiv av{}QW:ltlOV :ltQUYJ.lU"tU.
122 40.4: "ta~ ilE :ltOAEI.,; O"lOIjJQOVL~lOV "ta~ J.lEv "tOL~ VOJ.lOL~, "ta~ liE "tOL~ O:ltAOL~.
123 3.68: E{}L~lOV ... :ltuV"tu~ %OO"J.lLotJ~ EIVUL %ul "tOL~ VOJ.lOL~ EJ.lJ.lEVELV. In the Hymn he is
also portrayed as a 'legislator' (40.5: EVOJ.lO{}E"tTjO"EV).
124 26.6: "tip aQLO"t!p aQxov"tL %ul %oO"J.lTj"tfi.
rv The Prometheus Myth
A reading of the Prometheus myth in Aristides 10Plato: in Defense ofOra-

tory confirms the conclusions drawn about Heracles. It best illustrates
how Aristides succeeds in transforming the Protagoras myth, which
was the charter myth of democratic Athens, into a justification of the
Roman Empire and the power of the civic elite. 125
According to Aristides, there was in the beginning 'a great distur-
bance (MQu~o~) and confusion ('taQaxi]) upon the earth. Men nei-
ther knew what to do with themselves-for there was nothing which
brought them all together, but the bigger led the smaller-nor could
they maintain themselves against the other animals' .126 This descrip-
tion echoes Plato's Protagoras,127 but also Aristides' description of the
world before the invention of oratory, 'when human affairs were falling
into utter ruin'. 128 Accordingly, the impossibility of survival is no longer
explained, as in Plato, by the absence of political science and the art of
war, which is part of political science.l" but by the absence of rhetoric,
as suggested by the emphasis on the silence of men as they perish.P"
A significant echo of this description is also to be found in the Roman
Oration in the portrait of the world before the rule of Zeus, when 'ev-
erything was filled with faction, uproar, and disorder (lbtaV'ta O'taOE«)~
xat {}oQu~ou xat &'taSLa~ dVaL f.tEO'ta)' and before the Roman Empire:
'before your empire everything was in confusion, topsy-turvy, and com-
pletely disorganized (:7tQo f.tEv 'tfj~ Uf.tE'tEQa~ &Qxfj~ av«) xat %a't«) OUVE'tE-
'taQa%'tO %at d%fj eqJEQE'to ['ta :7tQaYf.taLaJ)'.131
Moreover Aristides completely transforms the role of Prometheus. As
in Aeschylus.!" the Titan remains a 'friend of mankind', 133 but he is no
longer a trickster and a thief who gave men either the fire from which
they learnt all the arts or the knowledge of the arts that ensure a liv-
125 See Cassin 1991; Pernot 1993a; and WISsmann 1999.

126 2.395.
127 322b: 'they were killed by the wild beasts since they were in every way inferior to
them ... they harmed each other'.
128 2.208.
129 Plato, Prot. 322b-c: ltOA.L'tL%~V YUQ 'tEXVT]V OVltlll ELXOV ~~ IlEQO~ ltOA.EIlL%1] ... ,hE OU%
EXOV'tE~ 't~v ltOA.L'tL%~V 'tEXVT]V.
130 2.395: rocn:E nltlIJMvV'to <nYii.
131 26.103. See also To the Cities concerning Concord (23) 31: bELVQV YUQ ~ cn:ao~ ltuV'tuxii
%ut {}OQf3iiibE~.
132 C£ Prom Vmct. II, 58: qJlAay{}QlIlltO~.
133 Aristides 2.396: nEL ltlll~ rov qJlAav{}QlIlltO~.
66 SUZANNE SAID
ing.134 He becomes a self-appointed ambassador on mankind's behalf'!"

and goes up to heaven to inform Zeus about the desperate situation
of men, prefiguring contemporary sophists who serve as mediators
between the provincial cities and the imperial center. Thus he becomes
a precursor of Aristides, who many years later moved Marcus Aurelius
to tears with his description of Smyrna's destruction and succeeded in
securing imperial funding for the reconstruction of the city. As for Zeus,
he behaves like a good emperor: 'full of admiration for Prometheus' just
speech'i!" he sends Hermes to mankind with a remedy. But this rem-
edy is no longer, as in the Protagoras myth, 'mutual respect and justice'
(aL()W re xat ()LXTJV), that is politics, the supreme 'tEX,vTJ, which teaches
men how to behave as members of a community, acknowledging the
legitimate claims of others and setting themselves limits. It is replaced
as a <pUQI.tUXOV I37 by oratory, which holds together the cities and orders
(XOO!J.EL) them both by maintaining order and introducing adornment.!"
However this <puQ!J.axov is not given to all, but only to 'the best, the
noblest, and those with the strongest natures', 139 that is, the members
of the elite who are in charge of saving themselves and others."? So
the Prometheus myth that was made by Protagoras into the charter for
participatory democracy has become a justification of the power of the
educated elite. Oratory, which was defined by Isocrates (a major source
for Aristides' rewriting of the Prometheus myth, as amply demonstrated
by J. Wissmann)!" in democratic terms as the capacity to persuade each
other.!" is now working from the top to the bottom with orators who
prefer law and order to confusion.!" preach internal as well as external
concord, and prevent uproar, disorder, and faction.
This last example sufficiently demonstrates the vitality of myth under
the Empire, a vitality to be explained first and foremost by its inherited
cultural value and its plasticity. Like Dio, Aristides knows how to 'turn
134 Plato, Prot. 321d: ri]v EV'tEl(VOV OOlp[UV, 'tl]V ... ltEQL rov 13[ov oorpinv; 322b: ~
/l1']I-lLOlJQyLXl] 'tEl(V1'].
135 2.397: ltQE013ElJri]~ UltEQ 'tWV uvf}Qomwv, OUl( UltO 'tWV uvf}Qomwv ltE'.tlpftEL~ ... uM'
uu'to~ u«p' eUlJ'tO'u.
136 2.39 6: 'tOu re IIQol-l1']ftEw~ UYUai}EL~ /l[xmu AEyOV'tO~.
137 2. 2 0 9.
138 2.40 I.
139 2.397: 'toiJ~ uQ[O'tOlJ~, XUL YEvvuLO'ta'tOlJ~ XUL 'ta~ «pUOE~ EQQWI-lEVEO'ta'tOlJ~.
140 2.397: LV' 01-l0U o«pa~ re uu'tOiJ~ XUL 'tOiJ~ aMolJ~ OW~ELV El(OLEV.
141 Wissmann 1999, 139-143.
142 Nicocles 5: 'tOU ltE[ftELV UAA~AOlJ~.
143 2.235: EltEL 'tov EV x6ol-lCfl 13lov ltQo 'tfj~ u'tu!;[u~ uLQouV'tm.
the myths in the right direction and make them into a parable of the
real and the true'!" and mold them so that they will become a mirror
of contemporary reality. True, one has to say, paraphrasing L. Pernot,
that 'la position adoptee par le genre epidictique [en general et Aristide
en particulier] n'est ni neuve ni originale ... [Mais] il ne s'ensuit pas
que ce message soit depourvu de force ni de subtilite'.145
144 Dio 5.1: EAXOfJ.EVa lIn lIQO<;; 'to Mov xaL lIaQa~aM6fJ.Eva 'toL<;; oiim xaLUATJitEmv.
145 Pernot 1993, 760.
CHAPTER FOUR
ARISTIDES AND THE PANTOMIMES
G.W BOWERSOCK
In 361 Libanius sent a letter to Demetrius of Tarsus to accompany

the texts of two speeches he had recently written. In one of these
he claims to have launched a polemic against Aelius Aristides: :ltQo~
'AQLO't'EL{)T]V I-LaX0I-LaL.1 The sixty-fourth oration in the surviving corpus
of Libanius seems to correspond with this description, and scholars are
generally agreed that this is the work Libanius sent to Demetrius. It is
a vigorous and lengthy assault on a lost speech of Aristides that had
prudishly denounced the dancers known as pantomimes for corrupting
their viewers.
The pantomimes were individual dancers of balletic virtuosity who
in solo performances enacted familiar myths with the aid of masks,
costumes, and music. They enjoyed enormous popularity throughout
the Roman Empire, as did their more ordinary colleagues, the mimes,
who spoke lines and acted together with one another. Both mimes and
pantomimes were important transmitters of Hellenic mythology and
culture. As some of the more austere Christian preachers complained,
they appealed to a diverse audience and linked together persons of
different religion and ethnic background in theatrical pleasure."
Libanius confined himself exclusively to the pantomimes, who were
the great virtuosi of the stage, although he says that Aristides had
tried to denigrate them by linking them with the mimes." The debate
between these two great sophists, two centuries apart, is full of paradox.
In his austere preaching against corruption from watching lubricious
entertainments, Aristides sounds more like a Father of the Christian
church than the dedicated polytheist he was, the author of resplendent
prose hymns to Olympian gods. Libanius, by contrast, espouses with
1 Lib. Epist. 615 Foerster.

2 See, for example, Moss 1935: Jacob of Sarug on the spectacles of the theater.
3 Lib. Orat. 64.ro. Behr 1986, 416-419 (with notes on 50l-503) presents excerpts
from Libanius as probable fragments of Aristides' original speech.
70 G.W. BOWERSOCK
particular warmth a form of entertainment that we know he openly

disliked and avoided. Subsequently he even undertook to terminate it
in his native city of Antioch. Furthermore, Aristides was, as he states
explicitly and emphatically, an orator for whose achievement he had
unbounded admiration.
If 361 was the date of the speech against Aristides, it would have
fallen in the early part of the usurpation of the emperor Julian, whose
cause Libanius strongly supported and whose memory he eloquently
cultivated. YetJulian, like Libanius, disliked the dancers.' So how does
it happen that Libanius took issue with an admired predecessor over
an art-form for which neither he nor the apostate emperor had any
sympathy? And why had Aristides himself shown such hatred for those
popular mediators of Hellenism?
To be sure, arguing against an impeccable model such as Aristides
would be in itself a feat of sophistic brilliance, and Libanius perhaps
relished the challenge. He certainly managed to reduce Aristides' argu-
ments to nonsense by showing that a few corrupt or effeminate per-
formers could no more impugn the art of the pantomime than a mur-
derous doctor could impugn the medical profession. Audiences are no
more corrupted by what they see in the dances than they are by the
vicious and bloody competitions of boxers and pancratiasts.' Further-
more, Libanius asks, are the pantomimes more criminal than those
who overturn altars, steal votive offerings, destroy shrines, and burn
statues?" This curious register of miscreants actually seems to allude to
Christians, since pagans and Jews were not known to have committed
misdeeds of that kind. Christians did indeed go on such rampages, con-
spicuously at Daphne, near Antioch, when Julian's brother, the Caesar
Gallus, had undone the oracle of Apollo by importing into the temple
precinct the earthly remains of St. Babylas. If the pagan Aristides in his
puritanical mode of denouncing the pantomimes sounded rather like a
Christian, it seems as if Libanius attacked him in his response almost as
if he were.
To some extent, the Syrian origins of many famous dancers roused
Libanius to defend himself as a Syrian. In his speech Aristides had been
4C£ Wiemer 1995, 6g-'71 (Die Rede 'FUr die Tanzer').

5For murderous doctors, Lib. Orat. 64. 44, for boxers and pancratiasts, ibid. 61 and
II9. On the speech and its arguments see Mesk 1909 and Molloy 1996.
6 Lib. Orat.64.33.
ARISTIDES AND THE PANTOMIMES 71
rude about Syrians.' But, even so, the motivation for Libanius' curious
defense of an entertainment he despised can only be left to speculation.
Yet, with the help of his abundant references to Aristides' lost work
and his occasional quotations from it, we can reasonably deduce the
provocation that led Aristides himself to condemn the pantomimes.
This deduction opens up issues of sophistic competition and jealousy-
issues that we have long known were fundamental to the so-called
Second Sophistic. Aristides' sense of his high calling as a rhetor did
not easily accept any comparison with less grandiose professions. In his
day the popularity of the pantomimes clearly vexed him." This paper
seeks to find out why.
We know that Aristides' speech was addressed to the Spartans, al-
though it is clear, from the citations and from Libanius' commentary,
that he did not actually go to Sparta to deliver it." Libanius assumes
that to some extent Aristides chose that city as his addressee in order to
invoke the high-minded austerity of the legendary regime of Lycurgus.
But, as Libanius points out, and Aristides himself must have been well
aware, the Sparta of the second century AD was an utterly different
place from the city of Lycurgus. Besides, as Libanius observes, Aristides
himself had never declaimed by the banks of the Eurotas and therefore
had no attachment to Sparta. So why did Aristides turn to that city,
out of all those major cities that welcomed pantomimes, when he
undertook to denounce them? Libanius offers a perceptive analysis:
'You claim to be giving advice to the Spartans alone because you know
that the others would be annoyed by your speech. Where was it that
you customarily worked up your numerous and splendid declamations?
In what cities did you orate? Whose applause made you a star? I note
that you did not choose Sparta as a workshop for your art, nor did you
release your words to flow alongside the river Eurotas. But you used
to go to the Hellespont, to Ionia, Pergamum, Smyrna, Ephesus, and
to Egypt, the land which, as you say yourself, first brought forth the
evil. You even went to Rome, where the dancing profession is highly
esteemed'. 10
This means that in declaiming about the pantomimes Aristides had
deliberately chosen to avoid all the important cities where he had him-
7 Lib. Drat. 64.9.

B For the whole topic, see the still fundamental study of Robert 1930.
9 Lib. Drat. 64.IO-II, cf 80.
10 Lib. Drat. 64.80.
G.W. BOWERSOCK
self enjoyed great success-Pergamum, Smyrna, Ephesus, Rome itsel£

These were all places that cultivated and admired the pantomimes.
And yet they admired Aristides too. In denouncing the tastes of the
Spartans, Aristides would not be offending a constituency that had
ardently supported him. He was safe with Sparta, since he had no con-
nection with it. A master of rhetoric would have readily savored the
potential of castigating the descendants of Lycurgus for watching pan-
tomimes.
In his speech Aristides charged that pantomime dancing had
changed over time for the worse, that by his day performers were little
more than prostitutes on public view. He claimed that their sinuous,
even contorted movement was an abomination that would lead viewers
into bad habits." It proved easy for Libanius to contest these assertions:
in rhetoric itself, change and innovation over time was fruitful." There
were even paragons of virtue among the famous pantomimes, and no
one was known to have become corrupt or criminal from watching a
show.
Yet Aristides had inveighed against one of his sophistic rivals for
using his rhetorical prowess in honor of a deceased pantomime, a
famous dancer called Paris. According to Libanius, 'Even the man who
was once conspicuous among us with the same name as the ancient
herdsman in whose presence the goddesses were judged for their beauty
was so lamented on his bier by the sophist of Tyre ... that no greater
tribute could have been devised to honor a departed sophist. For he did
in fact call the dancer precisely that. Did he choose to disgrace himself
utterly by the encomium of a prostitutei''" As scholars have readily
perceived, that eulogist was none other than Aristides's distinguished
second-century contemporary, Hadrian of Tyre.'! It is obvious that
Aristides had protested bitterly because his eminent rival had treated
Paris just as if he were a deceased sophist and even called him that. As
far as Aristides was concerned, Hadrian had sullied his reputation by
an encomium of a whore.
This treatment of a pantomime as a sophist by the great rhetor
whose reputation was at the time easily the equal of Aristides' evidently
11 Lib. Orat. 64.28 and 43 (noQvOL).

12 Lib. Orat.64.2 2 .
13 Lib. Orat. 64.41: ... 0001:' oux oI/)' 8 'tL UV E~~'tT]OE flE~OV, EL OOlPL01:~V OLXOflEVOV
E'tLfla. 8~ yE xat 'to;:;'t' au'to nQOOELltELV ~~LlJ)(JE 'tOV 6QXT]01:~V. ltIIW YUQ au'tov Ert..E'tO
xa'taQQlJnaLVELv EV 'tOL~ EY'X.lJ)fllo~ 'to;:; nOQvolJ.
14 PIR2 H 4. See especially Philostr. Vit. Sopko 2.10 (pp. 585-590 Olearius).
opened up a deep vein of resentment, both against Hadrian of Tyre
himself and against the whole profession of dancers, who appeared to
be usurping the high prestige of public speakers. This appears to have
been at least one of the sparks that ignited the flame of Aristides' rage
against the pantomimes. In his view they were contemptible panders to
public pleasure, and-worse still-were hailed as equal in artistic talent
to sophists and rhetors. The case of Hadrian of Tyre's eulogy for the
deceased Paris clearly reflected the heightened prestige of pantomimes
in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and it was no less clearly this prestige
that bothered Aristides.
During the reign of Lucius Verus, probably during his sojourn in
Syrian Antioch, Lucian wrote a famous essay in defense of theatrical
dancing.'> The authorship of this work, once doubted, has now been
generally vindicated as authentically Lucianic, and the essay may well
have been known to Libanius in writing his reply to Aristides. We have
no way of telling whether it was known to Aristides himself and served
as some kind of irritant, but Lucian's opinion was as positive as it was
well informed. For the relation of pantomime to rhetoric, the essay
provides precious testimony. In general, there were no competitions
(aywvE£) for pantomimes although the dancers performed a repertoire
of tragic themes, and they were sometimes known as 'tQayuwL. But, says
Lucian, there was one exception to the lack of thymelic crowns for
them. In Italy there were competitions for dancers." We may surmise
that this happened at the Sebasta in hellenophone Naples, and perhaps
also at the Capitolia in Rome or the Eusebeia in Puteoli.
The conjunction of the word tragic with a pantomime is reinforced by
Lucian's observation that tragedy and tragic dance were almost indis-
tinguishable: at U:JtOi}EOEL£ zorvcl a!J.<flO'tEQOL£, xat oUbEv 'tL bLaxExQL!J.EVaL
'tWV 'tQaYLxwv at OQXTJO"tLxaL, :JtAT]V O'tL :JtOLXLAO>'tEQaL a-omL ('The themes
for both were the same, and the ones for dancers differed from tragedy
only in that they were more ornamented'.) As Louis Robert demon-
strated brilliantly in one of his earliest articles and one of his very few
in German, the epigraphy of pantomimes in the later second century
perfectly displays the technical diction of the trade."
15 Lucian, De Saltatume. For an important discussion of this work see]ones 1986, 68-
77 ('The court of Lucius Verus').
16 Lucian, De Salt. 31-32.
17 Robert 1930.
74 G.W. BOWERSOCK
Let us observe some examples. The movement (xLvT]<JLe;) of a dancer

is regularly qualified as rhythmic (evQv{}J10e; or EiJQv{}J10e;, both forms
appear)." It is also described as tragic ('tQUYLXi)). On one inscription
from Heraclea Pontica pantomime dancing appears as 'rhythmic trag-
edy' ('tfie; EVQU{}J10V 'tQuycp~Lue; O"tElpOe;), and a pantomime dancer can
sometimes be called simply a 'tQuycpMC;.19 A dancer, such as the great
Apolaustus or Paris of Apamea can be called an actor (UJtOXQL'ti)C;),
albeit one with rhythmic movement.t" This technical language turns up
significantly in Libanius in contexts that appear clearly to paraphrase
or echo Aristides' original. There is a whole section on xLvT]<JLC;, as well
as a treatment of the dancer's gestures (veuJ1u'tu).21 Towards the end of
his speech Libanius, probably echoing Aristides, calls the pantomimes
'tQuycp~oL It is evident that in his speech Aristides had resorted to
the standard diction that was deployed in praise of the dancers of his
day.
What the epigraphy also reveals, in addition to the characteristic
language by which pantomimes were honored, is precious informa-
tion about the place of pantomimes in the international aywvec; of the
Graeco-Roman world. It now appears that soon after Lucian wrote his
essay on dancing the great agonistic festivals added dancing to the com-
petitions. Rhetoric, poetry, kithara-playing, trumpet-playing had long
since secured a firm place in the thymelic aywvec; of the Roman empire,
but, as Louis Robert already pointed out eighty years ago, the addi-
tion of dancing as a crown event came as an innovation in the second
century outside of Italy (Naples, as we have seen, and possibly Rome
or Puteoli, or both). The innovation in the eastern empire must have
come between 165, which is the latest date for Lucian's treatise, and
the reign of Commodus, during which the celebrated Tiberius Iulius
Apolaustus boasted of being the first pantomime to win a crown at
18 For %lVT]OL~ see Lib. Orat. 64.28. On rhythmic movement, see Fouilles de Delphes
111.1, 55r: Tib. lul. Apolaustos, 't[QuYL%ii~ eV]Qu{}1l0U %Lvr](JEl1l~ U:n:O%QL't'!][V]. L Magnesia
(Kern) 165 eVQu{}1l0U, 192 e]vQu{}[IlOU. fCR 4. 1272 and TAM V.wI6 (Thyateira): eVQu-
{}Ilou. SEC 1.529 (Syrian Apamea) eVQu{}ll[ou]. Sahin 1975 (Heraclea Pontica, with pho-
to), cf. BulLEp 1976. 687: eVQu{}llou. Blume! 2004, 20-22: EUQU{}IlLa. Observe Herodian
5.2.4 %Lvr](JEl1l~ EUQU{}1l0U.
19 Sahin 1975, SEC XI. 838 ('tQuyrpl\ip ~Ll\l1lVlqJ).
20 Fouilles de Delphes 111.1, 551: Tib. Iul, Apolaustos. Cf. BullEp 1976. 721 (citing Rey-
Coquais 1973, no. ro): honors to Julius Paris of Apamea 'tQuYL%ii~ %ELV'!](JEl1l~ U:n:O%QL't'!]V.
21 For %lV1]OL~ see note 18 above. For VEUIlU'tU, Lib. Orat.64'59.
Pergamum and in Thebes." His other victories in great cities, including
Ephesus, Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Laodicea, and Sardis, were evidendy
not the first for a pantomime." Hence it would be reasonable to assign
the introduction of pantomime competitions either to the later years of
Marcus or the early years of Commodus.
This chronology fits well with Aristides' intemperate judgment of
both pantomimes and mimes in his extant speech XU'tll 'trov el;oQXou-
I-tEVWV (no. 34 ~gainst the Betrayers of the Mysteries'). This is a work
that can be assigned to Smyrna in early 170.24 Towards the end Aris-
tides contrasts rhetors, philosophers, and all others in liberal education
with dancers, mimes, and magicians (OQXT]O'tUL~, I-tLI-tOL~, ttuUI-tU'tO:7tOLOL~),
who please the crowds but are held in low regard." The dancers are
clearly the pantomimes, as they are in the lost speech, whereas the
mimes are, as indeed they were, speaking performers." Aristides even
asks, 'Who would allow a mime to speak off stage?' in order to empha-
size the lowly status of such a person. Aristides' prejudice is evident in
this passage, but there is nothing here to suggest that pantomimes had
yet been elevated to the level of agonistic competitions with honors that
were accorded to the greatest rhetors of the age. This provides a slighdy
later terminus post quem than Lucian for the innovation that so outraged
Aristides. It came after 170.
It is obviously relevant to understanding Aristides' lost speech that
one of the first documented examples of a pantomime in the interna-
tional thymelic competitions comes precisely from Sparta, on a mid-
to-late second-century inscription detailing the accounts for prizes to
contestants." Among the winners are a pantomime from Sidon, a 'tQU-
yq>M~ ~L6cbvLO~, (observe that this is yet another such performer from
22 Fouilles deDelphes 111.1, 551, cf IK Ephesus 6. 2070-2071: first in Thebes. Strasser

2004 discusses but does not add to the dossier on the introduction of dancers into the
eastern agonistic festivals.
23 For another inscription of Apolaustos, Robert 1966b, 756-759 and BullEp 1967.
251, reviewing Corinth 8. 3 (Kent), nos. 370+ 693.
24 For the date, see Behr 1981, 398 n. 1. The speech is described in the Fifth Sacred
Discourse, 38--40.
25 Aristid., Orat. 34.55 and 57.
26 Behr 1981, 183, in his translation of Aristides' speech, misunderstands the three
nouns in Orat. 34.55 and wrongly turns the mimes into pantomimes. He compounds
the error when he translates the question in 34.57 (-tL~ uv "tip flLfllp lJUYXWQ~OELEV E~W
ljJl'}eYYEO'f}aL;) 'Who would permit the pantomime to speak off stage?' One might also
add that the article in this question is generic.
27 SEC XI. 838.
G.W. BOWERSOCK
greater Syria), a trumpeter, kithara-player, encomiast, painter, as well as

the traditional runners and pentathletes. One of the winners is Aelius
Granianus from Sicyon, a pentathlete and runner whom Pausanias
mentions as honored with a bronze statue near Sicyon for his Olympic
victories." So this suggests a probable date for the Spartan inscrip-
tion in the last decade of Marcus." Louis Robert had emphasized long
ago the proliferation of contests in later second-century Sparta, with
its three festivals of the Kaisareia, Eurykleia, and Ourania. He was
explaining the role of the presiding magistrate, who was called a xystarch
there. 30 We should note that the late-second-century star Apolaustos
included Sparta among the cities where he took the crown."
Artemidorus, author of our one surviving book of dream interpreta-
tions, was, to judge from various chronological indications, working in
the later second century. Hence it is instructive to observe that he reg-
isters pantomime dancing, to which he evidently alludes by the phrase
'dancing with writhing (OQXTJOL£ f.tE'tCt O'CQoqJi'j£)', as among the crown
contests." Similarly the inscription from Heraclea Pontica, which we
have cited earlier, refers to taking the 'the wreath of rhythmic tragedy',
in other words pantomime, for the first time (ro :7tQ(inov). This is prob-
ably another sign of the recent introduction of tragic dance into Greek
thymelic competitions. The language reappears in the third-century
historian Herodian, who refers to 'rhythmic movement'. 33
In arguing against Aristides, Libanius resorts frequently to compar-
isons with athletes and Greek competitions." His remarks clearly pre-
suppose that Aristides took a highly positive view of boxers, pancrati-
asts, and pentathletes. Hence he michievously conjures up a male ath-
28 Pausan. 2.11.8. See Cartledge and Spawforth 1989, 188 (Spawforth) with 264 n. 16,
and Appendix Iv, 'Foreign agonistai at Sparta' (Spawforth) (232-233). There is little
to be said for Spawforth's inclination to identify Granianus with Cranaus in Julius
Africanus: cf. Moretti, 1957, 163, no. 848.
29 Pausanias was writing in the middle 170's: Corinth founded 217 years before
(s.1.2), and the Costoboci, who invaded in the early years of the decade (IO.34.5). His
first book was written earlier (7.20.6, on his omission of Herodes' odeion for Regilla),
but the reference to Granianus occurs in the Konnthiaka.
30 Robert 1966, I02-I04 (;uO"tuQXlJ<; "tliiv EV AULKE~aLllovL UyWVlOV).
31 Robert 1930, 114 (where 'Tib. Claudios Apolaustos' is erroneously written for 'Tib.
Iulios Apolaustos'). Spawforth, in his list of foreign competitors at Sparta (n. 28 above),
evidendy missed Apolaustos.
32 Artemid., Oneir. 1.56 (p. 64 Pack): JtEQL M JtUQQLXlJ<; KaL OQXi]OElO<; IlE"tu O"tQoqJfj<; EV
"tOT<; JtEQL O"tEqJUVlOV.
33 See n. 18 above.
34 E.g., Lib. Orat. 64.61 and II9.
lete, duly oiled and garbed, who plays the female role in sexual activ-
ity.35 This is one of Libanius' many illustrations to show that one mis-
creant does not impugn an entire category. Similarly, in response to
the supposedly bad influence of dancers upon their viewers, Libanius
asks whether those who watch a bloody pancration or a fierce boxing
match are inspired to go out and do likewise." Again the presupposi-
tion of Libanius' comment is that from Aristides' perspective viewing
such activities would be wholly acceptable. Consequently Libanius can
cunningly strengthen his argument by adducing the athletic prowess of
pantomimes in accomplishing their formidable leaps on the stage, far
beyond (as he points out) the ability of any pentathlete." Yet clearly
Aristides approved of the pentathlon. And finally, Libanius links pan-
tomimes with trumpeters, who had long enjoyed a privileged place in
Greek festivals."
Accordingly, Libanius' numerous comparisons with agonistic festivals
may be taken to imply that Aristides had responded with particular
indignation to the recent incorporation of the pantomimes in thymelic
competitions. For him this public institutionalization of the dancers in
the Greek festivals would have effectively constituted the elevation of a
pantomime to the level of a sophist or rhetor, precisely as Hadrian of
Tyre had proposed in his eulogy of Paris.
On present epigraphic evidence, Sparta was among the first to wel-
come this innovation in its festivals, and so Aristides' choice of the Spar-
tans as his target may well reflect more than a simple desire to invoke
old-fashioned austerity, such as that associated with Lycurgus. Libanius
shrewdly observed that Aristides was in no position to denounce the
audiences who had heard and admired him in Pergamum or Smyrna,
and so, to make his point, he had to fix on a pantomime-loving city
where he had not actually declaimed. Hence an address to Sparta, ren-
dered in absence, allowed Aristides the luxury of venting his spleen
at what he perceived to be a debasement of traditional Greek aywver;
without insulting his enthusiasts in Asia Minor, in Athens, or in Rome.
But a little less than two hundred years later another of his enthusi-
asts called his bluff.
35 Lib. Drat. 64.54: 'tu yuVaLXWV Ec'\O~E :ltOLELV.

36 Lib. Drat. 64.II9.
37 Lib. Drat. 64.68-6g: ... :ltEc'\WV'tU 'tWV :ltEv'tuiH..mv f.lUXQO'tEQU.
38 Lib. Drat. 64.98.
CHAPTER FIVE
AELIUS ARISTIDES' ILLEGIBLE BODY
BROOKE HOLMES
Many modern readers have found it improbable that the Hieroi Logoi
are the product of literary ambition. Their author, however, who traf-
ficked professionally in the great Greek writers of the past, leaves little
room for ambiguity about his aspirations, declaring in the first sentence:
'I see myself creating an account in the manner of Homer's Helen' (Or.
XLVI!'I).l Aristides' framework, then, is epic, and more specifically that
of the Otfyssry--that much is clear.2
Yet in what respects is the Otfyssey a model for Aristides' undertaking?
The most obvious point of contact is the resemblance of Aristides'
sufferings to those of Odysseus, long buffeted on stormy seas. In both
cases, moreover, those countless evasions of death attest the presence of
a tutelary deity-Athena and Asclepius respectively" But why Helen?
In Otfyssey IV; we can recall, it is Helen who selects a tale from 'all the
toils of stout-hearted Odysseus' to tell his son Telemachus. She is thus
like an epic narrator faced with a vast archive of stories.' Yet Helen,
1 1I0xoo f.lOL XU'to. ri]v 'EAEVT]V 't~v 'Of.l~Qou 'tOV Myov ltOL~OEO'frUL. I have used Keil's
edition, in which the six books of the Hieroi liJgoi are Orationes XLVII-ill. Translations
from Aristides are my own unless noted. Numbers preceded by a T correspond to the
testimonia in Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, whose translations I have used.
2 On the Odysseus theme, see Schroder 1987. For the importance of Aristides'
travels to his understanding of the body, see the contribution of Petsalis-Diomidis in
this volume.
3 EXamT] yo.Q 'toov ~f.lE'tEQroV ~f.lEQooV, roOU'lJ'tro~ I\i; XUL VUX'toov, EXEL OUYYQUqJ~V, EL 'tL~
ltUQWV ~ 'to. OUf.lltLlt'toV'tU alt0YQaqJELV ~1301jAE'tO ~ 't~V 'tou t}EOU ltQOVOLUV IILT]ydO'frUL.
('for each of our days, just as each of our nights, had a story if someone who was
there wished either to record what happened or recount the providence of the god',
Or. XLVII.3). I follow Wilamowitz, Festugiere, Behr, and Schroder in retaining the
ltuQwv of the manuscripts. Keil proposed emending to ltuQ' EV, arguing that the line
was corrupted under the influence of the ltuQwv in the following line. Wilamowitz ably
defended the manuscript reading by citing Or. XLVIII.56 and Or. L.2o, cases where
Aristides uses the plural (ol ltUQOV'tE~) to refer to those who were present at an event in
question (the onset of an attack and an oratorical performance) and can corroborate
Aristides' account.
4 Aristides in fact cues the locus classicus of unspeakable epic magnitude, II. 2.489, in
the first lines (oUII' EL f.lOL IlExu f.lEv yAooOOUL, IlExu liEmof.lu,;' dEV, Or. XLVII.I).
BROOKE HOLMES
as Aristides would have surely known, is not simply Homer's double.

In the story she chooses to tell, she recounts a time that she herself,
when she was at Troy, met Odysseus, who had infiltrated the city in
disguise; she alone discovers his identity and compels him to reveal the
secret plans of the Greeks (Od. 4.250-264). Helen, then, is a narrator
whose credentials rest in part on her ability to match the mitis of her
subject with her own cunning intelligence like some dark Penelope.
This skill turns out to be apposite to Aristides' task. He, too, is faced
with a subject that is not only long-suffering but also uncommonly
polymorphous: a body whose constantly changing face of disease ('t~v
:ltOLXLA.LUV 'tfj~ vooou, Or. XLVIII.6g) is the occasion for ongoing divine
attention. The prologue to the Hieroi Logoi gives every indication that
we are dealing not with an artless collection of dreams and everyday
minutiae but rather with a deliberate attempt to tell an epic story that
requires all of the narrator's resources.
In this paper, I argue that by analyzing how Aristides represents the
difficulty of both interpreting and memorializing the body's suffering
we can better understand his epic aspirations. In fact, I suggest that
his struggle to communicate what has happened to him draws atten-
tion to a tension within those aspirations between his identity as the
author of the Hieroi Logoi and his identity as a devotee of Asclepius.
For although he wishes to give a public account of his remarkable life,
albeit in response to a command from Asclepius,' he is also interest-
ing in preserving, or at least preserving the impression of, a uniquely
heroic and unfathomable intimacy with the divine. In what follows, I
focus on the two principal occasions for the expression of this tension:
Aristides' dreams, through which he gains a privileged perspective on
his symptoms, and his translation of suffering into a legible text capable
of commemorating Asclepius's benefaction.
In both of these areas, we might expect the body, since it is where
suffering takes place, to play an important role in interpretation and
commemoration. In fact, I will argue that the body is significant to
Aristides precisely because it evades these practices. In this respect,
the approach adopted here diverges from recent work on the role of
5 vuvl lIE 'tOlJO{)'tOL~ ihElJL lIUt XQ6VOL~ UlTtEQOV O\jJEL~ OVELQIl'tIDV uvuYllu~OUlJLV ~fLa~
aYELv Ul)'tu ltID~ E~ fLElJOV (,Now, after so many years and so much time later, dream
visions compel us to make these things public', Or. XLVIII.2). Asclepius is preparing for
this text from the beginning: E1Jtro~ E~ uQXfi~ ltQoEmEv (, {}EO~ Ult0YQUlpELV 'tU oVEiQU'tU.
lIUt 'tou't' ~v 'tIDV EltL'tUYfLU'tIDV ltQID'tOV ('Right from the beginning, the god ordered me
to record my dreams. And this was the first of his commands', Or. XLVIII.2).
Aristides' body in the Hieroi Logoi. Much of this work has been spurred,
at least in part, by rising interest in the corporeal codes of identity
in imperial-age ethics, medicine, rhetoric, and physiognomy" At the
same time, scholars have become more aware of Aristides' literary self-
consciousness, as well as the relationship of the Hieroi Logoi to other
Greco-Roman first-person writing.' In this climate, the equation of
Aristides' body with a text has become something of a commonplace.
That text is often understood as a 'script' of divine favor that is then
copied into the archive and, eventually, the Hieroi Logoi. 8 It has also
been described as a 'psychic text' of Aristides' struggles against cultural
codes of masculinity, an interpretation that combines the tradition of
seeing Aristides' symptoms and dreams as evidence of his troubled
unconscious with the equally prominent tradition of treating them as
evidence of his culture's anxieties." These scholars have done much
6 On the body and elite (masculine) identity in the imperial period, see Gleason
1995; Gunderson 2000; Connolly 2007. The increased interest in the day-to-day life of
the body in the Second Sophistic was identified early on by Bowersock (1969, 69-73).
For Aristides' relationship to what P. Hadot has called 'exercices spirituels' (1981) and
M. Foucault 'techniques du soi' (1986; 1997b), see Perkins 1992 (= 1995, 173-199); Miller
1994, 184-204; Shaw 1996, 300; Pernot 2002, 383.
7 On the literary and rhetorical character of the Hieroi Logoi, see Pearcy 1988;
Pigeaud 1991; Quet 1993; Castelli 1999; and the contribution of Downie in this volume.
Others (Michenaud and Dierkens 1972; Gigli 1977) have argued that the text is ordered
by the logic of the dream. On Aristides' relationship to contemporary autobiographical
writing, see Bompaire 1993; see also Harrison 2002, arguing that Apuleius is a critical
response to Aristides' model of religious autobiography. On first-person writing as a
'technique du soi': Foucault 1997a.
8 See Pearcy 1988, 391: 'But the Sacred Tales record also the creation of a second
text.. .It is the body of Aristides himself In its illnesses and recoveries, the medical
history of Aristides makes up a narrative of Asclepius' providence and favor. Physical
existence is transitory... The Sacred Tales, themselves, however, might endure, to present
the complex interpenetration of reality by the word of the god and the transformation
of the diseased and imperfect text of Aristides' body into the lasting text of the Sacred
Tales'. See also Perkins 1992, 261 (= 1995, 187): 'In Aristides' representation, bodies
become texts on which the god's purposes and intentions are written'; King 1999, 282:
'the creation of a story from the minute details of [the body's] physicality paradoxically
seeks to transcend its materiality and make it into a sign of divine favor'. Pearcy, op. cit.,
377-378 and Gasparro 1998 place the Hieroi Logoi alongside works by other imperial-age
devotees of Asclepius.
9 Miller 1994, who finds in Aristides' ceuvre 'an insistent thematic move whereby
oratorical writing and the symptomatic 'writing' of the body function as signs of each
other, all under the aegis of Asclepian oneiric practice' (189), looks beyond the 'text' of
divine favor to 'the symptoms of a rebellion against [Aristides'] culture's construction of
masculinity', symptoms that articulate a desire for 'the intimacy and privacy that cul-
tural codes denied to men of his standing and profession' (200). See also Brown 1978,4
on 'the unremitting discipline imposed on the actors of the small and unbearably well
BROOKE HOLMES
to bring the different layers of the Hieroi Logoi to light. They have
also happily succeeded in shifting discussion from Aristides' alleged
hypochondria to the historical meanings of the body and disease in
both the cult of Asclepius and Greco-Roman elite culture; indeed, this
work has made clear the very importance of the physical body as a
vehicle of meaning in those contexts.
Nevertheless, the conflation of Aristides' body with a text needs to
be questioned for the reason that within the Hieroi Logoi themselves,
signs and stories are systematically displaced from that body's surface.
As Aristides recounts in the second book, the origins of this displace-
ment lie in the failure of even the best physicians at Rome to make
sense of his symptoms within the semiotic framework of contemporary
medicine (Or. XLVIII.5-6, 62-64, 69).10 It is at this moment that Ascle-
pius begins to offer Aristides another conduit of interpretation in the
form of the dream, through which bodily symptoms are transformed
into symbolic narrative. By restoring meaning to Aristides' sufferings,
the dream allows Aristides to interpret and to overcome them, albeit
lit stage of an ancient city'. For retrospective diagnoses of Aristides' psychological con-
dition, see Gourevitch and Gourevitch 1968; Michenaud and Dierkens 1972; Hazard-
Guillon 1983; and esp. Gourevitch 1984, 22-47, recounting a long history of such diag-
noses by both medical professionals and philologists. Cf. the remarks in Pigeaud 1991
and Andersson and Roos 1997 on the limitations of this retrospective diagnosis. For
readings of Aristides as an exemplar of his era, see Festugiere 1954, 85-104; Dodds
1965, 3g-45; Bowersock 1969, 71-75; Reardon 197$ Brown 1978,41-45; Horstmanshoff
2004,332-334; andsupra,nn. 6-8.
10 That is, medicine that explains diseases and remedies primarily in terms of phys-
ical causes inside the body and external factors such as diet or environmental condi-
tions. The relationship between secular physicians and Asclepian priests was often sym-
biotic: see Edelstein and Edelstein 1945II, 13g-140; Horstmanshoff 2004; Gorrini 2005,
with nos. 18-19 [IG II/lIP 3798 and 3799]. Ancient sources saw continuity between
Asclepius and the human physician, often casting the god as the inventor of mod-
ern medicine (Edelstein and Edelstein, op. cit., II, 140-141), and indeed, Aristides has
high esteem for the historical figure of Hippocrates (King 2006, 261-262). Moreover,
many scholars have detected similarities between Asclepian therapies and those devel-
oped in secular medicine, particularly as time wore on (Oberhelman 1993, 153-155;
Boudon 1994, 165-168; Chaniotis 1995, 334-335; LiDonnici 1995, 48), and the two tra-
ditions shared disease terminology (Chaniotis, op. cit., 330 n. 38). It is also the case that
Aristides was surrounded by physicians both in the temple precinct and away from it.
Nevertheless, as far as he was concerned, Asclepius was always the true doctor (Or.
XLVII.4, 57), and the theme of medicine's limits is a Leitmotif in the Hieroi liJgoi; for
references, see Behr 1968, 169 nn. 23-24. For another example of an elite patient who
resists being 'read' by the physician (though in this case the physician comes out on
top), see the case of Sextus in Galen's On Prognosis (10.1-16, 14.650-656 Ktihn=120,
16-124, 22 Nutton).
temporarily, a process that creates a story (Ollyygmpi], Or. XLVII.3) to

be recorded in the archive. No trace of this story remains, however,
on the body itself: its ability to 'forget' appears synonymous with its
recovery of health. Recognizing both the forgetfulness of the body and
the shift of signs from its surface to the dream can clarify its role
within Aristides' epic project. The central argument of this paper is
that the body, and particularly embodied experience, is metonymic
of all that Aristides wishes to represent as beyond the public record
and sometimes beyond words altogether." The tension within Aristides'
double identity as exegete-narrator and divine protege is thus realized
through the elusive figure of the body.
I begin by examining how, as a result of a shift from the theater
of the sickbed to the theater of the dream space, Aristides ceases to
be equated with a body that serves as the passive object of medical
interpretation and becomes a privileged interpreter of his mysterious
sufferings." Yet if information gained from the dream must be mapped
back onto the lived body, there is always room for error. Aristides quite
naturally assumes that the body is fully transparent to the god; at times,
he refers to found texts that imply the existence of another, complete
divine text. Thus despite his advantage over other interpreters of his
body, he often remains uncertain about how to interpret his dreams.
Built into the Hieroi Logoi, then, is a sense that the body itself remains in
shadow.
In the second half of the essay, I approach the complex relationship
of the living body to its story from the perspective of commemoration.
Drawing on motifs that were important over half a millennium of the
cult of Asclepius, Aristides appears to see the scarred or inscribed
body as petrified in time without hope of renewal. This is not to say
that he does not represent the body as marked in sickness; quite the
contrary. Rather, insofar as the miracle of Asclepian healing involves
11 In addition to Or. XLVII.I, cited in n. 4, see also e.g. Or. XLVII.59 (O(Ja~ OMEL~:n:W
~QLt}J.lY)OEV); Or.
XLVIII.56 (%u[,;m 1:~ oI6~ 1:'liv ELY) AOyL<JJ.lC!J AUf3ELV EV oI~ T]J.lE~ ~J.lEV 1:01:E;);
Or. XLVIII.58 (citing Od. 3.113-114, 1:L~ %EV E%ELVU mlV1:U yE J.luihjOaL1:O %U1:ut}vy)1:WV
avt}Q<ll1twv); Or. IL.30 (dUu 1:OLVUV J.luQLa liv E'LY) MyELV cpuQJ.la%wv EXOJ.lEVU ...). For the
topos in the aretological tradition, see Festugiere 1960, 132-134. On dQQy)1:O~ EUt}UJ.lLU,
see Or. XLVIII.22, cited below.
12 Theater should be understood in literal terms here. We have evidence of regular
public anatomical demonstrations and rhetorical performances by physicians in the sec-
ond century CE (von Staden 1994; Debru 1995; Perkins 1995, 158--159), and Aristides,
as a rhetor, was well acquainted with the theater.
86 BROOKE HOLMES
the body's regeneration, that body is a poor site for commemoration.

Writing happens elsewhere: in letters discovered in dreams, in the
dream archive and the public tales, on votive offerings, and, most
extraordinarily, on the bodies of other people. Aristides' body evades
its stories, I suggest, not because it is subject to death, as is sometimes
said, but because it resists death.
The Odyssean slipperiness of the body in the Hieroi Logoi poses
challenges of interpretation for both Aristides and his readers. Those
challenges are important to understanding not only the relationship of
the Hieroi Logoi to their putative epic model, but also Aristides' divided
position as both that epic's preternaturally perceptive narrator and
its elusive hero. The tension that results from that position may, in
turn, help us understand why Aristides, whether we adopt a traditional
biographical-diagnostic approach or the more recent approaches that
situate him within his cultural and historical milieu, remains so difficult
to pin down. He seems to display the familiar persona of an elite Greek
of the Roman period while, at the same time, undermining all attempts
to turn him into an example. Aristides has been called many names; he
has been given many diagnoses. He turns out to satisfy all of them, and
then some.
Interpreting the disease
Dreams anddecipherment
The chronological arcM of the Hieroi Logoi, as we have just seen, lies
in the failure of the doctors first at Rome, then at Smyrna, to under-
stand or to alleviate Aristides' polymorphous pain." No amount of
purging or bleeding provides relie£ In the end, the bedside scene of
ingenious decipherment of which Galen, a generation after Aristides,
is so fond never occurs. The physicians are left in an aporia. It is at
this point in Aristides' life, when medicine's trust in the body as revela-
tory of hidden truths-a trust shared by physiognomy and ethical self-
fashioning-proves misplaced, that the god steps in to open up another
13 On the literary tapas of being derelictus a medicis, see Horstmanshoff 2004, 328-329
n. ro.
means of understanding symptoms: the dream.'! The dream transforms

not only the semiotics of bodily suffering but also the conditions of
interpretation.
We can begin to understand these transformations by looking at a
dream recounted in connection with Aristides' near-death experience
during the Antonine plague. That dream also raises the question of the
relationship between interpretation and salvation. Aristides reports that
as he was lying sick in bed, 'I was aware of myselfjust as though I were
somebody else, and I perceived my body ever failing until I came to
the last moment' (oih;w :ltaQTptoAouttovv el-tav'tq>, WO:ltEQ av UAAq> 'tLVL, 'Xat
Uottav6l-tT]v U:ltOAeL:ltOV'tO~ olel 'toli owl-ta'tO~, EW~ EL~ 'tOuOXa'tov ~Attov, Or.
XLVIII.39). At this point, Aristides turns towards the wall and falls to
dreaming that he is an actor at the end of a play who is about to turn
in his buskins. Asclepius suddenly makes him turn over so that he is
again facing outwards; the dream seems to end. That abortive final act
appears to signal that death has been averted.
Translated into the terms of the theater, Aristides' brush with death
suggests a relationship between the alienation from the self character-
istic of illness and the self-interpretation that dreams make possible
while also demonstrating his capacity, qua dreamer, to move between
the roles of sufferer and interpreter. In the first phase, when Aristides
is still awake, the body drifts away from the first-person speaker, an
indication of impending death. In the second phase, however, Aristides
dreams himself into the position of the departing player. Nevertheless,
the dream's dramatic setting ('I seemed to be at the end of the play')
still leaves a formal place for the subject of the earlier verbs 'I was con-
scious of' (:ltaQT]'XoAouttovv el-tav'tq» and 'I perceived' (Uottav6l-tT]v). That
is to say, even as Aristides identifies with the disappearing body, the
waking person who had been conscious of the body being left behind
14 Medicine's commitment to the idea that the symptom reveals truths of the phys-
ical body dates from the classical period (Holmes, forthcoming). This commitment is
strengthened, at least in some quarters, by the anatomical investigations of the Hellenis-
tic period. This period, however, also sees the eruption of debates about the physician's
ability to know what is hidden and the therapeutic usefulness of anatomical and physio-
logical knowledge. A useful overview of the consequences of these debates for medicine
in the early Roman Empire can be found in Nutton 2004, 157-170, 187-247. Despite
the epistemological debates among the medical sects, the interpretation of symptoms
as expressions of an inner bodily truth continues to be the dominant model in the
early imperial period, reaching its pinnacle with Galen (Barton 1994, 133-168; Perkins
1995, 142-172). Although dreams were used alongside symptoms in medical diagnosis,
in Aristides they are opposed to the physicians' tactics of decipherment.
88 BROOKE HOLMES
now becomes the implied spectator of the dream performance and its
imminent close. Finally, upon waking, Aristides again explicitly assumes
the position of the spectator in order to recount both this dream and
the following one, in which Athena appears and exhorts him to perse-
vere. The dream thus translates the split self of the near-death experi-
ence into the relationship between performer and audience within the
theater while shifting the weight of the'!' away from the audience to
the performer. After the dream ends, the'!' again migrates back to the
position of the watcher, who reflects upon the visions (O'ljJEL~) in which
he himself appeared. 15
What is perhaps most remarkable here is that the situation drama-
tized by this dream, namely the actor's moment of passage from the
stage into the 'real' world, implies that oneiric performance is crucial to
life. For the actor's exit paradoxically signals not the reunification of the
self-reflexive pronoun (E!!UV'tl'p) with the first-person subject of the verb,
but impending death. We might ask, then, why the stage is so vital to
Aristides.
The buskins dream gives us the beginning of an answer to this
question. In this dream Aristides already has a sense that he is on
the brink of death, a sense to which the dream gives metaphorical
expression by equating life with dramatic performance and staging its
final scene ('I had come to the end', Et~ 'toiioxu'tov ~A:frov, Aristides says
just before the dream begins). Even though the dream shows Aristides
something he presumably already knows ('I am dying'), the very act of
showing seems to release him from the crisis staged in the dream: the
body left on stage remains in play, i.e. remains alive.
The therapeutic value of the dream-stage makes even more sense
when we consider that in a far more common scenario Aristides' suffer-
ings are unintelligible, not only to the physicians, but also to Aristides
himself For one of the basic premises of the Hieroi Logoi is that the body
is besieged by invisible or mysterious threats: Aristides' sense that he
has been violated is almost always belated; even then, he is usually in
the dark about what has caused his symptoms. Since the tempests of
Aristides' abdomen or his asthmatic attacks abruptly sever the reflex-
ive pronoun (E!!UV'tl'p) from the first-person speaker, thereby bringing
the body to conscious awareness as a mysterious, alien entity, they can
be seen as variations on his near-death experience during the plague.
15 Dreaming is treated by ancient authors as a kind of seeing (Oberhelman 1987,48).

AELIUS ARISTIDES' ILLEGIBLE BODY 89
Like the buskins dream, the dreams that comment on these tempests or
attacks enable the body to be saved. Yet they do so not by simply stag-
ing the crisis of illness. In most cases, the dramatic format of the dream
generates interpretation that gives rise in turn to therapeutic action.
Aristides' projection of the self into the imaginative and dramatic
space of the dream is consistent with his more general sense of the
body as strange or alien in cases of disease. In fact, symptoms like
dramatic pain or stomach trouble may simply exaggerate Aristides'
more persistent sense of the inside of the body as a mysterious and
strange place, vulnerable to violations that are not always immediately
felt: even before symptoms, then, there would be a need for dreams
to provide a window onto this hidden space. Aristides' perception of
his body in these terms participates in wider Greco-Roman attitudes.
Over the last century, the Freudian unconscious has powerfully shaped
how we understand the part of the self that is submerged below our
everyday perceptions, although the priority of psychoanalysis in this
regard has been challenged in recent decades by genetics, medical
imaging, and the flourishing of neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
That the soul has its own hidden recesses is an idea found in some
Greek sources." Yet perhaps the most opaque and most daemonic part
of the self was the inside of the physical body, at least from the fifth
century BeE when that body definitively takes shape as a place where
disease silently develops." The trust of laypersons and physicians alike
in diagnostic and prescriptive dreams suggests that anxious uncertainty
about the hidden body was widespread, as was the desire to access this
concealed space. 18
16 See Plato's remarks about the flourishing of repressed desires in dreams at R.

IX, 57IC3----<4, although I would argue that the non-transparency of the soul here is
developed on analogy with the non-transparency of the physical body. At the same
time Greek ethical philosophy becomes increasingly interested in the opaque parts of
the soul in the Hellenistic period.
17 See Holmes, forthcoming.
18 On the ancient diagnostic or prescriptive dream, see Oberhelman 1993; Holow-
chak 2001. Notice that ancient dream interpretation has typically been distinguished
from modern (psychoanalytic) interpretation on the grounds that the ancients cared
about the future, while we care about the past (Price 1990). The diagnostic dream
(eVU1tVLOV) can be accommodated within this opposition, insofar as it sheds light on
a disease before it breaks into the patient's conscious awareness (Oberhelman 1987,
47). Nevertheless, in the case of such dreams the opposition that I describe above
between different kinds of unseen spaces in the self, i.e. the opposition between the
modern unconscious and the (non-conscious) innards of the ancient material body; is
go BROOKE HOLMES
Concern about the hidden life of the body is fostered by the rise
and dissemination of naturalizing medicine. Despite the impasse of
the doctors at Rome, access to the hidden life of the body-typically
imagined along the very broad lines of the body described by humoral
medicine-remains central to the Hieroi Logoi, as in the cult of Ascle-
pius more generally in the imperial period. Thus at one point, shortly
into the first book, Aristides recounts a dream in which the trans-
parency of the body is literalized. Sitting in a warm bath, he bends
forward and sees that the lower part of his stomach is in a rather strange
state (:7tQOXEX:UqJW~ be Ei.~ 'to :7tQaO'frEv oQcPTJv 'tu xu'tw 'tfj~ XOLA.LU~ u'tO-
:7tW'tEQOV ()LUXELl-tEVU, Or. XLVII.8). The difference is that, in the cult,
information about the body comes not from the body but from the
god.
Dreams help the patient see into his or her body by creating contexts
through which its experiences and states become visible. The vague
or imprecise feeling of the body as something strange is transformed
into the perception of a concrete object, a visible anomaly, or an
invasive act-that is, something that can be seen and understood by
the dreamer. Aristides might dream that a bone is troubling him, for
example, and that it needs to be expelled (Or. XLVII.28). A dream may
make Aristides aware of the fact that he has been defiled (l-t0A:uvl}fjvm)
even before he.feels violated (Or. XLVII.7). In one dream, Aristides is
offered figs, but learns from the prophet Corns that they are poisonous;
he becomes suspicious and vomits, while still worrying that he has not
vomited enough and that there are other, unidentified poisonous figs
as important as the past-future opposition. Indeed, just as the twentieth century saw
an enormous investment of cultural imagination in the idea that our secrets about
our neuroses lie in our dreams, the popularity of diagnostic dreams in antiquity may
suggest a similar cultural investment in the idea that the secrets of our suffering bodies
lie in our dreams. w.v. Harris has pointed out that the widespread interest in medical-
anxiety dreams in antiquity can be correlated with the far greater number of health
problems that the average person would have faced (2005, 260). It may also be true
that it was precisely because physicians validated the meaning of dreams as medical
that so many dreams seemed to dreamers to be about the body. In recent centuries, this
validation has no longer been forthcoming: compare to Aristides' interaction with his
doctors the following exchange between the nineteenth-century belle-lettrist Alphonse
Daudet, who suffered from syphilis, and his physician: 'Daudet told us this evening that
for a long time he had dreamed that he was a boat whose keel caused him pain; in
the dream, he would turn on his side. The persistence of this dream caused him to ask
[Dr.] Potain if this meant his spine was rotting. Potain's response was to laugh' (Daudet
2002,6).
(Or. XLVII.54). The message of the dream, Aristides thinks when he

wakes up, is to fast, although he suspects that some vomiting might be
in order.
Here, then, we begin to glimpse how the splitting of the self in the
dream can counteract the alienation from the body most visibly real-
ized in disease. The dream, where the 'I' is both actor and spectator,
unlocks the mysteries of embodiment by bringing to light, at least dimly,
the web of relationships and events in which the lived body is invisibly
and treacherously embedded. Moreover, by situating embodied expe-
rience within a thicket of symbols, the dreams also show Aristides the
remedies (UA,EsupuQ!!uxu) to counter the threats that he is constantly
facing." It is precisely because the body, like Odysseus, is always beset
by danger that 'each of our days as well as our nights has a story' (Or.
XLVII.3).
With the transformation of the embodied self into a theatrical player
within a dream, then, Aristides' sense of distance from that self becomes
the condition of his understanding of it. Like Helen remembering the
toils of Odysseus, he is reporting in the Hieroi Logoi on the troubles of
someone, or rather something, else. Indeed, although he is ostensibly
narrating his own epic adventures, he sets out by announcing that he
wants to talk about his abdomen (vliv bE w~ EOXEV 'to 'toli ~'tQO'lJ bTJA,wam
:7tQo~ iJ!!a~ ~o'liA,o!!m, Or. XLVII.4). And just as Helen remembers cut-
ting through Odysseus's disguise, Aristides recalls how he deciphered
the mysterious suffering of the abdomen, albeit through the medium of
the dream.
Knowledge confers power: once dreams are interpreted, they lead
Aristides to the appropriate therapeutic response. Dreaming of the
trapped bone, for example, carries with it a sense of bloodletting; the
fig dream prescribes vomiting or fasting," By determining how to act
19 :rtOAAU IlEV YUQ KUt UAAU E:rtEotiIlTlVEV 0 itEO'; EK 'tillv EqJEO'tT]Km:lOV UIEt KLVMvlOV
ESUQ:rtU~lOV, ot mixvol VUK'tO'; EKUO'tTl'; KUt ~IlEQU'; ~(Juv, UMO'tE UMOL :rtQO(J~UMOV'tE';,
'to'tE /)E E:rtUVLOV'tE'; ol UU'tOL, KUt O:rtm:E U:rtUMUYELTl 'tL';, uv'tLAUIl~UVOV'tE'; E'tEQOL' KUt :rtQo,;
EKUO'tU 'tOU'tlOV UAESLqJUQIlUKU nEL :rtuQu 'to'ii itEO'ii KUt :rtUQulluitLm :rtuV'toLm KUt EQYCP KUt
Mycp ('For the god signified many other things in the course of snatching me away from
the threats always besetting me, which came thickly every day and every night, some
assailing me at one time, some at another, and sometimes the same ones resurging, and
whenever one was freed from them, others attacking in turn. For each of these things
antidotes came from the god, and manifold consolations both in word and in deed', Or.
XLVIII. 25).
20 'For Aristides, dreams were basically staging areas for physical treatments... '
(Perkins 1992, 251; id. 1995, 178). Yet the dreams must almost always be interpreted.
BROOKE HOLMES
on the sick body, Aristides, not unlike his contemporaries committed

to elaborate regimens of self-care underwritten by physicians, gains
control over it. At one point, in fact, Aristides believes he could have
expelled his disease entirely (nuauv E;E~UAOV 'tT]V vooov, Or. XLVIII.72)
had he not been led astray by the 'evil council' of his companions,
who persuaded him to adopt their own misguided explanations of the
dreams." These companions, as competitive interpreters of Aristides'
suffering (via the dreams), are not unlike physicians, and their failure
of understanding reconfirms Aristides' identity as the expert interpreter
of his own body. His capacity to perform this role is directly created
by the shift from symptoms to dreams: Aristides alone, after all, has the
claim to autopsy; he is the one 'trained in divine visions' (YEY'u!J.vua!J.Evo~
... EV 'frEim~ (>-tlmOLv, Or. XLVII.38). These skills, it is worth noting, also
establish his authority as the narrator of the Hieroi Logoi.
Yet the 'evil council' episode also reminds us that Aristides' decipher-
ment of a mysterious body, unlike the physician's, is mediated by divine
signs that themselves require interpretation. Let us consider, then, how
the substitution of a divine sign for a bodily one complicates Aristides'
access to the truth about his body and the translation of that truth into
the Hieroi Logoi.
Dreams andobscurity
Aristides' dreams grant meaning to the sick body, yet they are also
objects of interpretation. What this means is that his situation is even
more complex than Helen's. For one thing, whereas Helen relies on her
own intuition in the (direct) encounter with Odysseus, the information
that dreams provide Aristides about his body's condition, and indeed
the dreams themselves, come from a place as foreign as the disease
itself In the warm bath dream, where Aristides observes the strange
state of his abdomen, it is an unnamed person who has to tell him
that there is no need to guard against bathing, because the aition of
On the interpretation of Asclepian dreams through puns and wordplay, verbal and
visual imagery, and analogy, see Oberhehnan Ig8I; on Aristides' interpretations of his
own dreams, see Nicosia Ig88, 183-185.
21 The scene and language are Odyssean, recalling the episode in Book 10 where the
companions open Aeolus's bag of winds. Although practices of dream interpretation
were codified, as Artemidorus's dream book makes clear, and although Artemidorus
makes a point of stressing how easy divine prescriptive dreams are to decipher (IY.22),
Aristides regularly asserts his unique ability to uncover oneiric meaning.
his problems has nothing to do with bathing. In another remarkable

dream, Aristides imagines that some barbarians gain control over him;
one of them approaches and makes as though he is going to tattoo him
(M;uv :ltUgUOXELV Wi; mi,;ovtu).22 Yet rather than doing so,
E:7tEL'ta 'Katl-Ei:VaL 'tOV ()U'K't1JAOV ofJ'twot !-LEXQL 'tOii AaL!-Loii 'KaL 'tL EYXEaL 'Ka'ta
()TJ rwc E:7tLXWQLOV VO!-LOV, OVO!-LUOaL ()E au'to O~1JaL'tLav' 'taii'ta ()E umEQov
oo~ ovaQ ()LT)YELattaL 'Kat 'tOu~ a'Kouov'ta~ tta1J!-LU~ELV xat MYELV oo~ aQa 'toii'to
a'i:'tLOV ELT) 'tOii ()L'ljJfjV !-LEV, !-LT] MvaattaL M :7tLELV, 't<p 'tQE:7tEattaL E~ o~o~
'ta ortlc, E'K ()T] 'tOu't01J E!-LE'tO~ re E()EL'KV1J'tO 'Kat :7tQooE'ta~Ev 0 ~uQ~aQo~
A01J'tQoii rs a:7toO)(.EottaL 'Kat ()LU'KOVOV Eva :7taQamTJoaattaL 'to 'tTJ!-LEQov ELVaL.
aA01JOLa 'Kat E!-LE'tO~ !-LE'ta QgmwvT)~. (Or. XLVII.g)
...he put his finger all the way into my throat and poured in something
according to a kind of local custom, and he called this 'oxusitia'. Later
on [I dreamed] that I narrated these things as a dream and the listeners
were amazed and said that this, then, was the cause of my thirst, on the
one hand, and my inability to drink, on the other, namely that my food
was turning sour. From this [dream] vomiting was indicated, and the
barbarian ordered me to abstain from bathing and that today I produce
one witness to this. No bathing and vomiting with relie£
Confronted with both the barbarian and his invasive gesture, we are
led to see the origins of the disease as external to Aristides. More inter-
esting is the fact that the diagnosis-oxusitia, "indigestion" or "food-
turning-sour," as the later gloss shows-is of equally foreign prove-
nance. In fact, it is the barbarian who delivers the presumably god-
sanctioned command to abstain from bathing. Etiological clues and
treatment prescriptions are delivered by an 'attending someone' ('tLi;
:ltugwv) with a better grasp of what has happened than Aristides him-
self."
Given that the dreams arrive from a place outside of Aristides and
given, too, that they are populated with shadowy informants, the reader
of the Hieroi Logoi has the impression of a strange symbiosis between the
invasive object and the divine message. I do not mean to imply that
Asclepius is somehow responsible for the disease. Admittedly, there is
litde question that a drama of salvation requires the continual breach
of the body's defenses, and Aristides has been accused (or celebrated)
more than once-including by his contemporaries (Or. L.27)-of stay-
22 For the translation of lTt[~w as 'to tattoo' (rather than 'to brand'), seeJones 1987;
id.2000.
23 See also e.g. Or. XLVII.S6; Or. IL.I1. The 'tL~ :n:UQIDV is first mentioned at Or.
XLVII.3·
94 BROOKE HOLMES
ing sick for the benefits that sickness brings." What I want to stress
here, however, is simply that the story of Aristides' suffering, which
eventually becomes the text of the Hieroi Logoi, has its origins in a space
as estranged from Aristides as the disease itself 25 That is, grasping the
hidden experiences or condition of the body requires opening up chan-
nels of knowledge as mysterious as the passages through which the dis-
ease first entered. This knowledge is acquired indirectly within the the-
atrical space of the dream rather than directly rendering the lived body
transparent or legible.
By using dreams to decipher his suffering, Aristides, as we have
seen, redefines his sense of distance from the body to turn it into
an object of knowledge. Yet even when he is defined as a knower,
Aristides is not fully at home. That is, if Aristides acquires knowledge
neither intuitively nor, like Helen, through his own mitis, but through
his relationship to the divine Other, neither self in the split-self divide
offers much familiarity. Thus, although Aristides claims an authoritative
position of knowledge about his body vis-a-vis other experts (physicians,
companions), that position is always unstable on account of the gap that
remains between what he knows and what the god knows. Moments
of confident interpretation are interspersed with moments of doubt
(should I bathe? should I eati')." Whatever Aristides might see of the
abdomen, there is always more that the stranger who magically appears
beside him can tell him.
The idea of a stranger who knows more about the mysterious body
than Aristides himself means that Aristides' identification with Helen,
whose authority to tell her story is rooted in experience, is complicated
by a more traditional epic model in which the access to knowledge
is partial. Unlike Odysseus in Helen's story; who tells Helen all the
purposes of the Achaeans (Od. 4.256), the body is never fully denuded
of its secrets. And unlike Helen, Aristides' metis depends on a muse.
As a result, we cannot reliably identify the 'attending someone' ('ttl;
:n:ugwv) mentioned in the prologue who might be able to record what
happened or relate the providence of the god. In fact, the mysterious
knowing stranger is instrumental not only in the initial interpretation
24 Festugiere 1954,86; Behr 1968, 46; Reardon 1973, 84; Brown 1978,41; Gourevitch
1984,50-51, 58-59· Cf. Quet 1993, 243; Andersson and Roos 1997, 37·
25 Note that hieroi logoi are marked 'as spoken or written manifestations of "the
Other'" (Henrichs 2003, 239).
26 E.g. Or. XLVII.7, 27, 40, 55-56.
of symptoms but also in the composition of the story they generate.

In the preface of the second tale, we learn that in writing the Hieroi
Logoi, Aristides relied on Asclepius's assistance, since his body had long
forgotten its pains and his original records of the dreams were lacunose
or had been 10stY So the knowledge for the text in our hands also
originates outside ofAristides. His task is simply to make this knowledge
public.
The incompleteness of Aristides' knowledge comes into relief against
a master text whose existence is implied by the bits and pieces of other
writing that appear in the dreams and elsewhere. As Aristides tells his
foster father Zosimus within a dream, 'Look! The things I dreamed that
the dream said I discover written in a book' ({tEuaaL, a MyeLv eMxo'Uv
ovuQ, ei'QLaxw yeYQUl-tl-tEVU ev 'tqJ ~L~A.Lq>, L.69); on another occasion,
he finds a letter, in which everything that he has been foretold in a
dream is written in detail (Or. XLVII.78).28 It is unclear whether these
discovered texts are anterior to the dream, thereby functioning as a
kind of script. Yet they do imply that the dreams are part of a grand
narrative of Aristides' life that unfolds under the sign of the god.
To the extent that the written things that Aristides discovers often
express divine truth, they model the faithful record of events that the
Hieroi Logoi should be. Yet the writing of the Hieroi Logoi is troubled
at the outset, even before the loss of the archive, by the challenge of
understanding the body through the filter of the dream. Aristides' diffi-
culties as an autobiographical narrator with epic pretensions stand out
as the particular difficulties of someone trying to capture an infinitely
27 On the relationship between the archive and the Hieroi Logoi, see Pearcy 1988.
See King 1999 on Aristides and the difficulty of writing about chronic pain. Aristides
repeatedly draws attention to the problems that plague the composition of the Hieroi
Logoi: the magnitude and the number of his sufferings defy calculation and transcription
(see above, n. II); the archive that contained the decades of notes has been scattered
and lost; indeed, it was patchy to begin with (Or. XLVIII. 1-4); given that Aristides
began composing the tales late in life, in the early 170S (see Behr 1994, II55-II63), well
after his first doomed trip to Rome in 145 when he was around 26 years old, he can
remember but a fraction of his past woes; and his body has constantly interfered with
the composition of its history (Or. XLVII.4; Or. XLVIII. 2). Thus, insofar as Aristides'
past is itself a kind of alien wisdom, he needs Asclepius as a muse: the Hieroi Logoi are
composed according to 'however the god should lead and move' (8:n:lOi; av 0 {}Eoi; am re
Kat KLVfj, Or. XLVIII.4; cf. Or. XLVIII.24; Or. L.50) its author.
28 See also Or. IL.3Q-31; Or. L.I; Or. LI.45, with Pearcy 1988, 385-386. The discov-
ery of a piece of writing that confirms the truth of a story is a topes (Festugiere 1960,
124-126). On the association of writing with special, often sacred, authority, see Hen-
richs 2003, 249.
au'ta OW'tT]QLaV E:7tayyEAAO!J.EVa, XaL O'tL ~ <PLAOU!J.EVT] '\jJUxi]v UV'tL '\jJUxii~ XaL
mU!J.a UV'tL O(b!J.a'to~ UV'tEc'\WXEV, 'ta au'tii~ UV'tL'tWV E!J.WV. (Or. LI. 23)
But the main point was that the whole affair concerning Philumene
had been inscribed on her very body and on her innards, just as on
the entrails of sacrificial animals. And there seemed to be a good deal
of intestine, and at the same time somehow I was looking at it. The
upper parts were healthy and in good condition, but at the end was a
diseased part. And this was all pointed out by the one standing nearby,
whoever he was. For indeed I was asking him, 'what, then, is the cause
of my troubles and difficulty'? And he pointed out that place. The
oracles went something like this: nry name had been inscribed in this way,
'Aelius Aristides', and nearby, spaced apart, were different naming marks.
'Sosimenes' had been written as well, as well other things announcing
salvation and that Philumene had given a soul in exchange for a soul, a
body for a body, hers in place of mine.
The girl's innards, just like Aristides' lower abdomen in the warm bath
dream, appear to be diseased. Yet whereas Aristides had required the
'attending someone' to explain why his entrails are diseased, in this
case the attendant simply points to where Philumene's story is already
inscribed (eY'{EYQa!J.!J.Evou :7taVLOi; LOU :7tEQL au'tilv :7tQaY!J.a'toi;). The girl
thus resembles, as Aristides says outright, the sacrificial animal whose
entrails Aristides had examined in the first dream. As in hieroscopy,
the matter written on Philumene's entrails turns out to be more about
Aristides than about her. The question posed is about Aristides' pains;
accordingly, it is his own name that he finds inscribed into (evEYEYQa:7tLO)
his foster daughter's body. The signs all indicate that Philumene had
dedicated her body for his and a soul for a soul, her story for the future
of his,"
In his pioneering reading of this episode, L. Pearcy likened Philume-
ne's innards to Aristides' own diseased body (1988, 387-389). It is true
that she is cast as Aristides' surrogate. Yet the two also differ from one
another in that Philumene's body is literally inscribed with the meaning
of her disease and her death, which turns out to be the meaning
of Aristides' disease and his survival. Philumene's dreamed body thus
takes over the role of Aristides' own dreamed body in attracting signs
29 See also Or. XLVIII.44, another example of the life-for-a-life logic. These episodes
have understandably attracted attention and are often interpreted as an unsavory
sign of Aristides' megalomania or his psychological instability. Gourevitch places the
substitution narratives in the context of contemporary perspectives on Antinous' death
(1984,55, with nn. 77-78).
98 BROOKE HOLMES
that make the difficulties of the lived body comprehensible, but with
a twist. For it is as if Philumene's serving as a site of interpretation in
the dream, and specifically her conversion into a text, expresses her
monumental act of substitution in the waking world, namely the gift
of a life for a life. By assuming both the disease and the written word,
Philumene also assumes Aristides' death, releasing him from the story
that is for her both the first and final sacred tale.
Philumene's body offers a site where Aristides' story and Asclepius's
saving grace may be both staged (as in the dream) and recorded (as
in the archive and the Hieroi Logoz). As a result of her gift her foster
father understands (albeit in a limited sense) his own trouble and, most
importantly, gains new life. A similar, less disturbing substitution that
nevertheless also involves an act of inscription is found in an episode
where Aristides learns in a dream that he will die in two days. The
fate may be averted if he completes a series of sacrifices, makes an
offering of coins, and cuts off a part of his body for the sake of the well-
being of the whole (6eLv 6E xat 'tou oWf.ta'to~ av'tou :7taga'tEf.tVeLV imEg
ow'tT]gLa~ "COu :7tav'to~, Or. XLVIII.27). Fortunately, Asclepius remits this
demand and allows Aristides to substitute his ring (6mt'tvA.LO~) for his
finger (Mx't'lJA.O~).30 By inscribing (E:7tLygu'ljJm) this ring with the words
'0 son of Cronus' and dedicating it to Telesphorus, Aristides cheats
death.
The Telesphorus episode, like the Philumene story, points to the
desire to protect the body from writing. For it is precisely the body's
conversion into a textual surface that appears to preclude its regenera-
tion. The fixed nature of the inscription is overdetermined as a signifier
of the irreversibility of death, on the one hand, and the promise to
remember divine benefaction, on the other. Philumene's fate and Tele-
sphorus's ring suggest a relationship between inscription, memory, and
death in Aristides' imagination.
Such a relationship may seem, at first glance, counter-intuitive, given
the fundamentally important role of commemorative tablets and votives
in the healing events that take place in the cults of Asclepius and other
healing gods. On reflection, however, we can see how the association
of inscription with death might make sense in such a context. However
speculative, etymologies of Asclepius's name in Homeric scholia offer
30 Compare Or. XLVIII.13-14 (the enactment of a shipwreck averts a real one); Or.
Lrr (a dusting stands in for actual burial). Such performances may be seen to persuade
the gods that the demand has been satisfied: see Taussig 1993.
a useful point of orientation. Scholiasts commonly took the name to

be the combination of the adjective <J'X,A.T]QOl;, 'hard, rigid', and the
alpha-privative, the stated rationale being that, as the god of healing,
Asclepius opposes the hardening and withering brought on by disease
and death. Porphyry's account is paradigmatic:"
'to aaxEM~ O'T)!-taLvEL 'to a.yav aXAT]Qov. aXEAAELV YUQ EO'tL 'to aXAT]QO:ltOLELV,
xal. 0 aXEAE'to~ 0 xa'teaXAT]XW~ <'lui 'tT]V aaaQxLav, xal. 'AaXAT]:ltLO~ xa'ta.
O'tEQT]OLV !-tE'ta. ~:ltLo'tT]'to~, 0 <'lui 'tfj~ La'tQLxfj~ !-tT] Miv axEMwltm. (Homeric
Qyestions, a 68=T26g, Edelstein and Edelstein)
Dried up means what is too harsh. For aXEMELV means to make harsh.
Also the skeleton is that which is dried up through lack of flesh, and the
name Asklepios comes from this word with an alpha privative, together
with the word for gentleness, that is, he who by the agency of the medical
art does not permit dryness.
Asclepius restores to life, as the symbol of the snake, capable of shed-

ding its skin, suggests." In our earliest Greek poetry and philosophical
speculation, in fact, we find the idea oflife as something aqueous, labile;
in death, everything turns to bone." Asclepius is a god of suppleness.
The very suppleness guarded by Asclepius, however, makes the pro-
tection of memory a crucial question. Every god needs poetry and
myth to keep their deeds visible in cosmic memory. The problem faced
by Asclepius, however, is not simply the ephemerality of action and
event." For a god whose work lies in restoring to life, the site of his
power is uniquely resistant to manifesting that work in any lasting way.
Gods like Apollo or Hecate or Aphrodite might break into the mor-
tal world via symptoms; Asclepius erases them from the body. Whereas
health, like beauty, can index divine benevolence, nothing in it signifies
31 See also T267---268; 270-276.

32 On the snake and the renewal oflife, see T70I, 703-706.
33 Thus Aristotle reported-although he is not necessarily to be trusted-that Tha-
les based his idea that the primary element of the world is water on the fact that the
nurture (trophC) of all things was moist and that coming-to-be required the moist (Metaph.
1.3, 983b6). Theophrastus conjectures that Thales privileged water as the principle of
life after seeing that corpses dry up (Theophr. Phys. op. fro I=DKII A 13). Disease could
also be represented in medicine, however, as the liquefaction and disarticulation of the
body, an elaboration in materialist terms of the archaic concepts of 'limb-loosening'
(A1J(JLI-LEA~I;) eras and death. See e.g. Archil. II8 0N), Sapph. 137 (LP), Hes. Th. 121, with
Vermeule 1979, 145- 177.
34 Ephemeral events such as sacrifices or, in healing cults, the nocturnal encounter
with the healing god, were often represented on votive offerings (van Straten 1981, 83-
86, 98; id. 1992, 256-257).
100 BROOKE HOLMES
its own history. Yet it is precisely the before-and-after that is important

to Asclepius: the very absence of the mark on the healed body belies its
history of sickness and the intervention of the god.
We can contrast to the tabula rasa created by Asclepius's healing the
almost imperceptible scar discovered postmortem on the body of the
saint Macrina by her brother and the author of her fourth-century CE
Vita, Gregory of Nyssa." Through Macrina's nurse, we learn that the
scar, likened by Gregory to a mark (O'tLY!1U) made by a small needle,
replaced a painful sore that had appeared on the saint's breast after she
had prayed for healing. The scar is identified as a sign (OT]!1ELov) and
commemoration (!1VT]!1oo'Uvov) of God's removal of the pathos (V. Macr.
31.5-7).36 The mark signals, then, not death, but the renewal of life
under the aegis of divine power. Macrina wears the memory of this
renewal on her own person.
The difference between Macrina's scar and the Asclepian tabula rasa
would seem to reflect a historical shift. For the interpretation of that
scar takes place against the backdrop of Christianity's valorization of
the scarred, wounded, and inscribed body in the first centuries CE,
a valorization that departs sharply from Greco-Roman ideas about the
corporeal mark. As a surge of recent scholarship has shown, throughout
Greco-Roman antiquity a mark such as the tattoo cued subjection to
a master, narrowing one's identity to whatever was imprinted on the
skin and locking that identity against the passage of time." The tattoo
can thus be seen as concretizing the surplus of power that licensed the
more general use and abuse of bodies deemed subhuman by masters
and governments and effectively canceled the individual's claims to
self-determination." If we read Aristides' avoidance of the tattoo in
the dream with the barbarians in this context, it is possible to see it
as a promising sign for Aristides' eventual recovery of health. Through
35 See Frank 2000 and Burrus 2003 for discussion of Macrina's scar, which Frank
reads as an allusion to Odysseus' famous OUA~ and a site for fixing Macrina's 'shifting
identities' (s29).
36 Compare the representation of the martyr's wounds as 'God's writing' at Prud.
Peri. 3.135,cited by Shaw 1996, 306.
37 duBois 1991; Steiner 1994, 154-159; Shaw 1996, 306;]ones 2000, 10; Burrus 2003,
404-408. The mutilated body could also be read in such terms (Gleason 2001, 7g-80),
although cf Edwards 1999, on the valorization of Scaevola's scarred body in Seneca's
letters.
38 For this argument in classical Athens, see e.g. Dem. Against Androtion 55; Pi. Leg.
854d. Aristides himself uses lTt[~w in the metaphorical sense of 'to defame', 'to abuse'
(xat 'tWV !-lEV OtXE'tWV oMEva 1tll:I11:m:' ElTtL!;a~ 'tWV oa1J'tO'u, 'tWV b' 'EM~VWV 'tOiJ~ EV'tL!-lO'tU-
AELIUS ARISTIDES' ILLEGIBLE BODY WI
the spectacular performances of the early martyrs, Christians reclaimed

the marked and tortured body as a site for the resistance to Roman
power while at the same time investing the concept of subjection to
a higher power with new meaning," For most Greeks and Romans,
however, corporeal inscription was strongly associated from at least the
fifth century BCE with slaves, barbarians, and criminals, groups lacking
in the corporeal integrity necessary for self-mastery and the mastery of
others, i.e. the integrity of the citizen or elite body. If Asclepian healing
is to restore this integrity, it is incompatible with the mark.
Asclepius's need for a site of commemoration independent of the pri-
mary site of his power offers one explanation for why he so often issues
directives to create a record when dispensing cures.'? Ancient reports
and archaeological evidence indicate that sanctuaries of Asclepius over-
flowed with inscriptions and votive offerings." Anatomical ex-votos-
both molded forms and body parts executed in repoussee relief ('tu-
:itOL eYf-lUx:tOL, xu'tUf-lux'tOL)-have been discovered in healing sanctuaries
throughout the Greek world, particularly from the fourth century BCE
onwards." By doubling body parts in durable materials-recall the sub-
stitution of Aristides' ring for his finger-these votives commemorate
'to'lJ<; %ut 'tOiJ<; fm:EQ 'tfj<; %OLVfj<; EAE'lJ{}EQla<; aYOlvL~OJ.lEVO'lJ<; Lou %ut Q'tL!;U<; yEYEV1]OaL, ~d
you never tattooed any of your servants, but you have done as much as tattoo those
who were the most honored of the Greeks and who fought on behalf of their common
freedom .. .' Or. 111.651, cited inJones 2000, 9-IO).
39 See esp. Shaw 1996. On the changing meaning of the marked and tortured
body, see also Gustafson 1997, 98-I01; Gleason 1999, 305. In speaking of a 'new
meaning', I refer to Christianity's interaction with classical Greco-Roman culture.
Religious tattooing had long been common among other peoples (Gustafson, op. cit.,
9B---99;Jones 2000, 2--6).
40 See e.g. IG IV2.1 122 XXV=T423; IG IV2.1 126 (E%EAE'lJOEV llE %ut avuYQll1jJaL
'tuum)=T432; tc, I, xvii, nos. 17-18=T43g-440.
41 Van Straten 1981, 78-79; LiDonnici 1995, 41; van Straten 1992, 27Q--272. For an
overview of the anatomical votives found in healing sites across the Greek-speaking
world, see Rouse 1902, 21Q-216; Lang 1977, 14-19 (votives from Corinth); van Straten
1981, IOQ-I04, esp. the catalogue on pp. I05-151; Georgoulaki 1997. Miniature molded
body parts have been found as early as Minoan Age Crete. Although their function has
been disputed, they are widely seen as some kind of a dedication to gods with healing
capacities (van Straten 1981, 146; Georgoulaki, op. cit., 198-202). Anatomical votives
begin to appear again in quantity with the rise of healing cults, particularly the cult of
Asclepius, in the fourth century BCE, and they remain in use to this day in Greece.
A representative corpus of inscriptions can be found in the testimonia gathered in
Edelstein and Edelstein 1945 (e.g. T428, 432, 43g-441). On other dedications to healing
gods, see Rouse, op. cit., 208-226; LiDonnici, op. cit., 41-47.
42 'tuJto<; EyJ.lU%'tO<;, IG2 II 1534.64; 'tuJto<; %u'tUJ.lU%'to<;, IG2 II 1534.65, 67.
102 BROOKE HOLMES
survival; like Aristides' ring, may have also been thought to enable it."
Their suitability for memorializing lies precisely in their resistance to
change.
Fixity is also, of course, an attribute of writing," Indeed, a second-
century CE papyrus fragment in praise oflmouthes-Asclepius, the pref-
ace of which bears remarkable similarities to the Hieroi Logoi, heralds
writing as the most suitable medium for committing Asclepius's deeds
to memory, while placing votives on the side of (ephemeral) sacrifice;"
[nu]ou YUQ [a]vu-
thi!1u'W~ Ti [fr]uoLu~ b[OO]QEU
'tOY nUQuu't[L]KU !1[6]v[0]v
aK!1a~EL KU [LQ] 6v, EqJl'tUQ-
'tal bE 'tOY !1EMOV'tU, YQU-
qJi] M aMvu'W~ xaQ[L]~ KU-
'to. KaLQOV aVT]~aoK[o]uOU
'ti][v] !1VT]!1T]V. (P. O:ry XI, 1381, Col. ix Igl-lg8=T331)
For every gift of a votive offering or sacrifice lasts only for the immediate
moment, and presently perishes, while a written record is an undying
meed of gratitude, from time to time renewingits youth in memory.
Aristides' archive and the Hieroi Logoi similarly ensure that if each day
and each night has a story, these stories are not lost by disappearing
from the body'" Nor is the body compelled to remember them by
becoming arrested in time. Thus, because inscriptions and texts stand
43 For the dedication of anatomical ex-votos in the hope of a cure, see Aristid. Or.
XLII.7; see also van Straten 1981, 72-74, lOS; Georgoulaki 1997, 194. C£ Rouse 1902,
21<F-2II, asserting that the votives played no role, at least in the early centuries of the
cult, in 'mystical substitution', although he is happy to see such substitution as part of a
later mentality (citing Or. XLVIII.27). The success of such substitutions may have been
related to a concept of the body as a collection of parts that could be exchanged, as
Rynearson 2003 argues. On the votive as a 1Lvi'ilLu, see van Straten 1981,76-77.
44 Pi. Phdr. 275c, 277d,with Derrida 1980.
45 On the diffusion of the cult of Asclepius Imouthes in Egypt, see Edelstein and
Edelstein 1945II, 252.
46 On the Hieroi liJgoi as a votive, see Quet 1993, 236-238. Aristides accepts the
topos of writing and immortality: see e.g. Or. L.45-47 where he inscribes a dedication
with a couplet that comes to him in a dream. The inscription inspires him to persist
with his rhetorical career, 'as our name would live even among future men, since the
god had called my speeches "everlasting" (me; KUV 'tOTe; UO'tEQOV uvf}QOJltOLe; ovolLU ~lLliiv
EOOILEVOV, EltELI\~ yE uEvaoUe; 'tOile; Myoue; 0 {tEOe; E'tUXEV ltQOOELQT]KWe;). An epigram of
Callimachus playfully turns the votive tablet (ltLVU;) into a safeguard against Asclepius's
forgetfulness: 'to XQEOe; me; UltEXELe;, l\OKAT]ltLE, 'to ltQo YUVaLKOe; / dT]ILOIILKT]e; l\KEOlllV
O)(PEAEV Eu;aILEVOe;, / YLVWOKELV. ijv II' c'iQu M{tn [ltaAL] KUL ILLV UltaL'tfje;, / qJT]OL ltUQE;Eo{}aL
ILUQ'tUQLT]V 0 ltLVU;. ('Know, Asclepius, that thou hast received the debt which Aceson
still, the patient can be recreated as a tabula rasa without the memory of
Asclepius's deeds being erased.
The case of Pandarus, found in the third-century BeE Epidaurian
miracle tablets, suggests that the association between disease, corporeal
inscription, and commemoration may have been part of the imagina-
tive world of the Asclepius cult from an early point." Pandarus arrives
at Epidaurus bearing tattoos (O'tLY!1U'tU) on his forehead. In a dream
vision, the god wraps a band (or fillet) around the marks, instructing
him to remove it in the morning and dedicate it as an offering. Upon
removing the band, Pandarus finds that his face is clean of the marks;
he dedicates the band, which now bears the letters (YQ<l!1!1u'tu) that
once appeared on his forehead. The votive, then, quite literally assumes
the disease-letters as part of the patient's release, thereby becoming the
memory of the marks' erasure.t" The disease-inscription nexus is con-
firmed in the second part of the stOry.49 Pandarus gives money to one
Echedorus to dedicate to Asclepius, whose aid Echedorus is seeking
in the removal of his own tattoos. But Echedorus fails to deliver the
money, and goes on to lie about it in a dream; the quizzical Ascle-
pius responds by fastening the old headband of Pandarus around the
lying suppliant's marks." Echedorus's discovery the following morning
reverses his predecessor's: taking off the headband, he finds that both
sets of letters are inscribed on his forehead, while the band itself is
clean. The votive commemoration is erased, then, at the moment that
the god applies signs to the body's surface.
owed thee by his vow for his wife Demodice. But if thou dost forget and demand
payment again, the tablet says it will bear witness', Call. Epigr. 55=T522).
47 IG IV2.1 121 VI=T423'
48 The anatomical ex-votos themselves, however, only rarely represent diseased body
parts (Aleshire 1989, 41); I thank Christopher Jones for drawing my attention to this
point. Note that 30.4, 30.5 in van Straten's catalogue are drawn from the problem-
atic Meyer-Steineg collection. Some anatomical ex-votos are directly inscribed; others
lacking inscriptions may have been placed on inscribed pedestals (van Straten 1992,
24g-250).
49 LiDonnici 1995, 26 reads the two episodes as parts of a single story, hypothesizing
that the Pandarus element was a votive inscription to which a priest may have added
the Echedorus component.
50 For the punishment motif, see also e.g. IG IV2.1 121 Iv, V, VIII=T423, with the
comments of LiDonnici 1995, 26 n. 9 and 40 n. 3. Compare the similar pattern of
transgression and punishment in the form of disease in propitiatory inscriptions found
in second and third-century CE Phrygia and Lydia, analyzed in Chaniotis 1995. On
the whole, however, the cult's emphasis was primarily on cure, rather than on blame
and expiation.
104 BROOKE HOLMES
The tension between fixed memorials and corporeal renewal that I

have been describing would have always been available to cult devotees
for thematic elaboration." In Aristides' ceuvre it becomes a major
theme. Even cases where Aristides does actively engage the concept
of the divine mark end up confirming his larger commitment to the
body's capacity for renewal. Early in the first book of the Hieroi Logoi,
for example, Aristides dreams that a bull bruises him on the knee
(Or. XLVII.I3). His most trusted physician, Theodotus, approaches and
cleans (aVExattUQEV) the bruise with a lancet of some kind, and Aristides
has the idea in his dream to tell Theodotus 'that you yourself made it a
wound'." Upon waking, Aristides finds that his knee does indeed have
a small wound. Rather than causing trouble, however, it seems to be
beneficial for his upper body. Nevertheless, the cut disappears after the
katharsis is completed.
A longer-lived and more spectacular corporeal mark appears at the
end of the first book. Aristides reports that a tumor suddenly appeared
on his groin from no obvious source (an' aQxij~ oMEf.tL{i~ QlUVEQ{i~, Or.
XLVII.62), as is true of so many of his diseases. Rather than telling
Aristides to excise the tumor, however, the god commands him to
endure it-indeed, he is to nourish it ('tQEQlELV 'tOV oyxov, Or. XLVII.63).
And this Aristides does for four months, quite contrary to the advice
of his human doctors. The tumor brings with it an incredible burst
of creativity that leads Aristides to declaim from his sickbed. The
flourishing of his talents suggests that the presence of a localized disease
gives rise to a more general katharsis, as in the bruising episode.
In the end, however, what Aristides chooses to stress in the story is
the dramatic reversion of the marked body to unblemished surface at
the point when Asclepius makes clear to him that the time has come
to expel the tumor with 'some drug'. Naturally, the success of the drug
in deflating the tumor causes the doctors to marvel at the god's pronoia.
Yet they persist with their advice to Aristides, suggesting that he allow
them to cut away the loose skin left by the tumor. Again, Aristides
51 Kee 1982 argues for a historical shift within the cult of Asclepius between the
period of the Epidaurian inscriptions and the Hieroi Logoi. Yet it is the relationship to
the god that changes in his analysis: Asclepius becomes more central to people's lives,
rather than fulfilling a single role. The basic imaginary of the cult remains quite stable,
although the motifs gather new associations.
52 See also Or. IL.47, where Sarapis appears in a dream with a lancet and shaves
around the face, 'as if removing and purging defilement and changing it to its proper
state' (olov AVl1a't' (upaLQoov xat xa{}aLQOlv xat l1E1:a[3uAAOlv Et~ 'to 1tQoai'jxov).
perceives his physicians' strategy as divergent from that communicated

to him by the god, who has ordered him to smear egg on the skin,
and he ignores them. The result of this godsent remedy is the disap-
pearance of every last trace of the tumor, 'so that after a few days
had passed, no one was able to discover on which thigh the tumor
had been, but both were entirely unscathed (pure, clean)' (WO'tE OAL-
ywv ~I-tEQWV :n:UQEA:frO'Uowv oMel\; OLO\; r' ~v EVQELv EV O:n:O'tEQq> I-tTJQq>
'to qJ'ul-tu EXELVO EyEVE'tO, u"A"A' T]O'tTJV Ul-tqJO'tEQW xu'fruQw 'toL\; a:n:umv, Or.
XLVII.68).53
The disappearance of the tumor dramatically demonstrates Ascle-
pius's ability to return the body 'to its former state' (El\; 'to uQxuLov, Or.
XLVII.67) and to make everything the same as it once was (O'Uvi)YUYEV
:n:av'ta el\; 'tau'tov, Or. XLVII.68; cf Or. IL.47). Throughout Aristides'
writings, erasure turns out to be closely related to a concept of regen-
eration that seems to deny the passage of time so central to the archive
and narration more generally. Health is an absence of scars, forgetting,
a washing away. I close by briefly looking at Aristides' commitment
to endless regeneration in light of both the incompatibility between the
mark or sign and the body and the ways in which Aristides controls and
circumscribes the public representation of his embodied experience.
Lethe and katharsis

The concept of being remade in the wake of illness runs as an under-
current throughout the Hieroi Logoi. Aristides, we have seen, often casts
the causes of his suffering as foreign elements that have breached the
boundaries of the body. Although the elimination of a materia peccans
played a key role in medical concepts of disease from the fifth century
BeE onwards, the representation of disease as something foreign was
counterbalanced by the belief that disease was a process by which con-
stituent elements within the body grew dangerously powerful. 54 Indeed,
the idea that disease developed inside an individual body could be used
to buttress the 'care of the self' as an ethical imperative." Moreover,
53 See Pernot 2002, 375 for a reading of the tumor episode consistent with the one I
offer here.
54 The classic account of 'ontological' versus 'physiological' concepts of disease is
Temkin 1963. See also Niebyl 1969, 2-II for the overlap of these concepts in Greek
explanations of disease. For the medical idea of katharsis in the classical period, see von
Staden 2007.
55 See, for example, Galen's arguments against Erasistratus's concept of causality
106 BROOKE HOLMES
the ethics of self-care eschews the idea of perfect unity: bodies naturally
comprise opposed elements whose interaction must always be man-
aged. Aristides, as we have seen, resists attempts to locate his symptoms
within secular frameworks of interpretation. He thus implicitly rejects
the premise that his suffering is the outcome of practices over which
he might be held accountable." His strategy works in tandem with his
representation of disease as invasive and hidden and the corresponding
emphasis on cathartic expulsion and rebirth.
Indeed, in his evacuation of the inner body, Aristides was often
willing to go to extremes that expressly contradicted basic therapeu-
tic principles of secular medicine, such as considering the strength
of the patient when undertaking therapy'" When the noted physician
and sophist Satyrus-a teacher of Galen's-hears how many purges of
blood Aristides has had, he orders him to stop immediately, lest he over-
whelm and destroy his body (Or. IL.8; c£ Or. XLVII.73; Or. XLVIII.34-
35).58 Aristides responds that he is not master (%UQLO~) of his own blood
and that he will continue to obey the god's directives.59 Aristides' abil-
ity to survive the body's journey to the precipice of a void indicates his
privileged relationship to Asclepius. Indeed, it is because he can endure
the diseased body's destruction that he is granted holistic renewal, an
idea that bears some similarity to contemporary ideas of martyrdom
and resurrection in early Christianity, with the notable difference that
Aristides wants life after death in this life.60 The myth of Asclepius, after
in On Antecedent Causes XY.I87-196 (142,3-146,5 Hankinson) and Nutton 1983, 6-16 on

resistance to 'ontological' concepts of disease on ethical grounds in the Greco-Roman
period.
56 Asclepius does, as we have seen, command him to avoid certain foods or activities,
so that the central imperative of medicine, 'watch out'! (lpUAa!;ov), remains in effect,
as at Or. XLVII.7!. The difference is that no dietetics handbook or physician can
provide the information Aristides needs: the threats to his health are unpredictable
and changeable.
57 On the importance in imperial-age medicine of establishing the patient's strength
before letting blood, see Niebyl 1969, 68-76 (and pp. 26-38 on the origins of the
concept in fifth and fourth-century BCE medicine).
58 Both Aristides and Satyrus accept the effectiveness of venesection but they take
different views of it. In medicine, bloodletting helps eliminate excess, rather than
aiding in the expulsion of a foreign body (Niebyl 1969). Yet Aristides seems to think
of bloodletting precisely in terms of expelling something foreign (e.g. Or. XLVII.28).
59 C£ Or. XLVII.4.
60 Perkins (1992, 254, 262-266; 1995, 180-181, 18g-192) draws the comparison be-
tween the martyr and Aristides; see also Dodds 1965, 42. In both cases, similarities arise
from a shared cultural context rather than any direct claims of influence. C£ Shaw
1996, 300 ('the discourse in which Aristides is engaged .. .is distinctively his own, and is
AELIUS ARISTIDES' ILLEGIBLE BODY 10 7
all, made clear the dangers involved when philanthropic gods pursue
more radical forms of resurrection."
In An Address Regarding Asclepius, Aristides casts renewal precisely in
the metaphorical terms of primeval creation.
a.AM Kat ItEAT] 'tou oWlta'tO~ ahu'i>vtaL 'tLVE~, Kat c'ivbQE~ Myoo Kat Y'uvaLKE~,
:n:QOVOL<;,l 'tOU {teou yEvEo'frm mpLOL, 'tWV :n:aQu 'tfj~ qJl"oEOO~ bLmp{taQEvtOOV,
Kat Ka'taMyouOLv c'iMo~ c'iAAo n, OL ItEv a.:n:O 0't6Ita'to~ ou'tooot (jJQa.tOvtE~,
OL M: EV 'to~ a.va{t~ltaOLV E~T]YO"'ItEVOL' ~ItLV 'tOLVUV OUXt ItEQO~ 'tou oWlta'to~,
a.AA' a:n:av 'to ow Ita OUV{tEL~ re Kat OUIt:n:~~a~ au'to~ ebOOKE bOOQEa.V, Wo:n:EQ
IIQoltT]{tEU~ 'ta.QXa'La MYE'tm oUIt:n:Mom'tOY c'iv{tQoo:n:OV. (Or. XLII.7=T317)
But some, I mean both men and women, even attribute to the provi-
dence of the god the existence of the limbs of their body, when their
natural limbs had been destroyed; others list other things, some in oral
accounts, some in the declarations of their votive offerings. For us it is
not only a part of the body, but it is the whole body which he has formed
and put together and given as a gift, just as Prometheus of old is said to
have fashioned man.
The representation of Asclepius's work as the gifting of new body

parts, rather than the salvaging of old ones, lends credence to the idea
that the votive transforms permanent damage (the diseased body) into
lasting memory and, as a result, gives the patient a fresh start. Never
one to be outdone, Aristides declares that, in his case, his whole body
has been destroyed and remade. In On Concord, Aristides' experience
of renewal is extraordinary because it has happened so many times.
'I myself', Aristides declares, 'am one of those who under the god's
protection, have lived not twice but many varied lives, and who on this
account regard their disease as profitable' (eyw I-tEv oilv xat au'tol; eLl-tL
'tmv ou btl; [PE~L(J)XO't(J)V] u:n:o 'tq> t}Eq>, &JJ.. a :n:OAAOUI; 'tE xat :n:av'tOba:n:oul;
~LolJl; ~E~L(J)XO't(J)V xat 'tilv vooov xma roiito Elvm AlJOL'tEAfj VOl-tL~OV't(J)V,
Or. XXIII.I6=T402; c£ Or. XLVIII.59).
located in a realm of ideas and rhetoric separate from that of the Christian ideologues').
Shaw dates the dissemination of Christian interpretations of the endurance-pain (and
torture)-virtue nexus in the elite Roman world to the first century CE (op. cit. 291-
296). Thus while it is true that Aristides' stance incorporates motifs from the cult
of Asc1epius, we can also assume his exposure to contemporary concepts of, and
debates about, suffering and healing, given his elite education, his travel, and the
cosmopolitanism of the Antonine Age.
61 In most versions, Asc1epius is struck dead by Zeus's thunderbolt for raising the
dead (T66-8S; TrOS-IIS). Notably, it is Sarapis who appears to Aristides in a dream
about the afterlife (Or. IL.48).
108 BROOKE HOLMES
The logic of regeneration shows up in dramatic ways in the Hieroi

Logoi. In addition to continual purgation and innumerable enemas and
bloodlettings, Aristides boasts of being operated on more than any
other suppliant in the history of the Pergamene temple of Asclepius."
These literal acts of cutting and reassembling vividly express the process
that Aristides imagines takes place in less violent treatments. In the
third book, N eritus, one of his foster fathers, dreams that the god tells
him it is necessary to remove Aristides' bones and put in tendons, since
the existing ones have failed (Or. IL.IS). Seeing Neritus's alarm at the
prospect of such a surgical operation, the god gives a less shocking
command: no need, after all, to knock the bones out directly and cut
out the tendons at present; rather what Aristides requires is a change
(&AAOLWOL~) of the existing tendons, a great and strange 'correction'
(E:ltav6Q{}wOL~).63 To achieve this Aristides need only adopt the use of
unsalted olive oil.
What is particularly striking in the N eritus dream is the idea that
starting over involves, in the first formulation, not the replacement of
bones and tendons with new bones and tendons, but the replacement
of hard (i.e. OXATlQ6~) bones with pliant tendons, as though the bones
themselves were impediments to Aristides' reinvention (an idea that
recalls the etymologies of Asclepius's name that we saw above). Despite
the strong emphasis that Aristides appears to place on the foreign
origins of disease, then, his belief in regeneration in fact exaggerates
secular medicine's concept of a body complicit in the production of
suffering. That is to say: it is not simply the invasive element that
must be eliminated, but the damaged body itsel£ Purging the body's
strangeness thus lays the groundwork for what is both a homecoming
and a form of rebirth.
62 or re YUQ VEW)tOQOL EV 'tou'tlp OV'tE~ ~AL)t[U~ )tUL :n:UV'tE~ ol :n:EQL 'tOY i}EOV i}EQU:n:ElJ'tUL
)tUL 'tU!;EL~ EXOV'tE~ w~oA6yolJV UWL 1I~:n:o'tE ~T]lIEvu :n:w 'toov :n:uV'tWV OlJVELIlEVUL 'tocruii'tu
't~T]i}EV'tU, :n:A~V yE 'IcrxuQwvo~, dVUL II' EV 'tOi:~ :n:uQullo!;6'tu'tOv 'to y' E)tELVOlJ, aMU )tUL
oo~ U:n:EQf3uAAELV 'to )tui}' ~~a~ UVElJ 'toov UAAWV :n:uQuM!;wv... ('For the temple wardens,
having reached such an age in that place, and all of those who served the god and
held appointments in the temple agreed that they had never known anyone who had
been cut up so many times, except for Ischuron, whose case was the most unbelievable,
but that our case went beyond even this one, to say nothing of the other unbelievable
things', Or. XLVIII.47).
63 In the last two orations, we find similar instances where what must be changed is
the mind (Or. L.S2) or 'the dead part of the soul' ('to 'tEi}vT])tO~ 't'i'j~ 1jJlJxfj~, Or. LII.2). In
both cases, change brings divine communion.
aelius aristides’ illegible body 109
I have argued Aristides sees the lived body as resistant to both inter-
pretation and the act of creating memory. The body is rather written
into stories that are first staged in dreams then recorded in the archive.
By interpreting these stories, Aristides is able to act on the body in such
a way as to restore it to a primeval state of harmony in which the disso-
nance between an opaque interior harboring something foreign, on the
one hand, and the person who suffers and seeks the meaning of that
suffering, on the other, is eliminated, at least temporarily. The body is
repeatedly released from death because, although it is recovered from
obscurity through stories, it is never captured by any one story. At the
same time, the slipperiness of the living body creates the need for a
fixed text to memorialize the work of Asclepius.
Even the casual reader of the Hieroi Logoi, however, cannot help
but notice that that text does not always feel stable and fixed. It is
often jumpy, elliptical, and defiant of chronology.64 Its disorder stages
the breakdown in Aristides’ understanding of what has happened, the
moments when he is unsure how to match representation to reality;
its lacunae recall the breaks in the archive. The tenuous grasp that
Aristides has on his lived experiences in the Hieroi Logoi confirms the
body’s irrepressible strangeness that wells up in the gap between the
dream and waking life, between the oneiric performance and the text.
At other moments, however, what escapes narration is precisely the
glowing plenitude of well-being that rewards successful therapeutic ac-
tion. This plenitude cannot be captured by the negative figure of the
tabula rasa. For the feeling of being restored to wholeness that Aristides
describes after events such as the dedication of the surrogate-ring to
Telesphorus have a positive charge.65 Such feelings are associated most
strongly with ‘the divine baths’ that Aristides narrates, and indeed
64 Castelli 1999, 198–202.

65 See Or. XLVIII.28: τ8 δ" μετ τοτο *ξεστιν εOκKζειν @πως διεκε!με&α, κα0 -πο!αν
τιν Yρμον!αν πKλιν TμAς Tρμσατο - &ες (‘After this it is impossible to imagine our
condition, and into what kind of harmony the god again brought us’). As D. Goure-
vitch has observed, the word Xγ!εια is found only once, at Or. L.69 (1984, 49). What
Aristides gains following the successful implementation of dream therapies is described
as <>αστ,νη (Or. XLVIII.35; Or. IL.13; Or. LI.38, 90). ‘Physiquement’, Gourevitch writes,
‘ce bien-être obtenu grâce à la faveur divine, est un état bizarre, qui n’est pas partic-
ulièrement voluptueux, mais caractérisé par un sentiment de chaleur intérieure par-
faite, et d’éloignement par rapport au monde extérieur’ (op. cit., 48); see also Brown
1978, 43; Miller 1994, 203–204. A kind of relaxation or sense of presence may also
attend moments of inspired oratorical performance (e.g. Or. LI.39).
110 brooke holmes
with all his encounters with sacred water.66 Like other events that
exchange the damaged past for a unified and all-consuming present,
such as the healing of the tumor or tasting the water from Asclepius’s
sacred well, the baths are synonymous with lêthê: ‘So let us turn to
the divine baths, from which we digressed. Let the pains, the diseases,
the threats, be forgotten’ (νν δ4 @&εν ξ βημεν τρεπ,με&α πρ8ς τ
λουτρ τ &εα· Pδναι δ4 κα0 νσοι κα0 κ!νδυνοι πKντες ρρντων, Or.
XLVIII.71).67
In bathing, the body is restored to the conscious, first-person subject
as a singular entity suffused with warmth and oblivious of all that is
strange or painful. One famous passage in particular goes to some
lengths in its attempt to describe the phenomenology of starting over:
κα0 τ π8 τοτου τ!ς #ν νδε!ξασ&αι δυνη&ε!η; :παν γ ρ τ8 λοιπ8ν τ7ς
Tμ ρας κα0 τ7ς νυκτ8ς τ8 εOς ε%ν"ν διεσωσKμην τ"ν π0 τF. λουτρF. σχ -
σιν, κα0 οNτε τι ξηροτ ρου οNτε Xγροτ ρου το σ,ματος Moσ&μην, ο% τ7ς
& ρμης ν7κεν ο%δ ν, ο% προσεγ νετο, ο%δ’ α` τοιοτον T & ρμη _ν, οLον
ν τFω κα0 π’ ν&ρωπ!νης μηχαν7ς XπKρξειεν, λλK τις _ν λ α διηνεκς,
δναμιν φ ρουσα $σην δι παντ8ς το σ,ματς τε κα0 το χρνου.68 παρα-
πλησ!ως δ4 κα0 τ τ7ς γν,μης εBχεν. οNτε γ ρ οLον Tδον" περιφαν"ς _ν
οNτε κατ ν&ρωπ!νην ε%φροσνην *φησ&α #ν εBναι α%τ, λλ _ν τις ρ-
ρητος ε%&υμ!α, πKντα δετερα το παρντος καιρο τι&εμ νη, Sστε ο%δ
-ρ.ν τ λλα δκουν -ρAν· ο[τω πAς _ν πρ8ς τF. &εF.. (Or. XLVIII.
22–23)
And who would be able to relate what came after this? For the entire
rest of the day and the night until it was time for bed I preserved the
state following the bath, and I sensed no part of my body to be hotter
or colder, nor did any of the heat dissipate, nor was any added, but the
warmth was not of that kind that one could obtain by human means; it
was a kind of continuous heat, producing the same effect throughout the
entire body and during the whole time. And it was the same with my
mind. For it was no obvious pleasure, nor would you say that it was in
the manner of human joy, but it was an inexplicable wellbeing that made
everything second to the present moment, with the result that I seemed
to see other things without even really seeing them. In this way I was
entirely with the god.
66 The role of water in the cult of Asclepius (and in other healing cults in the Greco-
Roman world) has long been recognized. For an overview of the different uses of water
in the Hieroi Logoi, see Boudon 1994, 159–163.
67 See Or. XXXIX.2, where Aristides compares the water in the sacred well to
‘Homer’s lotus’.
68 Following χρνου, MSS. Keil prints χρωτς following Haury’s emendation.
At such moments, the body becomes familiar without the mediation

of the dreams, which are premised on self-estrangement in waking
life. The outside world falls away, leaving only the divine embrace
and a sense of inner unity.69 It is this experience of self-sameness—no
part of the body, for example, is warmer or colder than the others—
that is shattered not only by the disease, but also by dreaming and
writing, practices that, as we have seen, are premised on self-splitting.
In focusing Aristides’ attention wholly on the present, the baths stand
outside of memory.
To the extent that the baths stand outside of time, they are in a
strong sense extra- or anti-textual: private and eternally present. Nev-
ertheless, Aristides wants to narrate the baths and other such moments
within the Hieroi Logoi. The fact that he does so reminds us that ‘the
body’ of which I have been speaking is always an effect of the Hieroi
Logoi, however much body and text are uncoupled within that work.
When Aristides writes about his fully embodied communion with the
god, he treads a narrow path between opening that relationship up to
public interpretation and protecting the inimitable intimacy that leaves
no place to the watcher, and between timelessness and commemora-
tion.70 Following one outdoors bath, Aristides writes that ‘the comfort
and relaxation that followed this were perfectly easy for a god to com-
prehend, but for a person, not at all easy to imagine or demonstrate
in language’ (T δ4 π0 τοτFω κουφτης κα0 ναψυχ" &εF. μ4ν κα0 μKλα
<>αδ!α γν.ναι, ν&ρ,πFω δ4 D νF. λαβεν D νδε!ξασ&αι λγFω ο% πKνυ
<>Kδιον, Or. XLVIII.49). The Hieroi Logoi are a testimonial to experi-
ences that Aristides insists will always lie outside the public domain,
experiences that nevertheless could not be celebrated as indications
of divine favor without Aristides’ willingness to speak and write about
them.
Aristides’ difficulty in sharing the comfort gained through the bath
restages the singular nature of his original experience. Several compan-
69 See also Or. XLVIII.53; Or. LI.55.

70 On the tension between the public and the private, see Miller 1994, 184–204. This
tension can be sensed even more strongly against the backdrop of Albert Henrichs’
recent analysis (2003) of hieroi logoi, which were defined, Henrichs argues, by their com-
mitment to the esoteric while also gaining fame, e.g. in the travelogues of Herodotus
or Pausanius, as closed books. Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi, named through—what else?—a
dream (Or. XLVIII.9), are cited by Henrichs as an exception to the rule (230 n. 71;
240 n. 115), although on closer inspection they appear to be consistent with Henrichs’
account of hieroi logoi.
112 brooke holmes
ions, for example, once tried to imitate his fulfillment of the divine pre-
scription only to find that their bodies could not tolerate the extreme
conditions that it required (Or. XLVIII.76).71 As on other occasions
where Aristides insists that only he is capable of understanding what
the god says and fulfilling his commands, that capacity is confirmed
through the failure of others.
On the other hand, Aristides’ troubles as a narrator cue the impos-
sibility of setting into time an experience that is defined by its resis-
tance to narrative arcs that posit beginnings and endings.72 Of course,
these experiences are not, in fact, unspeakable, despite Aristides’ use of
this literary topos. Indeed, Aristides addresses the crowd following his
bath at Or. XLVIII.82 with a speech inspired by Asclepius. Still, expe-
riences of inner unity lie outside the logic of interpretation that governs
the experience of the body in its opacity, where opacity ensures there
is always something hidden to be (potentially) known and explained
via a boundless divine text. Moments of communion with the divine
participate, rather, in an ongoing cycle by which Aristides has his sto-
ries purged and washed from him as a condition of the renewal of
life.
Even Aristides, however, cannot remain with the god forever. How-
ever much time seems to stand still within his states of joy, pleasure
ends, pain encroaches, and the body is again taken up as an object of
interpretation and narration: story follows upon story. Thus, the body is
Odyssean not only in its toils and its subterfuge, but in its refusal to stay
at home in Penelope’s embrace: no sooner has it become familiar than
it is attracted into foreign territory once again, like Tennyson’s Ulysses,
for whom ‘the deep / moans round with many voices’, beckoning him
back to the open sea with its waves, its strangeness. Unlike Odysseus,
71 Although barefoot runs and wintry baths were part of the usual repertoire of
Asclepian cures, as Marcus Aurelius indicates (Ad se ipsum V.8=T407) and Aristides
himself acknowledges (Or. XLVIII.55).
72 Aristides elsewhere uses the experience of drinking the sacred water to capture a
sense of speech that would happen ‘all at once’: τ!ς ο`ν δ" γ νοιτ’ #ν ρχ, D Sσπερ
Tν!κ’ #ν π’ α%το π!νωμεν, προσ& ντες τος χε!λεσι τ"ν κλικα ο%κ τι φ!σταμεν, λλ’
&ρον εOσεχεKμε&α, ο[τως κα0 - λγος &ρα πKν&’ 5ξει λεγμενα; (‘What, then, should
be the beginning (of our speech), or, just as when we drink from the well, raising the
cup to the lips we never stop again, but pour in the liquid all at once, so too should
our speech everything all at once’? Or. XXXIX.4=T804). That the sentiment is a topos
does not keep it from participating in a set of motifs central to Aristides’ œuvre. Water,
he goes on to say in the same speech, is untouched by time (χρνος γον α%το ο%χ
:πτεται, ibid. 9).
however, this epic hero travels without a scar: the past belongs wholly
to the god and the archive. By displacing writing from the lived self,
Aristides manages to keep his distance from his stories and, hence, to
survive them.73
73 I am very grateful to Heinrich von Staden, whose critical eye and intellectual gen-
erosity have seen this project through from beginning to end. I would also like to thank
Paul Demont, who supervised my mémoire L’écriture dans les Discours sacrés d’Aelius Aris-
tide, as well as to the members of my D.E.A. jury, Alain Billaut and Danielle Gourevitch;
Hakima Ben-Azzouz and Marie-Pierre Harder provided invaluable editorial assistance
in Paris. Thank you to William Harris for inviting me to take part in the conference at
the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia and for continuing to involve
me in the world of Aristides, to Brent Shaw, and to Glen Bowersock, whose comments
on the written version of this article greatly improved it. I acknowledge two Joseph
E. Croft ’73 Summer Travel Fellowships from Princeton University and a Mellon Fel-
lowship for Assistant Professors, which allowed me to complete this work under ideal
conditions at the Institute for Advanced Study.
chapter six
PROPER PLEASURES:
BATHING AND ORATORY IN AELIUS ARISTIDES’
HIEROS LOGOS I AND ORATION 33*
Janet Downie
Aelius Aristides begins the first of his Hieroi Logoi with what purports
to be a diary of illness and therapy. Aristides suffers from digestive
problems, and he sets out to offer a serial account of his condition:
‘But now’, he proclaims, ‘I want to reveal to you how it was with my
abdomen. And I will give an account of everything day by day’.1 From
the outset, descriptions of his night visions dominate the account, and
as a consequence scholars have read Aristides’ so-called Diary (HL I.7–
60)—and sometimes the Hieroi Logoi as a whole—in the Asclepiadic tra-
dition of prescriptive dreams and votive offerings.2 He writes, however,
not from the sanctuary of Asclepius at Pergamum—his most famous
haunt—but from his ancestral estates in Mysia, in early 166 CE, some
two decades after the original illness that led him to his divine protec-
tor.3 And while the text is remarkable for the way it vividly reproduces
* I would like to thank William Harris for the opportunity to present this paper at
the Symposium and for his assistance in the revision and editorial process. I am grateful
also to Brooke Holmes and Ewen Bowie for their help, and to Christopher Faraone,
Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch and Jaś Elsner for feedback on earlier versions. The
text is substantially that of the paper as presented.
1 νν δ4 )ς *σχεν τ8 το Zτρου δηλ.σαι πρ8ς XμAς βολομαιk λογιομαι δ4 5καστα
πρ8ς Tμ ραν (HL I.4). The Diary closes at HL I.60: τοσατα μ4ν τ περ0 το Zτρου (‘So
much, then, for the situation concerning my abdomen’).
2 E.g. Edelstein and Edelstein 1945; Festugière 1954; Dodds 1965; Perkins 1995.
3 Behr 1968, 97–98, dates the Diary 4 January – 15 February CE 166, based on
references in Aristides’ dreams to events of the Parthian War (HL I.36) and to the
presence of the emperor in the East (HL I.33; for imperial activities and movements
see Birley 1966). Cf. Boulanger 1923, 483. The date of the composition of HL I is a
separate question. Behr 1994, 1155–1163, argues that the Hieroi Logoi were written in 171.
A persuasive case for the later date of 175 is made by Weiss 1998, 38 and nn. 55 and
56; cf. Bowersock 1969, 79–80. Conjectures as to the date of composition are based
upon readings of two key passages—I.59 and II.9—but it is possible too that HL I and
116 janet downie
the uncertainties of dream language, the first Logos is, I believe, a

deliberately public account with a rhetorical aim.4 Aristides is as much
concerned with developing a professional self-portrait as with offering
an account of divine medical care.
In this paper I examine the rhetoric of Aristides’ self-presentation in
a narrative episode from the first Logos. Aristides’ dream account at HL
I.19–21 includes a declaration of his oratorical vocation that scholars
have taken as key to understanding the passage. But previous readings
have not offered an adequate account of what Aristides achieves by
reporting this assertion in the context of a dream concerned with the
sensual pleasures of bathing. I suggest we can appreciate the rhetorical
point of this juxtaposition by considering its place within the broader
narrative of bathing in HL I, and by reading the episode alongside
moments of very similar polemic in Aristides’ Or. 33, ‘To Those who
Criticize him because he does not Declaim’. In both Or. 33 and HL I
Aristides draws on the precedent of Socratic self-portraiture as a way of
presenting professional claims. At the same time, a comparison of the
two texts also reveals what is distinctive about the Hieroi Logoi and its
narrative of physical experience.
Midway through the Diary of the first Logos, Aristides describes a
dream in which he sees himself in conversation with an athlete, a
youth in training at one of Smyrna’s gymnasia.5 The subject of their
conversation is bathing—a pursuit which Aristides’ interlocutor takes to
be an uncomplicated, self-evident pleasure. Adopting a Socratic pose,
Aristides questions the youth’s assumptions (HL I.19–20):
HL II were written at different times. Dorandi 2005 suggests that HL I is the work not
of Aristides at all, but of a later interpolator. However, his argument—based on the
heterogeneity of this portion of the text and on its narrative confusion—is difficult to
accept. For reasons I explain more fully in my dissertation on Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi, I
take HL I to be genuine.
4 On Aristides’ realistic portrayal of the syntax of dream language see Gigli 1977,
219–220; Del Corno 1978, 1610, 1616–1618; Castelli 1999. Nicosia 1988, 181–182, sug-
gests that the Diary of the first Logos has undergone little ‘secondary elaboration’ by
comparison with dream narratives of the other Logoi. Cf. Dorandi 2005. Contrast Quet
1993, 220, who maintains that the Diary of 166 was ‘choisi et peut-être conçu pour être
publié’ by Aristides himself. On Aristides self-consciousness about the compositional
status of his text, and on his references to the ‘apograph’ see Pearcy 1988.
5 The setting of this dream in Smyrna is secured by a reference to the ‘Ephesian
Gates’ at HL I.20. Cf. Cadoux 1938, 181. For gymnasia in Smyrna see Aristides
Or. 17.11; 18.6. On baths as an outstanding feature of the Smyrnaean landscape, see
Aristides Or. 17.11, 47.18–21, 29.30, 23.20. Cf. Yegül 1992, 306.
proper pleasures: bathing and oratory 117
α`&ις δ4 δκουν πρ8ς α%τF. τF. ΑσκληπιF. νεαν!σκον τιν τ.ν γυμναστι-
κ.ν *τι γ νειον περ0 βαλανε!ων διαλ γεσ&αι, τ μεγKλα δ" παινοντα
κα0 τοιατας τιν ς τ ς πολασεις το β!ου τι& μενον. δε!ξας ο`ν α%τF.
τ"ν &Kλατταν oρμην εO κα0 ντα&α μεινον λοεσ&αι, D ν μικρF.. ‘ν
μικρF.’, *φη. μετ δ4 τοτο λ!μνην τιν *δειξα κα0 oρμην εO κα0 ν λ!μνMη
τοσατMη κρεττον, D ν μικρF.. συνεχ,ρει κντα&α @τι αJρετ,τερον τ8 ν
μικρF.. ‘ο%κ ρα, *φην, πανταχο τ γε μεζον αJρετ,τερον, λλ’ *στιν τις
κα0 μικρο χKρις’. κα0 :μα νενησα πρ8ς μαυτ8ν )ς κα0 πιδεικνυμ νFω
που καλ8ν εOπεν @τι τ.ν μ4ν λλων ν&ρ,πων αJ Tδονα0 κινδυνεουσιν
X.ν τινων εBναι Tδονα!, T δ4 μ" κα&αρ.ς ρα ν&ρ,που ε$η, @στις σνει-
μ! τε κα0 χα!ρω λγοις.
And again, I dreamed that by the statue of Asclepius himself a young
man—one of the athletes, still unbearded—was lecturing about bathing
establishments. He was praising large ones and considered such things
the pleasures of life. So indicating to him the sea, I asked if it was better
to bathe even in there, or in a small place. ‘In a small place’, he said.
And after this I pointed to a harbor and asked whether it was better
in a harbor of that size, or in a small place. He agreed that in that
case too it was preferable [to bathe] in a small place. ‘Then it’s not’,
I said, ‘a general rule that the greater is preferable, but there is also
some charm in the small’. And at the same time I thought to myself that
also if one were declaiming somewhere it would be well to say that the
pleasures of other men risk being the pleasures of swine, but my pleasure
is purely that of a man, since I keep company with—and rejoice in—
words (logoi).
The dream contains a miniature elenchos on the subject of the size of
bathing sites, by which Aristides exposes the absurdity of the young
man’s assumption that life’s physical pleasures should be enjoyed on a
large scale. Then, at the conclusion of this exchange, still inside the
dream,6 Aristides gives an oratorical cap to the conversation in his
own mind: ‘What are the pleasures of the bath house’, he reflects,
‘compared to the pure intellectual joys of one who dedicates himself
to rhetoric?’ I will come back—at the end of this paper—to what
ensues. For in fact, while he strongly censures bathing as ‘the pleasures
of swine’, Aristides ends up making the surprising decision to indulge
in the very activity he has repudiated (I.20–21). But to begin we should
examine the associative logic of the dream itself. How does Aristides’
total rejection of bathing relate to the Socratic-style exchange that
precedes it?
6 Implied by the phrase κα0 :μα νενησα.

118 janet downie
Scholars have noticed Aristides’ highly self-conscious expression,

here, of his intellectual allegiances.7 However, the two studies that take
some time to interpret the passage have concluded that the episode
at HL I.19–21 is ultimately symbolic—either of literary aesthetics or
of suppressed sexual desire; and neither offers an adequate account
of Aristides’ deliberate conjunction of bathing and oratory. Charles
Weiss reads the passage as an allegory of literary style, and dismiss-
ing the ‘long fast leap’ Aristides makes between the dream’s two parts,
he focuses his attention on the logical conclusion of the elenchos—that
there is a certain charm in the small.8 Weiss relates this to a liter-
ary aesthetic of smallness in Callimachaean terms, and suggests that
it alludes to the plain style of the Hieroi Logoi themselves.9 Besides the
fact that it is difficult to take the sprawling narrative of the HL as
a study in literary miniaturization,10 there remains the issue that in
his rhetorical comment on the dream elenchos, Aristides does not draw
distinctions between different kinds of speaking or writing; rather, he
contrasts the so-called ‘pleasures of swine’ with oratorical culture in
its widest sense: logoi. Weiss’s reading does not address why Aristides
represents the very broad categories of bathing and rhetoric as moral
opposites. Michenaud and Dierkens, on the other hand, make Aris-
tides’ opposition between bathing and oratory crucial. They read the
dream encounter with the young athlete as representing a homosex-
ual solicitation through which erotic energy is sublimated in intellectual
pursuits.11 However, their overtly psychoanalytic approach misses the
ironic humor at work here and precludes any recognition of Aristides’
deliberate construction of an ethical dichotomy between bathing and
declamation.
7 Weiss 1998, Michenaud and Dierkens 1972. Keil 1898, ad loc. cross-references this
passage with Or. 33.29–31; cf. Behr 1981, ad loc.

8 Weiss 1998, 50.
9 Weiss 1998, 49–52 takes the dream as ‘a symbol for the [stylistic] program’ of the
Hieroi Logoi. He suggests that the Hieroi Logoi were composed as an essay in the ‘plain
style’ as part of a bid for a position on the imperial staff (perhaps as tutor to the young
Commodus) when Marcus Aurelius visited Smyrna in 176 during a political-diplomatic
tour after Avidius Cassius’ uprising in the East.
10 When Aristides uses water metaphors to talk about oratory and writing, immen-
sity and incommensurability—not an aesthetic of smallness—are the pervasive themes

(e.g. HL I.1). On the rarity of references to Hellenistic authors in Aristides’ writings and
those of his contemporaries—and the few exceptions—see Bowie 1989, 211–212.
11 Michenaud and Dierkens 1972, 88, take this dream as corroborating their hypoth-
esis that Aristides’ oratorical activities are compensation for fear of real social engage-
ment.
To understand Aristides’ deliberate combination of bathing and ora-

tory in this passage, I suggest we should consider two contexts for the
dream: first, the therapeutic motif of alousia (‘abstention from baths’)
that structures the dream narrative of HL I; second, the rhetoric of
Or. 33, where Aristides characterizes bathing as a luxurious activity in
order to highlight the ethical value of oratory. Dating to approximately
the same time as HL I, Oration 33 presents the physical concerns of epi-
demic illness and of luxurious living as a testing ground for intellectual
commitments. The thematic parallels help to show what is at stake in
HL I, where Aristides makes the care and cultivation of his body part
of a strategy for self-presentation.
Alousia
From its first entry, the Diary of Aristides’ digestive complaints is

framed by the god’s prescription for restoring balance in his body: alou-
sia, ‘abstention from baths’.12 This therapy makes sound medical sense
in the ancient context.13 For, since abdominal disorder was understood
to result from an excess of moist humors, a ‘drying’ regimen was con-
sidered the appropriate corrective in some cases. But Aristides’ Diary
does not, on the whole, record simple abstention from bathing. Instead
he presents a long series of dreams that require interpretation and
seem, in a number of cases, to suggest that he ought to bathe. The
first of these dreams immediately follows Asclepius’ command of alousia
(HL I.7):
12 ΔωδεκKτMη δ4 το μην8ς λουσ!αν προστKττει - &ε8ς (I.6): ‘And on the twelfth of
the month the god prescribes abstention from baths’. Aristides uses the word alousia
sixteen times in the Hieroi Logoi, all citations but one occurring in the first Logos. The
only ancient author whose record approaches this is Galen (fifteen occurrences over
his entire corpus). There are, of course, other ways to describe the action of refraining
from bathing in Greek. In the Hippocratic context, for example, Villard 1994, 43 n. 9,
finds the following verbal locutions: λουτρ.ν ε$ργεσ&αι/απ χεσ&αι, λουτεν, μ" λοειν.
Alousia, then, is concise shorthand for the prescription.
13 Villard 1994, 52. Villard’s lexical analysis of Hippocratic texts shows that louesthai
can indicate many different external therapeutic activities involving water, only some of
which involved immersion bathing. In the Hippocratic treatise The Art 5, bathing and
abstention from bathing (alousia) appear in a list of polar opposites that guide medical
treatment—including eating much and fasting, exercise and rest, sleep and wakefulness
and so on. In the Hippocratic Corpus, see especially: Regimen 2.57, Affections 53, Regimen
in Acute Diseases 18. Bathing was believed by the Hippocratic writer of Places in Man 43
120 janet downie
After this there came a dream that contained some notion of bathing—
not, however, without some doubt (though I did seem to be actually
defiled [molunthenai] in some way), but it seemed nevertheless a good idea
to bathe, especially because if in fact I had suffered this [defilement],
water was necessary. Straightaway, then, I spent some rather unpleasant
time in the bathhouse. And when I got out, all [my body] seemed
full and my breathing was like an asthmatic’s so that, to begin with, I
immediately stopped taking nourishment. After this there was corruption
(diaphthora) from night onwards, and it went on to such an extent that it
scarcely let up a little before noon.
Aristides describes himself as hesitating between the ‘notion’ (ennoia)

that a dream of defilement signals the need for a bath, and a ‘doubt’
(huponoia)—since bathing would presumably be contraindicated by his
digestive problems and by Asclepius’ previous instructions.14 The term
molunthenai is rare in the medical context; here, in the context of dream
interpretation and in conjunction with diaphthora it acquires, rather, a
moral resonance.15 Although Aristides is not explicit about the details
of his vision, we might imagine an excrement dream of the sort that
Artemidorus and Galen both describe. Galen, attending primarily to
how dreams index the state of the body, says that when a dreamer sees
himself standing in excrement or mud it means either that his humors
are in a bad state or that his bowels are full.16 According to Artemi-
and by Galen to help people obtain nourishment from food; thus, its opposite, alousia,
was a logical concomitant of fasting.
14 This passage gives an example of the frequently complex syntax of the HL, by
which Aristides attempts to render dream logic in language: narrative and interpreta-
tion quickly merge.
15 The medical uses of μολνω are limited: in his treatise on the composition of
medicaments, Galen uses the verb to talk about colors that stain; in the Hippocratic
corpus, the related μωλνω describes swellings that suppurate. Basically, μολνω refers
to physical defilement, but this sense is easily extended metaphorically or symbolically
to the moral sphere. Plato speaks of the person who is ‘defiled’ like a wild pig by
his ignorance (Rep. 535e); Artemidorus investigates the significance for the dreamer’s
social life of various dreams of ‘defilement’ (ii.26). Cf. LSJ (s.v.) for attestations of
both the physical and extended (or metaphorical) senses. While diaphthora can refer
to ‘corruption’ of a physical sort (see LSJ I.5, Aretaeus, CA ‘stomachic disorder’), in
Aristides’ corpus its moral overtones (cf. LSJ I.3 ‘moral corruption’) are marked: see Or.
34.27 and Or. 29.29. Cf. Or. 33.30: φ&ορ (discussed below, and by Avotins 1982). In his
treatise On Diagnosis from Dreams (VI.832–835K) Galen cautions that a doctor can err
by interpreting in medical terms a vision whose significance pertains to a non-medical
aspect of the patient’s life.
16 VI.835K: ‘For, those who dream that they spend time in dung or mud—either
they have bad and malodorous and putrid humors inside, or an abundance of retained
excrement in their digestive system’.
dorus, however, whose interest in the interpretation of dreams covers

the whole range of symbolic meanings, a dream involving excrement
(animal or human) may portend sickness, particularly if the excrement
stains,17 but as a symbol of impurity it may also pertain to a variety of
issues relating to the dreamer’s social life.18 Although the Diary is ori-
ented around physical concerns, Aristides responds to this dream as if
it marks impurity: he takes a bath. Seizing upon water as a conceptual
link between the social and medical realms19 he finds little success, as
the bath leads to physical discomfort, rather than to successful regula-
tion of the moist humors.
Aristides’ account of his dream of defilement points towards a persis-
tent area of ambiguity in the first Logos. As we have seen, bathing and
abstention from baths might be explained in either medical or social
terms. Just so, in spite of the explicitly medical framework of HL I,
many of Aristides’ dream accounts seem concerned less with physi-
cal therapeutics than with social and professional situations.20 Several
dream episodes accommodate both issues in the same narrative space.21
So, while Aristides’ preoccupation with bathing seems at first to belong
to his therapeutic concern with alousia, it is also part of Aristides’ social
world: a number of narrative vignettes in the Diary feature conven-
tional bathing in purpose-built bathhouses. I suggest that he highlights
this feature of contemporary health and recreation deliberately, in order
to make an ethical point about oratory.
Medical and dietetic writings of the Imperial period partly reflect the
great popularity of public and private bathing facilities.22 Physicians like
Galen offer nuanced and complex advice on precisely how to calibrate
17 Artemidorus ii.26: ‘…[excrement] indicates despondency and harm, and—when

it stains—illness’.
18 Artemidorus ii.26 surveys a range of possibilities.
19 On Aristides’ eclectic approach to dream interpretation see Behr 1968, 171–
195, and Nicosia 1988. Such lack of systematization and consistency in the actual
deployment of dream theory was probably common (Harris 2003).
20 Oratory is part of what Aristides refers to as the ‘secondary business’ (πKρεργον)
of his dreams (I.16). For a sense of the ethical value with which Aristides invests oratory,
particularly in the ‘Platonic Orations’, see Milazzo 2002; cf. Sohlberg 1972.
21 Other dreams that combine oratory with bathing: I.22, I.34, I.35. Dreams in
which bathing is linked with a social scenario: I.18, I.27, I.50.

22 Fagan 1999 suggests that the increased interest in bathing as therapy in the
Roman period was spurred by Asclepiades of Bithynia, who relied heavily on baths
in medical treatment. On the rudimentary state of bathing facilities in earlier periods,
as implied by the discussion of bathing in the Hippocratic Regimen in Acute Diseases 65–68
see Villard 1994, 43.
122 janet downie
bathing procedures to each health situation;23 Celsus also recognizes the

wide dietetic and therapeutic possibilities of different kinds of bathing.24
It seems that bathing was such an important part of social life that
there were perhaps few health conditions for which it was decisively
proscribed. While Asclepius’ prescription to Aristides of alousia fits the
logic of humoral medicine, then, it remains somewhat surprising from
a social perspective. Aristides’ abstention from bathing would appear
to be partly a principled, ascetic position—a possibility that his own
writings, and those of his contemporaries, support. Artemidorus, for
example, describing a progression from the primitive practices of the
hardy ancients to more decadent Roman habits, identifies contempo-
rary bathing with luxury:25
… But now [too] some people will not eat before they have washed,
and others even bathe after they have eaten. And then, they take a bath
when they are about to have dinner. And now the balaneion is nothing
other than the road to luxurious living.
A similar apprehension about the link between bathing and luxury
seems to underlie Plutarch’s cautious advice on lifestyle and regimen
in his ‘On Keeping Well’: the bath is better avoided if you are in good
health, he says. And while there may be a place for warm bathing in
recovering from an illness, he emphasizes this is not to be overdone
(131B–D; cf. 127E–F). The association of bathing with luxury made it a
useful tool for rhetorical denunciations of contemporary mores, as we see
in Philostratus’ Life of the first century sage Apollonius of Tyana. The
model Apollonius makes philosophy his way of life, and his rejection of
warm baths is the hallmark of an abstemious regimen of self-care: he
disparages public bathhouses as ‘men’s senility’ (1.16.4).26 Similar prin-
ciples are attributed, in this text, to the Cynic lecturer Demetrius, who
waged a campaign against the excesses of the Emperor Nero partly
by declaiming against bathing on the premises of the new imperial
23 See Galen’s De sanitate tuenda III, with Boudon 1994.

24 Fagan 2006, 201–202.
25 i.64: ‘Our distant ancestors did not consider [dreams about] bathing a bad
[omen]. For they were not familiar with bathing establishments (balaneia), since they
bathed in [tubs] known as asaminthoi. But later generations, by the time balaneia were in
existence, considered it a bad [omen in a dream] both to bathe and to see a bathing
establishment, even if one did not bathe. And they thought that the balaneion indicated
disturbance (tarache)—on account of the tumult that arises there—and harm (blabe)—on
account of the sweat exuded—and even mental anguish and fear because the skin and
the appearance of the body are altered in the balaneion’.
26 Cf. Philostratus, VA 7.31, and Marcus Aurelius 8.24.
gymnasium in Rome: bathers, he said, are effeminate men who defile

themselves with extravagance.27 In brief, Aristides’ preoccupation with
bathing in the first Logos belongs within a whole contemporary culture
of the bathhouse. Conventional bathing in elaborate public and private
facilities was a social institution of the imperial era that could be made
to bear ethical weight. Aristides himself uses bathing as part of an eth-
ical polemic in his Oration 33, ‘To Those who Criticize him because he
does not Declaim’, and we shall see that this polemical text sheds light
on the dream conversation at HL I.19–20, in which Aristides contrasts
the athlete’s interest in bathing with his own intellectual pursuits.
Professional Apologetics in Oration 33
On the basis of references to the Antonine plague, Or. 33 has been

dated to around 166, which would make it roughly contemporary with
the period covered by the Diary of HL I.28 In this Oration Aristides
defends himself against accusations that he has been less than fully
engaged in his role as a public speaker.29 Defining and defending his
practice of rhetoric, Aristides argues, to the contrary, that his deep
commitment to oratory as a socially constructive force is clear from the
fact that he continued to declaim in Smyrna, even when the plague was
at its height in 165.30 Inscribing his speech consciously in a Greek tradi-
27 Philostratus, VA 4.42.
28 The core of Or. 33 is an apologia, perhaps intended for an audience of Aristides’
students in Smyrna (Avotins 1982). The addition of a prologue makes it an epistolary
propemptikon, ostensibly for a friend of Aristides’ who is about to set out on a journey
(on the possible recipient see Behr 1968, 102). The dating of Or. 33 is not secure (Behr
1968, 102 n. 22c), but references to the Antonine plague at 33.6 and arguably at Or.
33.30–31 (Avotins 1982) indicate a date after 165. Behr 1968, 102 suggests it was written
before Aristides’ return to Smyrna in 167; contrast Boulanger 1923, 162, who dates Or.
33 anywhere between 165 and 178.
29 Some scholars have taken this piece to be a response to renewed attacks on
Aristides’ claims to liturgical immunity (Mensching 1965; for the story of Aristides’
several attempts to contest public duties assigned to him, see Bowersock 1969, 36–
41). It is not clear that Aristides had such a specific situation in mind (see Behr 1994,
1168 n. 124 for a critique of Mensching’s hypothesis). Even if, as Behr argues, Aristides’
issues of immunity were over by 153, Aristides is nevertheless frequently concerned with
defining and defending oratory as a profession, and especially his own practice of it.
30 Or. 33.6: ‘In fact, I have spoken to you about these things before, too, when the
plague was at its height and the god ordered me to come forward. And what I am
about to say is informed by the same intention—that you should know I did not think it
124 janet downie
tion that has Socrates as its source,31 Aristides calls his oration both an
‘apologia’ and ‘a well-intentioned censure’,32 and he borrows from the
opening paragraphs of Plato’s Apology the first word of the defense por-
tion of Or. 33: skiamachein, ‘shadowboxing’.33 Reprising Socrates’ asser-
tion that his appearance before the jury is not primarily a consequence
of the immediate charges against him, but rather reflects a fundamen-
tal misunderstanding of his way of life, Aristides constructs a fictional
court scenario, in which he is compelled to defend his professional con-
duct against unspecified accusers.34 His defense is an ethical one: like
Socrates he bases his self-portrait on claims that he has always been
concerned primarily to foster the highest human faculties of intellect
and spirit.
In the apologetic context of Or. 33, then, when Aristides invokes the
contrast between the pleasures of the bathhouse and the intellectual
discipline of oratory, he makes a point about his own ethical persona.
Conventional bathing is introduced as a sign of the degenerate luxury
that is the opposite of all Aristides claims to stand for. Refuting the
charge of failing to make public appearances, Aristides turns the tables
on his accusers: they are the ones who are at fault for preferring baths
to more dignified pursuits (Or. 33.25):
Instead of going to listen to declamations, most of you spend your time
(diatribete) around the bathing pools, and then you are amazed if you
miss some of the speakers. But, it seems to me, you don’t want to tell
yourselves the truth: that it’s not possible for people who love jewelry
or who are attached to bathing, or who honor what they should not, to
understand the serious pursuits (diatribas) of oratory.
Underscoring the contrast by his word choice, Aristides insists that

wasting time (diatribete) at the baths is the opposite of responsible intel-
right to sit idle in those most precarious times. It’s other people who make declamation
(logoi) a matter of small concern’.
31 Aristides’ deep familiarity with Plato’s Apology of Socrates is clear especially in his
Platonic Orations (Or. 2 and 3; Milazzo 2002). Gigante 1990 briefly discusses Socrates
as a model for Aristides in the Hieroi Logoi. Early on, Isocrates appropriated the Socratic
apologia tradition for rhetoric (Ober 2004). On Aristides’ use of Isocrates see Hubbell
1913.
32 Or. 33. 34: ‘What I have said, then, is an apologia, if you will—or a well-intentioned
censure (πιτ!μησις π’ ε%νο!ας)’.

33 Or. 33.3: ‘Shadow-boxing, I realize, is what is called for, somehow. For those to
whom I should address what I have to say are not present’. Cf. Plato Ap. 18d.
34 He draws attention to the courtroom fiction: ‘I speak, then, as if these men were
present and I were addressing them’ (Or. 33.5).

lectual endeavors (diatribas). An immoderate dependence on bathing is

as pathological, he suggests, as a passionate desire for jewelry. By way
of contrast, Aristides sketches the responsible attitude toward bathing
in a passage that makes reference to Homer. Although he was born
the son of the Mysian river Meles—so the legend goes—Homer did
not spend his life swimming idly about, the sophists say, but renounced
such activities for greater pursuits (Or. 33.29):
… Homer himself was not satisfied to dwell on his father’s banks and to
swim along with the fishes who were his brothers (as their story goes),
but rather lived a life so rough (auchmeron) that clearly he was generally
satisfied with access to basic necessities. And baths that were improvised
and, in fact, for the purpose of helping ailing bodies, as Plato says—those
he accepted, but he permitted no further luxury.
Homer appears here as an ascetic model for the true orator:35 his
‘rough’ or ‘squalid’ way of life is, literally, ‘dry’ (auchmeron)—so Aris-
tides once again links the parching effects of a regime of alousia with
the ethical virtue of rejecting luxury. The legendary poet is said by his
modern admirers to have accepted only baths that were medically nec-
essary36—and even these were to be ‘improvised’, not taken in the kind
of well-appointed kolymbethrai that Artemidorus refers to. Aristides’ por-
trait of Homer makes him representative of an old-fashioned austerity
diametrically opposed to the sumptuous ease of Imperial-era balaneia
that seduce Aristides’ degenerate contemporaries.
Because of its associations with luxury, bathing appears as oratory’s
opposite at the climax of Or. 33, when Aristides considers ethical behav-
ior in light of the ultimate stock-taking—death. Aristides closes Or. 33
by encouraging his audience to derive their satisfactions from the best
part of life—oratory of course. His image of the opposite, undesirable
ethical choice now combines bathing with a reference to ‘swinish plea-
sures’ and recalls HL I (Or. 33.31):
Take pleasure in the finest things of life as long as possible. So that
if we are of the portion who are saved, we will be saved among the
finest pursuits—study and oratory—and we will not be wallowing in our
accommodation to the swinish temperament night after night and day
after day. But if we are not [of the portion who are saved], the gain will
be everything that each person pursued up to that point. Or, by the gods,
is there some profit in bathing while one is alive ([an activity] that surely
35 Part of Aristides’ point is that contemporary orators themselves circulate these
stories about their ‘ancestor’ Homer, but fail to live up to the model they claim.
36 Plato, Lg. 761c–d.
126 janet downie
awaits the deceased), but when it comes to oratory (from which one is
necessarily debarred after death) it’s a thoroughly distasteful idea to take
pleasure in this during life, both by speaking oneself and by attending
when someone else is speaking?37
This statement of priorities—favoring the practice of oratory—is essen-
tially the same as the one Aristides makes to himself ‘as if he were
declaiming’ at the end of his dream conversation with the young athlete
in the first Logos. Here, he reverses the expected distribution of pleasure
and profit: intellectual activities are pleasurable, while bathing is a prof-
itless pursuit that Aristides associates with ritual treatment of the dead
body.38 In the context of a heightened awareness of mortality related to
the crisis of the Antonine plague,39 Aristides urges his audience to avoid
the kind of social degradation that so often accompanies epidemic ill-
ness and to make the finest human preoccupations their most urgent
concern, whether they should live or die.40 By pointing to the fact that
one can be bathed after death but cannot participate in the oratori-
cal community after death, Aristides draws a clear distinction between
activities that are purely physical and those higher ones that are mental
or spiritual as well. The description of bathers as swine, rolling about in
the mud, evokes a common image of the unregenerate mortal condition
used by Plato in several contexts—notably in the Phaedrus—to describe
the life lived without philosophy.41 Bathing, as Aristides’ opponents pur-
sue it, is the inverse of intellectual elevation and spiritual purification. It
is the pre-occupation of a non-initiate.42
37 My thanks to David Traill for suggestions on the translation of this passage.

38 Compare the end of Plato’s Phaedo where, as he reflects on the dignity and
immortality of the soul, Socrates takes a final bath as an anticipatory funeral rite. On
allegorical interpretations of Socrates’ final moments in this dialogue see Crooks 1998.
39 Or. 33.30–31, with discussion by Avotins 1982.
40 Avotins 1982 argues that σ,ζειν in this passage implies physical survival of epi-
demic illness. He also reads φ&ορK at 33.30 as a reference to destruction caused by the
Antonine plague. Avotins points out that Aristides echoes Thucydides here—specifically
the passage in which he describes the effects of the epidemic on Athenian morals (Th.
2.53; Avotins 1982, 4). Thus φ&ορK also alludes, presumably, to the moral degeneration
traditionally associated with plague (on this traditional aspect of plague writing, see
Duncan-Jones 1996). Cf. HL II.38–39 and Weiss’s discussion of Thucydidean echoes
(Weiss 1998, 69–71).
41 Plato, Phdr. 257a; cf. 275e, where written speeches, famously subordinated in this
dialogue to face-to-face dialectic are described as ‘rolling about’ (κυλινδεται) indiscrim-

inately even among those unable to understand or appreciate them; cf. Phd. 81d, 82e:
ν πKσMη μα&!>α κυλινδουμ νην; Tht. 172c; Plt. 309a. For the association of mud with the
uninitiated in Aristides see Or. 22.10; cf. Phd. 69c, R. 363d, Aristophanes, Ra. 145.
42 The connection between washing and purification was deeply embedded in Greek
Socratic Posturing
In Or. 33 we see Aristides using bathing and oratory as polarized ethical

terms and drawing on a Socratic tradition of polemical self-portraiture
in the context of epidemic crisis. The issues in HL I.19–20 are, I
suggest, similar. The Hieroi Logoi, however, are explicitly concerned
with Aristides’ own health, and so he faces the challenge of explaining
how his therapeutic and physical activities reflect on the professional
vocation he values most. We have seen that Aristides does not take
Asclepius’ original command to refrain from bathing (HL I.6) as the
starting point for a simple narrative of ascetic self-restraint. In fact, after
his conversation with the young athlete at I.19–20, and after his round
rejection of bathing as a swinish pleasure, Aristides’ dream goes on to
describe (and prescribe—we are led to believe) a decidedly pleasurable
warm bath (HL I.20–21):
δκει δ’ ο`ν τατα λ γειν - νεαν!σκος περ0 το βαλανε!ου το πρ8ς τας
πλαις τας εOς GΕφεσον φεροσαις, κα0 τ λος *δοξ μοι χρ7ναι ποπειρα-
&7ναι—πτε γ ρ δ" κα0 λλοτε &αρσ7σαι, εO μ" νν;—ο[τω δ" συν& σ&αι
εOς Sραν 5κτην )ς τηνικατα σφαλ στατον nν κινεσ&αι… πορευμε&K
τε, κα0 )ς oνσαμεν, πιστ ς τM7 δεξαμενM7 το ψυχρο πειρ,μην το [δα-
τος, κα! μοι *δοξεν παρ’ λπ!δας ο% μKλα ψυχρ8ν εBναι, κυανον δ4 κα0
Tδ? Oδεν. κγc, “καλ,” *φην, οLα δ" γνωρ!ζων τ8 το [δατος γα&ν. )ς
δ4 παρ7λ&ον ε$σω, πKλιν εiρον 5τερον ν &ερμοτ ρFω ο$κFω νειμ νον μAλ-
λον. κα0 :μα γιγνμην τε ν τF. &ερμF. κα0 πεδυμην. λουσKμην κα0 μKλ’
Tδ ως.
At any rate, the young man seemed to say these things concerning
the bathing establishment that was near the gates leading to Ephesus,
thought—not least in the context of the cult of Asclepius, where water appears to
have figured prominently (Parker 1983, 212–213). From early on, however, a distinction
could be made between purification of the mind and purification of the body as, for
example, in the inscription that is said (by Porphyry and by Clement of Alexandria)
to have greeted visitors to the fourth century temple at Epidaurus: ‘purity (hagneia) is
to think holy thoughts’ (Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, T.318; cf. 336). The distinction
is a prominent trope in leges sacrae from the Imperial period, including a first-century
CE lex sacra from Lindos (Sokolowski 1962, no. 108) that specifies one should enter the
temple ‘clean not through washing, but in mind’ (ο% λουτροι y λλ νFω κα&αρν); cf.
the verse-oracle of Sarapis (Merkelbach 1995, 85): ‘Enter with pure hands, and with a
mind and tongue that are true, clean not through washing, but in mind’ (Yγν ς χερας
*χων κα0 νον κα0 γλ.τταν λη&7 | ε$σι&ι, μ" λοετρος, λλ νωι κα&αρς). For broader
discussion of this distinction and its implications, see Chaniotis 1997, especially 163–166.
The metaphorical framework of religious initiation, to which Aristides briefly alludes
here, when he describes rival orators defiling their vocation, plays an important role
also in the polemical Orations 34 and 28.113–114.
128 janet downie
and in the end it seemed to me that I should give them a try—for

when else indeed would I be so bold if not now? Thus, I decided
upon the sixth hour as being the safest time to move about… We
started out, and when we arrived, stopping at the cold pool I tried the
water. And contrary to what I expected it seemed to me not to be very
cold, but dark and pleasant to look upon. And I said, ‘Good!’ as if to
acknowledge the excellence of the water. When I went in, I found in
turn another in the warmer chamber that was milder. And at once I
entered the warm chamber and began undressing. And I bathed with
much pleasure.
In an ironic reversal, Aristides decides to bathe and asserts his ethical
independence from the categories of intellectual and physical activity
he has so polemically set out. He decides to ‘test out’ the dream’s
apparent prescription in spite of his intellectual reservations, and the
result is positive: a very pleasant experience in the bathhouse.43 In this
episode, then, Aristides has begun the work of defining the physical
practice of bathing in his own terms, setting aside its associations with
luxurious indulgence so that he can appropriate it for his own purposes
of self-portraiture.
With the narrative of this transgressive bath at I.21 Aristides takes
a crucial step beyond the basic dichotomy of bathing and oratory that
played an important role in Or. 33. By claiming independence from the
ethical schema set out in the preceding dream narrative, he prepares
the way for the catalogue of extreme and paradoxical baths that will be
crucial to the quasi-heroic healing narrative of the second Logos.44 For,
once Aristides has defined his separation from conventional bathing
through the narrative of alousia in the first Logos, he can incorporate this
concept of abstention from bathing into a paradoxical physical regimen
that combines outdoor plunges into wintery rivers, harbors and wells
with taxing regimes of purging and fasting and with extraordinary
intellectual discipline.45 For all of this he claims Socratic precedent
43 In his decision to ‘test out’ what the dream message suggests Aristides again
follows a Socratic model: at the end of his life Socrates resorted to trial and error in the
matter of the god’s command to compose poetry (Phd. 60e–61c: ποπειρ,μενος τ! λ γοι).
On Aristides’ response to the dream Michenaud and Dierkens 1972, 88 comment:
‘Ayant affirmé publiquement son éloignement de tout plaisir sensuel dans le bain, il
se permet l’après-midi un bain chaud et agréable, chose absolument exceptionelle dans
les Discours Sacrés’.
44 HL II.24, II.45.
45 Episodes of extraordinary ‘bathing’ are described at HL II.19–23, II.46–55, II.71–
80.
when he summarizes, at the end of his Diary, the kind of life he led
during this period of illness (HL I.59):
But beyond all the fasting at this time, and the even earlier [fasts],
and the ones that I endured later that winter, I passed my days in an
almost irrational manner: writing and speaking and examining what I
had written. And I stretched it out usually into the middle of the night
at least, and then on each occasion pursued my customary routines
the next day, taking a correspondingly [minimal amount of] food. And
when abstention from food followed upon vomiting this was what was
encouraging: diligence and serious occupation about these [pursuits]. So
that whenever I think of Socrates coming from the symposium to pass
his day in the Lyceum, I think it no less fitting for me to give thanks for
strength and endurance in these things to the god.
Aristides makes arch reference here to the Socrates of Plato’s Sympo-

sium: the Socrates who could drink copiously without getting drunk and
share a bed with Alcibiades without compromising his principles—all
in the same spirit with which he endured the physical rigors of bat-
tle at Potidaea, went barefoot, or regularly stood stock still, unaffected
by inclement weather and deep in meditative thought.46 Already we
have seen Aristides taking on the role of the philosopher in his con-
versation with the young athlete earlier in HL I, and alluding to the
Socratic figure of Plato’s Apology in the ethical justification of his intel-
lectual pursuits in Oration 33. Now, near the end of the first Logos we
see Socrates invoked as the hero whose ethical seriousness is so solid
it passes every physical test—whether of excessive strain or excessive
luxury.47 Through the dream narrative of HL I.19–21 specifically, Aris-
tides wants to suggest that, like Socrates, he moves beyond conventional
moral categories.48
In this paper I have argued that at HL I.19–21 Aristides’ narrative has a

deliberate rhetorical aim that can be understood, first, in the context
of the broader theme of bathing and alousia in HL I and, second,
with reference to Aristides’ professional polemic in Or. 33. The first
Logos and Or. 33 both give moral weight to the motifs of bathing and
abstention from baths, and in both texts Aristides alludes to Socrates as
46 Socrates will not be affected, whether he drinks little or much: Plato, Symp. 176c;
cf. Krell 1972.

47 Symp. 174a (Aristodemus meets him—unusually—straight from the bath).
48 See McLean 2007, 65, on Socrates’ ‘peculiar bodily habits’ as a challenge to
physiognomic approaches to ethical assessment.

130 janet downie
a model. In Or. 33, Aristides’ vocation as an orator—and specifically his

professional engagement during the epidemic crisis of the 160s CE—is
linked to a Socratic concern for the soul. In the Hieroi Logoi, Aristides
has Socrates’ example in mind again, but in HL I he uses it to claim
a certain kind of liberty in his physical pursuits. He articulates an ethic
of alousia and bathing that will ultimately serve the larger apologetic
project of the Hieroi Logoi, in which his intellectual vocation and physical
experience are linked.
chapter seven
THE BODY IN THE LANDSCAPE:

ARISTIDES’ CORPUS IN LIGHT OF THE SACRED TALES
Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis
In the late summer of 166 A.D., Aristides delivered a speech in the

city of Cyzicus at a festival to celebrate the restoration of the temple
of Hadrian, which had been damaged in an earthquake in 161. The
speech itself survives in the corpus of Aristides’ writings as Oration 27,
Panegyric in Cyzicus. We also have an account of this episode in Aristides’
Sacred Tales, a work written about four years later in 170/171 on the
subject of the favours that he had received from the god Asklepios (Or.
51.11–17).
I begin this essay with a detailed reading of these two accounts,
focusing primarily on the treatment of the themes of travel and land-
scape, and how these are intertwined with the concepts of the body
and the divine. Travel and the body are often explored separately, but
when viewed in combination offer fruitful insights into Aristides’ out-
look on himself and the world. I then go on to explore these themes
more broadly in Aristides’ work, and I argue that they are significant
throughout the corpus. This example of the use of the Sacred Tales to
illuminate aspects of Aristides’ corpus finally opens the broader ques-
tion of the relationship of the Sacred Tales to the rest of the orations.
This question is significant not just for a nuanced understanding of the
Sacred Tales itself, but also for the corpus as a whole. It will be suggested
that viewing Aristides’ corpus in the light of the Sacred Tales reveals the
author’s profoundly religious outlook.
In the first four chapters of the Panegyric in Cyzicus, Aristides intro-

duces the themes of the divine, his body and his oratory. The divine
is established as central in Aristides’ statement that he is speaking at the
command of the god Asklepios (Or. 27.2). His longstanding and ongo-
ing relationship with the god is suggested further by mention of other
instances in the past in which he has received help from the god in dif-
ficult circumstances (2). The theme of his body arises in the reference to
132 alexia petsalis-diomidis
his physical weakness as a potential impediment to making the speech;

this weakness is said to be overcome on Asklepios’ orders (2). Aristides
self-consciously draws attention to the activity of his speechmaking in
the statement that he is extemporising—something which he was noto-
riously unwilling or unable to do—and he repeats this statement at the
end of the speech (3, 46). This introduction is important, and sets the
tone for the entire speech. It presents the orator’s motivation in deliv-
ering this oration, his overcoming of his physical difficulties, and the
actual content of his speech as emanating from Asklepios. In this way
the speech itself, its public delivery at Cyzicus, and subsequent readings
enact (and re-enact) the divine / human relationship.
Aristides then proceeds to a geographical ekphrasis (Or. 27.5–15). The
divine element is first established in the landscape by a reference to the
foundation of Cyzicus by Apollo (5). The structure of the description
of Cyzicus mirrors the process of movement and travel in that it starts
with a passage on the situation of the city (its broad geographical con-
text), continues with a more focused section on the city and culminates
with a specific description of the temple of Hadrian seen from up close.
The process of describing, and indeed of mapping, is never neutral.
But in this case, perhaps more than others, the description imposes a
particular and one might say even peculiar geographical hierarchy on
the landscape. Aristides first locates Cyzicus within a seascape: it is said
to be located between the Euxine and the Hellespont, ‘being a kind
of link between the two seas, or rather between every sea upon which
men sail’ (σνδεσμς τις ο`σα τ7ς &αλKττης \κατ ρας, μAλλον δ4 YπKσης
gν ν&ρωποι πλ ουσι, 6).1 It is also said to be located in the midst of
three seas, Lake Maeotis (the sea of Azov), the Hellespont and the Pro-
pontis (8). It is an epicentre of travel for sailors (6). The centrality of its
location both geographically and in terms of the movement of people
is further emphasised by the statement that it is ‘located in the midst of
the sea, it brings all mankind together, escorting some from the inner
to the outer sea, and others from without to within, as if it were a kind
of navel stone at the point between Gadira and the Phasis’ (τ7ς γ ρ
&αλKττης ν μ σFω κειμ νη συνKγει πKντας ν&ρ,πους εOς τα%τν, τος τε
π8 τ7ς ε$σω πρ8ς τ"ν *ξω παραπ μπουσα κα0 το?ς *ξω&εν πρ8ς τ ε$σω,
Sσπερ τις Pμφαλ8ς το μεταξ? τπου Γαδε!ρων κα0 ΦKσιδος), the tradi-
tional termini of ancient geography (7). Moving on from the seascape,
1 Translations are by C.A. Behr.

the body in the landscape 133
Cyzicus is then situated within the landscape (9–10). Centrality is here

replaced by the concept of a perfect mixture of geographical features
including mountains, plains and rivers.
This first section is like a broad cinematic panning shot, an aerial
view of the geographical context of the city. The camera then zooms
in to focus on Cyzicus proper (11–12). Aristides plays with the idea of
Cyzicus simultaneously being an island, a peninsula and a continent.
This not only opens up the question of its geographical status, but
also introduces the idea of transformational viewing. The causeways
linking Cyzicus to the mainland are referred to as ‘legs’, σκ λη (11).
This choice of word is interesting. It was used in the sense of walls, and
in particular for the long walls between the city of Athens and Piraeus,
by writers such as Strabo and Plutarch.2 This Attic association may
have made it particularly appropriate in the eyes of Aristides. But its
primary meaning of ‘legs’ should not be ignored. It implies viewing the
landscape in the form of the human body and the close linking of the
two. Aristides then refers briefly to the beauty of the public buildings
(13), but does not describe them. Instead he presents his religious vision
of the city ‘as the work of one of the gods’ (τ.ν κρειττνων τινς στι
πο!ημα) and ‘sacred to all the gods’ (*οικε γKρ τις YπKντων εBναι τ.ν
&ε.ν JερK):
Sσπερ γ ρ κατ κλρους :πασι &εος ξMηρημ νη πAσα δ" μεμ ρισται, κα0
α%τ"ν οJ νε> διειλφασιν Sσπερ Yμιλλωμ νων τ.ν &ε.ν πρ8ς λλλους
Xπ4ρ σωτηρ!ας τ7ς πλεως. &υσ!αι δ4 κα0 πομπα0 κα0 πρσοδοι κα0 &ερα-
πεαι &ε.ν μετ τ.ν κα&εστηκτων &εσμ.ν … (Or. 27.14).
For as if it had been set aside and allotted among all the gods, it has
now been all parceled out, and the temples have divided it up, as if the
gods were competing against one another on behalf of the safety of the
city. There are sacrifices, parades, processions, and divine services under
established codes…
The land of Cyzicus is envisioned as physically made up of the sum of
its sanctuaries, and simultaneously vivified by religious processions and
rituals.
Just as the topography of Cyzicus is effectively rearranged by the
manner of Aristides’ description, so the citizens of Cyzicus are said to
mould the landscape by exporting marble from the quarry at Prokon-
nesos to adorn other cities (15), and more significantly by the construc-
tion of the enormous and beautiful temple of Hadrian (17). The use of
2 E.g. Strabo 9.1.15; Plutarch Kimon 13.

marble from Prokonnesos for the construction of this temple is envis-

aged in terms of the transferral of most of the island of Prokonnesos to
Cyzicus. Not only is Prokonnesos reduced in this way, but the outline of
the land is radically altered by the new temple:
πρτερον μ4ν γ ρ τ.ν νσων τας κορυφας τεκμα!ροντο οJ πλ οντες,
Κζικος qδε, Προκννησος α[τη, τ.ν λλων gν $δοι τις· νν δ4 - νεcς ντ0
τ.ν Pρ.ν ρκε, κα0 μνοις Xμν ο%δ4ν δε λαμπτρων ο%δ4 πυρσ.ν ο%δ4
πργων πρ8ς το?ς κατα!ροντας, λλ’ - νεcς πληρ.ν :παν τ8 -ρ,μενον
τν τε πλιν κα0 τ"ν μεγαλοψυχ!αν τ.ν χντων α%τ"ν -μο δηλο, κα0
τοσοτος sν καλλ!ων στ0ν D με!ζων (Or. 27.17).
Formerly sailors used to judge their position by the peaks of the islands,
‘Here is Cyzicus’, ‘This is Prokonnesos’, and whatever other island one
beheld. But now the temple is equal to the mountains, and you alone
have no need for beacons, signal fires, and towers for those putting into
port. But the temple fills every vista, and at the same time reveals the city
and the magnanimity of its inhabitants. And although it is so great, its
beauty exceeds its size.
The human intervention in the landscape of Cyzicus is here experi-
enced through the process of travel, specifically through sailing. The
section on the temple proper is not a systematic description of the kind
Pausanias gives in his Description of Greece, much less so of the kind found
in modern guidebooks. Instead it conveys the size, beauty and awesome
nature of the building through a series of metaphors that transform the
temple:
φα!ης #ν τ.ν μ4ν λ!&ων 5καστον ντ0 νεc το παντ8ς εBναι, τ8ν δ4 νεcν ν-
τ0 το παντ8ς περιβλου, τ8ν δ’ α` περ!βολον το νεc πλεως ποχρ.ντα
γ!γνεσ&αι. εO δ4 βολει τ τ7ς <>αστ,νης κα0 τρυφ7ς, ντ0 γ ρ τ.ν οOκι.ν
τ.ν τριωρφων κα0 τ.ν τριρων πKρεστιν -ρAν νεcν τ8ν μ γιστον, τ.ν
μ4ν λλων πολλαπλασ!ονα, α%τ8ν δ4 τριπλον τM7 φσει. τ μ4ν γ ρ α%το
κατKγεις στι & α, τ δ’ XπερF.ος, μ ση δ4 T νενομισμ νη. δρμοι δ4 Xπ8
γ7ν τε κα0 κρεμαστο0 δι’ α%το δικοντες κκλFω, Sσπερ ο%κ ν προσ&κης
μ ρει, λλ’ ξεπ!τηδες εBναι δρμοι πεποιημ νοι (Or. 27.19–20).
You would say that each of the stones was meant to be the whole temple,
and the temple the whole precinct, and again that the temple’s precinct
was big enough to be a city. If you wish to consider the comfort and
luxury which it provides, it is possible to view this very great temple like
three-storied houses or like three-decked ships, many times greater than
other temples, and itself of a threefold nature. For part of the spectacle is
subterranean, part on an upper storey, and part in between in the usual
position. There are walks which traverse it all about, underground and
hanging, as it were made not as an additional adornment, but actually to
be walks.
This series of comparisons has the effect of playing with the relative
dimensions of the temple in the mind of the audience, effectively sug-
gesting a series of magnifications to the effect that that each stone is
the size of the entire temple, the temple the size of the precinct, and
the precinct as large as a whole city. The height of the temple and its
occupation of the air, the surface of the earth and underground is con-
veyed by offering the audience the vision of the temple transformed
into ‘three-storied houses’ or ‘three-decked ships’, and the emphasis
on the activity of viewing the building is suggested by the use of the
term & α ‘spectacle’. The passage is revelatory in its description of the
underground area of the temple which, according to the archaeological
evidence, was neither visible nor accessible.3 Finally Aristides chooses
to highlight the walkways that traverse the temple and are actually in
use, and in this way suggests the experience of sacred space through
physical movement.
A large portion of the speech is then devoted to praise of the ruling
emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, dwelling in particular on
the concord between the two rulers (22–39). In this respect Aristides’
speech mirrors the temple, as both oration and building celebrate the
figure of the emperor. Finally the speech seems to come full circle in
its return to the theme of the city of Cyzicus in a series of comparisons
between the concord of the emperors and the concord of the universe
and of cities (35, 41), between good order in a man’s life and in a city
(41), and the appellation of all cities as ‘sisters’ δελφα! (44). In these
parallels Aristides employs the analogy of city and person, not unlike
the earlier vision of the landscape as the human body (11).
I turn now to the Sacred Tales, to consider Aristides’ account of
delivering this oration in Cyzicus (Or. 51.11–17). The story opens with
a chronological reference that locates the episode within the timeframe
of the Sacred Tales narrative (‘after a little under a year and a month’);
there is also a reference to the festival at Cyzicus called the ‘Sacred
Month of the Temple’. There follows a description of Aristides’ physical
condition, his troubled sleep and inability to digest anything (11). In
this state he receives a revelatory dream in which the doctor Porphyrio
praises him to the citizens of Cyzicus and encourages them to gather
and listen to him speaking—an echo of the Homeric episode in which
Athena persuades the Phaeacians to assemble and listen to Odysseus—
3 On the archaeological evidence of the temple see Schulz and Winter (1990) and
Price (1984), 251–252, catalogue entry.

and then Aristides finds himself in a theatre (12).4 This dream prompts
him to depart immediately for Cyzicus. We are told a number of details
relating to the journey: there is mention of the order to the servants to
pack, the time of departure, the mode of transport (riding in a carriage),
the leisurely pace of the journey. Aristides then describes his arrival at
some warm springs, but being forced to continue his journey with a
few attendants because it was so crowded that he could find no shelter
(13). Aristides then arrives at a village, and we are given the precise
distance traversed (40 stades). He decides to proceed, riding on into the
night, but is forced to stop by a lake because his servants are exhausted.
Again precise distances are given: the night stop was 120 stades from
Cyzicus, and he had already completed 320 stades (14). Aristides offers
a detailed description of the furniture in the room in which he spends
the night and comments on its cleanliness; he is equally concerned
to give an account of his bodily state: he is thirsty and dusty, and
spends most of the night sitting on the couch in his travelling clothes.
He then relates in a tone of triumph that at daybreak he got up on
his own and finished the journey (15). Both the details of the journey
and of Aristides’ physical state are presented as significant indicators
of divine charis in the light of the initial revelatory dream. Aristides’
insistence on these details, including minutiae relating to his body such
as the state of his travel clothes, indicate the profoundly physical way
in which this journey was experienced. The initial statement about his
poor health also overshadows the narrative: his ability to endure such a
tiring journey despite his inability to sleep and eat is also implied to be
the result of divine favour.
But it is not only through his body that Aristides receives divine
favour on this journey: his oratory is also encompassed. And here
we come to climax of the story, the passage about composing and
delivering Oration 27:
κα! μοι παραμ&ιον _ν της πορε!ας τ8 τF. λγFω προσ χειν, ]ν *δει τος
Κυζικηνος πιδεξαι κατ τ"ν το νυπν!ου φμην· Sστε κα0 ποι&η ο[τω
παρ τ"ν -δ8ν τ εXρισκμενα αOε0 ναλαμβKνοντι. τ"ν μ4ν ο`ν σπουδ"ν
τ"ν συμβAσαν περ0 τ8ν λγον ο% μνον Tν!κα δε!κνυτο ν τF. βουλευτηρ!Fω,
λλ κα0 [στερον ν τM7 πανηγρει, εOδεεν #ν οJ παραγενμενοι κα0 οJ
τοτων κοσαντες, μο0 δ’ ο%χ qδιον ν τος τοιοτοις διατρ!βειν (Or.
51.16).
4 See Odyssey VIII.1–25.

And my consolation for the journey was in giving my attention to the

speech which I had to present to the Cyzicenes in accordance with the
prophecy of the dream, so that I even composed it in this way, always
recalling the ideas which I had conceived during the trip. Those who
were present, and those who heard about it from these, would know the
enthusiasm which was shown toward my speech, not only when it was
presented in the Council Chamber, but also at the festival. But it is not
so pleasant for me to linger over such things.
The threads are here interwoven very tightly. Aristides was undertaking
the journey to Cyzicus on account of a revelatory dream; his consola-
tion during the arduous journey was to turn his mind to the speech; the
actual speech was later composed by recalling ideas he had conceived
during the journey; and it was a great success, delivered not once but
twice. The divine, his body and his oratory are intimately connected.
The story concludes with an account of the return journey to his
estate at Laneion. The god’s command for him to set off is experienced
as a refrain praising the water at his estate. He notes that his return
journey was similar to the journey to Cyzicus: in both cases he left on
the same day he received the divine command, at about the same time,
and both journeys were uninterrupted. We are given the specific time
of arrival at an outlying farm on his estate, a mention of the fact that
he had not eaten, the total distance travelled (400 stades) and that he
arrived the next day at Laneion (17). He concludes the story with the
statement ‘And thus took place my first journey to Cyzicus and my stay
there’ (κα0 τ μ4ν τ7ς προτ ρας εOς Κζικον ξδου κα0 διατριβ7ς ο[τως
*σχεν, 18). Aristides’ decision to include the rather uneventful return
journey and not end on the note of oratorical triumph in Cyzicus
is interesting. Fundamentally it can be explained by the fact that the
return journey no less than the journey to Cyzicus was ordered by
the god and its successful accomplishment is ascribed to him. This
journey also, then, is one of the many divine favours bestowed by
Asklepios, for which Aristides is giving thanks through the composition
of the Sacred Tales. But it also reflects the importance of the journey
as a round trip, there and back. The Cyzicus episode is presented
as a sacred journey, undertaken at the command of the god, and the
Sacred Tales as a whole can be read as a series of such sacred journeys.
As a literary retrospective narrative of these events, the Sacred Tales
can with justice be called a pilgrimage text. The fact that Christian
and Islamic models of pilgrimage differ from Graeco-Roman ones, for
example, in the emphasis on one major journey to a sacred centre
and on the penitential dimension, should not prevent us from identify-

ing it as such.5
Oration 27 is a public speech, delivered at a civic festival and subse-
quently published; the Sacred Tales may have reached a smaller num-
ber of people—there is no indication that it was delivered to a mass
audience—but there is evidence to suggest that it was published, and
in this sense it is also a public text. It is self-conscious and polished
and by no means private musings, as has sometimes been thought. It
is, however, concerned with matters very personal to Aristides: divine
epiphanies and communications vouchsafed him, the internal processes
of his body, the processes of composition of his speeches. In the account
of the journey to Cyzicus we have the inside story, literally, a narra-
tive relating to the interior of Aristides’ body (his digestion and sleep)
and the internal processes of his mind (including the interpretation of
revelatory dreams, his intentions during the journey, the subject of his
thoughts, and later the process of composition of the speech). My ini-
tial decision to focus on the themes of travel, landscape and the body
in the Panegyric were partly inspired by the prominence of these themes
in the account in the Sacred Tales; effectively I have used the latter as a
guide, indeed a commentary, to illuminate the Panegyric. What clearly
emerges in both texts is Aristides’ preoccupation with landscape and
travel through it; his interlinking of landscape and body; and his con-
ception of the divine as the driving force in his life.
But two questions immediately arise: to what extent are these themes
of landscape, travel and the body important in the rest of Aristides’
writings? And more fundamentally, how typical is this sort of interpen-
etration between the Sacred Tales and other orations in the corpus, and
where does it lead us? Is Cyzicus a special case?
The answer to the latter question, I would argue, is a resounding no.
The themes of landscape, travel and the body are prominent through-
out Aristides’ corpus, and I now set out the evidence for this, focus-
ing first on the Sacred Tales and then on other orations. The Sacred
Tales opens with a comparison between Aristides’ sufferings (cast as
the achievements of Asklepios) and the toils of the archetypal traveller
Odysseus.6 The text as a whole is teeming with references to location—
where Aristides was at different points of the stories—and to his jour-
5 See Rutherford 1999; Elsner and Rutherford, eds. 2005; and Petsalis-Diomidis,
Forthcoming.
6 Or. 47.1. On this comparison see B. Holmes’s paper in this volume.
neys.7 Fundamental to the purpose of these stories is the presentation

of Aristides’ relationship with Asklepios. The god constantly communi-
cates with Aristides, ordering him to stay put or to travel somewhere;
the usual result is the alleviation of physical suffering contrary to expec-
tation and a sense of union with the divine. In one instance Asklepios
orders Aristides to go from Pergamon to his old nurse Philoumene,
and by this means the woman is saved from death.8 The account of
the journey to Cyzicus is typical in its inclusion of details, such as the
state of the weather, the route and stop-offs on the way. It is also rep-
resentative in its interlinking of the themes of the body and oratory
with the divinely inspired journey. Travel in the Sacred Tales is gener-
ally presented as being particularly difficult and dangerous for the sick
Aristides, but paradoxically it is undertaken for physical healing: many
stories in the Sacred Tales refer to the fact that although Aristides was
unable even to get up from his bed, he went on to travel great dis-
tances with the help of the god and to experience an amazing sense of
well-being.9 As far as oratory is concerned, his illness is repeatedly said
to prevent him from making speeches and from travelling to cities in
order to deliver them, but conversely some of the journeys inspire him
to compose,10 and Asklepios’ communications more broadly are seen
to benefit his oratory. In the Sacred Tales journeys are not only under-
taken for the purpose of bodily healing; they are also experienced, often
painfully, through the medium of the body. Simultaneously Aristides’
body is often described as a landscape, a space in which channels of
breathing and eating become blocked,11 channels flow,12 and tempests
occur (τρικυμ!αι).13 In the story of the tumour (Or. 47.61–68), the lan-
7 Journeys in the Sacred Tales include: Or. 47.65 (sailing across the harbour at
Smyrna), 78 (journey from Pergamon to see his old nurse Philoumene); Or. 48.7
(journey from Smyrna to Pergamon), 11–18 (abortive journey to Chios), 60–70 (journey
to Rome and back); Or. 49.1–6 (journey to Aliani), 7–14 (journey from the temple
of Zeus Asklepios to Lebedos), 20 (ordered to go and worship the statue of Zeus at
the hearth of his foster fathers); Or. 50.1–12 (journey to the Aesepus), 31–37 (journey
to Rome and return via Delos and Miletos), 42–55 (second journey to Cyzicus), 83
and 103 (summoned to Pergamon); Or. 51.1–10 (journey ‘to the land of Zeus’), 11–18
(first journey to Cyzicus), 18–37 (journeys to Pergamon, Smyrna and Ephesos); Or. 52.1
(journey to Epidauros).
8 Or. 47.78.
9 E.g. Or. 48.19–23; Or. 51.1–3, 49.
10 E.g. Or. 50.3–4.
11 E.g. Or. 47.69; Or. 48.6, 56–57, 62, 64; Or. 49.1–6, 11, 16–19, 21; Or. 50.17, 22, 38.
12 E.g. Or. 48.56.
13 E.g. Or. 47.3. Cf. Or. 42.7.
guage of gardening and irrigation is used: Asklepios orders Aristides to

foster the growth, and says that ‘the source of this discharge was located
above, and these gardeners did not know where they ought to turn the
channels’ (εBναι γ ρ το <εματος τοτου τ ς πηγ ς νω, το?ς δ4 κηπου-
ρο?ς τοτους ο%κ εOδ ναι το?ς Pχετο?ς Mr χρ" τρ πειν, Or. 47.63). The
body is also frequently imagined as fragmenting, both in Aristides’ ‘re-
al’ and oneiric life, for example in the feeling that his teeth were falling
out of his mouth and his intestines were hanging out of his body, and in
his dreams of being ordered to cut out pieces of his body.14
There is a profound sense in the Sacred Tales that Aristides’ rela-
tionship with the divine unfolds within the landscape of the Roman
Empire, as there are references not just to journeys in Asia Minor,
but also beyond to Italy and then back via Delos.15 The Pergamene
Asklepieion where Aristides spent two years at the command of the god
also features prominently. Some commentators have been disappointed
by his apparent lack of interest in the sanctuary and the major building
projects that were taking place at about this time.16 It is true that Aris-
tides does not offer a systematic description of the sanctuary, and he
refers only in passing to the magnificent new temple of Zeus Asklepios
in the context of a dream about the man who financed it, L. Cuspius
Pactumeius Rufinus.17 However, stories that occur in the sanctuary are
full of references to specific buildings and areas, suggesting that the
miniature landscape of the Asklepieion also played an important part
in the unfolding of Aristides’ relationship with Asklepios.18 This rela-
tionship is presented as the lynchpin of Aristides’ life; his therapeutic
and oratorical experiences, ‘real’ and oneiric, driven by this relation-
14 E.g. Or. 47.27, 62, 63; Or. 49.15.

15 Or. 48.60–70; Or. 50.31–37.
16 See Hoffmann 1998a and 1998b.
17 Or. 50.28.
18 E.g. Or. 47.32 (the lamps in the temple); Or. 48.30 (the temple warden Philadelphus
in a dream sees Aristides in the sacred theatre), 31 (he dreams that he is in the propylaia
of the temple, divine epiphany), 71 (he sleeps between the doors and gates of the temple,
anointing himself in the open air, bathing in the sacred well), 74–76 (he smears mud on
himself by the sacred well and bathes there; the next night runs three times around
the temple and then bathes in the well), 77 (smears himself with mud and sits in the
courtyard of the sacred gymnasium); Or. 49.7 (he was undergoing incubation in the
temple of Zeus Asklepios), 21–23 (story of the ointment of Tyche, including oneiric
and ‘real’ events at specific locations in the sanctuary e.g. Telesphoros’ temple), 28
(consumption of a drug ‘at the sacred tripod’); Or. 50.15 (ordered to resume oratory in
the stoa near the theatre), 66 (dream in which companions go towards the temple, and
he takes his leave).
ship with Asklepios, also occur not just in but through the medium of
the landscape. Aristides does not offer us a comprehensive picture, but
a specific, close-up, fragmented vision of the sanctuary, his body and
the world.
I turn now to consider the themes of travel and landscape in ora-
tions other than the Sacred Tales. First, the theme of travel: there are
numerous references to Aristides either travelling or refraining from
travel, often at Asklepios’ command, and several of the speeches are
said to be fulfilling vows to gods in thanks for saving Aristides dur-
ing a journey.19 In Oration 36, The Egyptian Discourse, there are extended
descriptions of Aristides’ journey up the Nile, undertaken in 142 A.D.20
The theme of safe travel as one of the blessings of Roman rule recurs
numerous times.21 Travel is associated with religion both in the image of
festivals continuously moving around the Empire and in the statement
that despite their fear of travelling, men cross the Aegean in order to
see ‘contests and mysteries’.22 Aristides uses the idea of territory being
measured according to the time it would take to travel there, for exam-
ple, in the case of the city of Ephesos and of the Roman Empire as a
whole.23 The image of the helmsman occurs frequently, and is asso-
ciated with Rome, the emperor and Asklepios.24 Aristides himself is
often paralleled with the traveller (and wise speaker!) Odysseus.25 His
speeches or arguments are imagined as choosing paths (literally roads),
and are described as rivers and ships travelling through the landscape.26
Aristides’ treatment of the theme of travel is intimately combined
with the idea of viewing the landscape. He adopts a traveller’s changing
perspective in his description of landscape. I traced this in the case of
Cyzicus, and there are even more compelling examples, such as Oration
17, The Smyrnaean Oration I, a speech written to celebrate the arrival
19 E.g. Or. 19.6 (he escaped the earthquake because the god ordered him to go to
his estate); Or. 20.2 (the Saviour restrains him from addressing the assembly in person;
he is in Laneion); Or. 21.2 (he is absent as usual because the god guides him); Or. 24.1
(again he is not able to deliver the speech in person to the Rhodians—on account of
his health). Speeches made in thanks for a safe journey: Or. 26; Or. 43; Or. 44.
20 Or. 36, especially 48–56, his journey to see the cataracts of the Nile.
21 Or. 26.100; Or. 35.37; Or. 36.91.
22 Or. 26.99; Or. 44.18.
23 Or. 23.24; Or. 26.79–84, 92–95.
24 E.g. Or. 26.68 (Rome); Or. 30.28 (Asklepios); Or. 33.18 (Asklepios); Or. 35.14–15 (the
emperor); Or. 42.4 (Asklepios).

25 E.g. Or. 33.18; Or. 42.14.
26 Or. 1.31 (road), and 35 (river); Or. 28.111 (the river Nile), 115 (ship); Or. 46.4 (ship).
of the new governor of Asia, where the description of Smyrna follows

the course of a walk. In this speech there is a specific emphasis on
the changing views of the landscape, following the movement of the
traveller.
κα0 προελ&ντι μικρ8ν T πλις α`&ις Sσπερ παραπ μπουσα ναφα!νεται,
κα0 γ!γνεται δι’ λKττονος ντα&α Zδη ρι&μητ κα0 μετρητ τ κKλλη
α%τ7ς. κα0 ο%δε0ς ο[τως πε!γεται @στις -ρ>A τ8 πρσω τ7ς -δο κα0 ο%
μεταβKλλει τ8 σχ7μα, τ μ4ν κατ’ Pφ&αλμο?ς δεξι ποιομενος, τ δ4
ριστερ πρ8 τ7ς 'ψεως (Or. 17.17).
And when you have proceeded a little ways, the city again is visible as if it
were escorting you, and here its beauty can more closely be counted and
measured. And no one is in such a hurry that he stares straight ahead at
the road and does not change his view, shifting that before his eyes to his
right, and what was to his left before his gaze.
In this case the changing views are directly related to the premise of
the walk through Smyrna, but the theme occurs in more abstract ways,
for example in the comparison of different views of a landscape and
the rhetorical discussion of which is best.27 The idea of moving through
the physical, indeed man-made, landscape and reading it is beautifully
expressed in Oration 46, The Isthmian Oration: Regarding Poseidon:
σοφ8ν δ4 δ" κα0 κα&’ -δ8ν λ&cν #ν ε[ροις κα0 παρ τ.ν ψχων μK&οις
#ν κα0 κοσειας· τοσοτοι &ησαυρο0 γραμμKτων περ0 πAσαν α%τν, @ποι
κα0 μνον ποβλ ψει τις, κα0 κατ τ ς -δο?ς α%τ ς κα0 τ ς στοKς, *τι
τε τ γυμνKσια κα0 διδασκαλεα [κα0] μα&ματK τε κα0 Jστορματα (Or.
46.28).
While traveling about the city you would find wisdom and you would
learn and hear it from its inanimate objects. So numerous are the trea-
sures of paintings all about it, wherever one would simply look, through-
out the streets themselves and porticoes. And further the gymnasiums
and schools are instruction and stories.
But far more frequent are expressions of Aristides’ unsatisfied desire

when viewing a landscape, his inability to see it from all angles and
truly possess it, and this theme I would connect to his ever repeated
desire for union with the divine, which is occasionally but never funda-
mentally satisfied.28
Moving on to the theme of landscape proper in orations other than
the Sacred Tales, there are quite simply many examples of geographical
27 Or. 19.2; Or. 23.20.

28 E.g. Or. 17.17; Or. 18.4–5; Or. 22.7; Or. 26.6; Or. 46.25.
ekphrasis. These include cityscapes, landscapes, seascapes and descrip-

tions of individual buildings.29 The frequent occurrence of this theme
suggests that to some extent ekphrastic tropes construct Aristides’ the-
matics. One of the ways in which he repeatedly describes the landscape
is in terms of the human body. Cities can be sick, such as Rhodes on
account of internecine strife and the world before the era of Roman
rule.30 There are analogies of the land, landmark or city to a whole per-
son (as in the example of cities as sisters in the Panegyric in Cyzicus),31
but more frequently to a part of the human body, as in the example
of the σκ λη of Cyzicus. Examples include the harbour of Smyrna as
the navel and bosom of the city, the feet of Smyrna set firmly on the
beaches, harbours, and glades, the sea as the eye of Smyrna, Smyrna as
the eye of Asia, the Koinon of Asia set in the navel of the whole empire,
the sea (of Poseidon) as a mother’s lap, the Aegean sea beginning at the
islands in the south and ending in the Hellespont, its beauty extending
‘from head to foot’.32 The use of the image of a fragmented body for
the landscape has particular resonance in the case of the descriptions
of Smyrna and Rhodes shattered by earthquakes and political insta-
bility in Rhodes.33 The landscape is envisaged not only as parts of the
human body but also as specific adornments of the body. For example,
the city of Smyrna is likened to a variety of pieces of clothing, includ-
ing an embroidered shirt, a robe of the Nymphs and Graces, a veil of
empresses and crown of emperors, and to the crown of Ionia; the river
Meles is compared to a necklace; the sea to the belt of the Roman
empire; Alexandria to the necklace or bracelet of a rich woman; and
Corinth to Aphrodite’s girdle, and to the pendant and necklace of all
Greece.34 The likening of cities and other landscape features to adorn-
ments of the human body implicitly creates the image of the underlying
geographical landscape as a vast human body.
From the plethora of images of the landscape as the human body
in Aristides’ corpus I have chosen two more elaborate examples to
29 Or. 17, passim (Smyrna); Or. 23.13–25 (Pergamon, Smyrna and Ephesos); Or. 26.6–
13 (Rome); Or. 27.6–17 (Cyzicus); Or. 36, passim (the Nile); Or. 46.21–26 (the Isthmus);
Or. 44, passim (the Aegean); Or. 39, passim (the well at the Pergamene Asklepieion); Or.
22.9–10 (the Eleusinian sanctuary).
30 Or. 19.10; Or. 23.31; Or. 24.16; Or. 26.97.
31 Or. 17.9; Or. 20.21; Or. 21.5; Or. 23.79; Or. 24.9–12,45; Or. 26.4, 83–84; Or. 31.13;
Or. 32.10, 21.

32 Or. 17.19, 22; Or. 18.3; Or. 21.7; Or. 23.9; Or. 44.17; Or. 46.24.
33 Or. 18.8, 9; Or. 19.3; Or. 21.10; Or. 24.38, 39.
34 Or. 17.10, 14; Or. 18.8; Or. 19.4; Or. 20.19, 21; Or. 21.13; Or. 26.10, 92–95; Or. 46.25.
quote here. In Oration 26 Regarding Rome imperial conquest is expressed

in terms of grasping the body or parts of the body: in the case of the
Athenians and Lacedaimonians ‘their experience was the same as if
someone, in his desire to obtain mastery over a body, should get hold
of some nails and hair instead of the whole body, and having these
should think that he has what he wished’ (κα0 *πα&ον δ" παραπλσιον
Sσπερ #ν ε$ τις σ,ματος πι&υμ.ν γεν σ&αι κριος 'νυχKς τινας κα0
κρα λKβοι ντ0 @λου το σ,ματος κα0 τατα *χων *χειν ο$οιτο :περ
βολετο, Or. 26.43). It is implied that the Romans grasp and enjoy the
whole body. But the landscape / body analogy is interestingly inverted
later in the speech where ‘all former men, even those who ruled the
largest portion of the earth, ruled over, as it were, only the naked bodies
of their people’ (οJ μ4ν νω πKντες κα0 οJ π0 πλεστον γ7ς ρξαντες
Sσπερ σωμKτων γυμν.ν α%τ.ν τ.ν &ν.ν _ρξαν, Or. 26.92); there is a
lacuna at this point of the text, but the sense is clearly that in contrast
the Romans rule over cities. To counterbalance this image of imperial
conquest Aristides also gives us one of lovemaking in The Smyrnaean
Oration (II):
κα0 μ"ν ο%δε πλKνης γε - Μ λης ο%δ’ οLος ποφοιτAν, λλ’ *οικεν ραστM7
τινι τ7ς πλεως ο% τολμ.ντι μακροτ ραν πογ!γνεσ&αι, :τε, οBμαι, σβε-
στον μ4ν α%τ7ς τ8ν *ρωτα, σβεστον δ4 τ"ν φυλακ"ν *χων. Sστε α%τ&εν
-ρμη&ε0ς α%το κα0 παεται, παρατε!νας κ,λFω τιν0 τ7ς πλεως \αυτν. (Or.
21.15).
Indeed, the Meles is not erratic, nor such as to wander off its course, but
it is like a sort of lover of the city, who does not dare to be farther apart
from it; for it has, I think, a ceaseless love for it and guards it ceaselessly,
so that it begins and ends here, stretching itself, as it were, beside the
city’s leg.
Through his descriptions Aristides imposes his own geographical hier-
archy on the landscape. The use of images of parts of the body is one
way in which this is achieved, for example in the ideas of the central-
ity of the navel or the preciousness of the eye. In addition, Aristides’
shifting perspective on geography results in the literal relocation of the
centre of the earth in a number of speeches: Rome, Cyzicus, Corinth
and the Aegean sea are at different times envisaged as the centre of
the world; and at a microcosmic level, every location in Rome can be
experienced as its centre.35 The idea of the citizens of Cyzicus mould-
35 Or. 26.7, 10, 13, 61; Or. 27.6–8; Or. 36.87–93; Or. 44.2–3; Or. 46.21–23, 26.
ing their landscape through quarrying at Prokonnesos and building the

temple of Hadrian is also present in passages of the ordering and re-
arranging of the landscape by the Romans, for example in the fording
of rivers and the establishment of post stations in deserts, and on the
cosmic level, in passages that describe the creation of the universe by
Herakles and Zeus.36 Both in descriptions of landscape and in refer-
ences to travel, especially sailing, Aristides emphasises the interconnect-
edness of the landscape.37 Images that convey the impression of a land-
scape not through detailed description but through transformational
images (such as the temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus as a three-storied
house or three-decked ship) occur in many orations. For example, the
Aegean is envisaged as containing cities and countryside in its midst,
while the islands themselves are likened to ships of rescue and ships for
Leto on her way to Delos; the city of Smyrna is imagined translated
into heaven; the Pergamene Asklepieion is described as the hearth of
Asklepios in Asia and as the harbour of Pergamon.38 A more extended
example of such transformational viewing can be found in the case of
Rome. Aristides first presents the city of Rome as snow poured over the
landscape, using the Homeric image, and then considers the parts of
the city rising high in the hills:
Sστ’ ε$ τις α%τ"ν &ελσειε κα&αρ.ς ναπτξαι κα0 τ ς νν μετε,ρους π-
λεις π0 γ7ς ρε!σας &εναι λλην παρ’ λλην, @σον νν Ιταλ!ας διαλεπν
στιν, ναπληρω&7ναι τοτο πAν ν μοι δοκε κα0 γεν σ&αι πλις συνεχ"ς
μ!α π0 τ8ν Ινιον τε!νουσα (Or. 26.8).
Therefore if someone should wish to unfold all of it and to plant and
set the cities, which are now aloft in the air, upon the earth, one beside
another, I think that all the now intervening space in Italy would have
been filled up and that one continuous city, extending to the Ionian Sea,
would have been formed.
This wonderfully vivid sifting and re-configuring of the landscape finds

echoes not only in Pliny the Elder’s image of all the buildings of
Rome gathered together ‘in one great heap’,39 but also within Aristides’
36 Or. 23.43 (Persians); Or. 26.101, 102 (Romans); Or. 40.4–6, 9, 12–13 (Herakles); Or.
43.11–15, 19 (Zeus).
37 E.g. Or. 36.91.
38 Or. 1.13 and Or. 44.8–9, 14 (the Aegean); Or. 17.8 (Smyrna); Or. 23.15, 17 (the
Pergamene Asklepieion).
39 Pliny Natural History 36.101 ‘For if you were to gather together all the buildings of
Rome and place them in one great heap, the grandeur which towered above would be
no less than if another world were described in the one place.’ (Loeb translation).
corpus, in a number of oneiric evocations of specific landscapes and

cosmic geography in the Sacred Tales.40 For example, Aristides writes:
Π μπτMη φα!νετο μ4ν τ8 Jερ8ν το Απλλωνος τ8 ν τF. 'ρει τF. Μιλ>α·
δκει δ4 οOκματα ττα προσγεγεν7σ&αι, κα0 'νομα εBναι τF. χωρ!Fω Ελε-
φαντ!νη π8 Ελεφαντ!νης τ7ς ν ΑOγπτFω. *χαιρον δ" κα0 κατ’ α%τ τ
οOκματα κα0 κατ τ"ν οOκειτητα το τπου τF. τπFω (Or. 47.24).41
On the twenty-sixth, there appeared the Temple of Apollo, which is on
Mount Milyas. Certain buildings seemed to have been added and the
name of the place to be Elephantine from Elephantine in Egypt. I was
pleased, both because of the buildings themselves and because of the
similarity of the one place to the other.
In such passages the landscape is reconfigured through divine charis,

and the dream reveals the divine either directly in an epiphany of the
god or in the form of a prescription for Aristides’ body. But the sense of
the divine within the landscape again is not limited to the Sacred Tales,
but is fundamental to Aristides’ writings. It was traced in the case of
Cyzicus, and further examples include Oration 39, Regarding the well in the
temple of Asklepios, where divine charis is located in a specific feature of the
landscape, but also in the idea of the divine sons of Asklepios travelling
throughout the earth and offering their divine aid universally, unlike
the heroes Amphiaraos and Trophonios who are limited to the vicinity
of their oracles.42 Such place-related religion and immanent revelation
of deities can be found in other second-century texts such as Pausanias’
Description of Greece and Philostratos’ Heroikos.
More broadly Aristides’ interest in the themes of travel and land-
scape was by no means unusual in the literature of the Second Sophis-
tic. Examples include the ancient novels, Pausanias’ Description of Greece
and Menander Rhetor’s On Epideictic Speeches, which includes a sub-
stantial section on how to praise a country and city. A brief compar-
40 E.g. Or. 49.48; Or. 50.55–56 (cosmic visions); Or. 51.56–67 (topography of Athens).
41 Compare Or. 36.50–54, a detailed discussion of the location of Elephantine and a
refutation of Herodotos’ writings about the springs there.
42 Or. 20.21 (Nymphs and Muses in and around Smyrna); Or. 23.22 (Muses and
Graces inhabit Smyrna); Or. 27.14 (land of Cyzicus parcelled out amongst the gods);
Or. 38.20–21 (sons of Asklepios travel throughout the earth); Or. 39 passim, especially
4–6, 11, 14–15 (the sacred well in the Pergamene Asklepieion; its precise location in
the landscape; described as the god’s co-worker); Or. 44.11 (the Aegean is full of sweet
music, as Apollo and Artemis inhabit it); 16 (the Aegean is full of temples and paeans);
Or. 46.17–19 (description of Black Sea down into the Aegean, with Poseidon riding on
his chariot; mention of various temples to him dotted around), 20 (everywhere is his
temple; the Isthmus is the headquarters of his kingdom).
ison between Aristides’ approach to travel and landscape and those of

Pausanias and Menander Rhetor is instructive. Despite the importance
of the idea of the landscape of Greece in Pausanias’ work, there are
remarkably few landscape descriptions, and instead the text follows the
bare linear structure of a periplous narrative. Pausanias does not refer
to the practical details of his journey and rarely alludes to his feelings
or thoughts. In contrast Aristides inserts himself into the landscape by
imitating the process of travel in geographical ekphrasis and by describ-
ing his experiences of travel ranging from the details of his lodgings to
intense moments of divine epiphany. By contrast, Menander Rhetor’s
Epideictic Treatise I Book II has much in common with Aristides’ geo-
graphical ekphrasis. In particular Menander Rhetor advises orators to
locate the country or city in relation to the surrounding territory and
geographical features, and includes statements in which a territory, city
or harbour is compared to the human body or parts of it.43 The latter
theme, however, acquires an unparalleled prominence in the corpus of
Aristides’ orations, while transformational descriptions of the landscape
and personal journeys are wholly absent from the advice of Menan-
der Rhetor. Aristides’ approach to travel and landscape can thus be
situated within a broader cultural sensitisation to the subject and even
within similar literary tropes; but his linking of travel and landscape
to the human body, personal experience and divine revelation is origi-
nal.
I turn now to consider very briefly the second question of how rep-
resentative the example of Cyzicus is as far as interpenetration between
the Sacred Tales and other orations is concerned. This is a question with
far-reaching implications for the interpretation of Aristides’ corpus, but
I will here limit myself to a suggestion of direction. Again, I would
argue that Cyzicus is not a special case, although it is a wonderfully
neat example of the dovetailing of the Sacred Tales with another of Aris-
tides’ speeches.
There are various degrees of interpenetration to identify. Fundamen-
tally all the speeches are connected to events in Aristides’ life, such as
the state of his health and his travels in order to deliver orations, and
to external contemporary events, such as political events, earthquakes,
deaths of friends. These same events may be referred to in the Sacred
Tales and equally in other speeches. While the Sacred Tales focuses on
43 Menander Rhetor, On Epideictic Speeches, 346.1–7, 351.4–6, 22–25, 30–32.

Aristides’ interior both in subject matter and approach, it also intersects

with public events such as earthquakes and the plague, for example in
the stories of Aristides stopping the spate of earthquakes and of Athena
saving him from the plague.44 The earthquake that destroyed Smyrna
also features prominently in other orations, in particular Orations 17–21,
and the plague is also referred to.45 Similarly, in the Sacred Tales public
figures such as the emperors appear frequently, and Aristides’ teacher,
the grammarian Alexander of Cotyaeum, is mentioned;46 these figures
also appear in other orations, the emperors frequently (e.g. Or. 23.78–
79) and Alexander of Cotyaeum in Oration 32, Funeral Address in Honour of
Alexander. Fellow pilgrims at the Pergamene sanctuary appear not only
in the Sacred Tales but also in a number of orations.47
There are also numerous cases of specific cross-referencing between
the Sacred Tales and other orations. In the Sacred Tales there are refer-
ences to the composition of orations, some of which survive, such as
Oration 27, Panegyric in Cyzicus, Oration 34, Against Those Who Burlesque the
Mysteries and Oration 41, Dionysus;48 and there are references to the Sacred
Tales in Oration 42, An Address Regarding Asklepios and Oration 28, Concerning
a Remark in Passing.49 Most fundamentally the Sacred Tales as a whole is an
apologetic text, partly aiming to silence those who criticised Aristides
for not declaiming often enough.50 To this end it reveals the extent of
Aristides’ constant bodily sufferings and the god’s constant commands,
both of which prevented him from writing and delivering speeches on
many occasions. The relevance of this theme to the other orations is
evident not only in Oration 33, To Those Who Criticise Him Because He
44 Or. 48.41; 49.38–43 (earthquakes); and Or. 51.25 (Athena saving him from the
plague).
45 Or. 33.6.
46 E.g. Or. 47.23 (Alexander of Cotyaeum and the emperor); 36–38 (dream of Marcus
Aurelius); 46–49 (dream of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus); Or. 50.75 (he receives
letters from Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, confirming his immunity from public
office).
47 References to pilgrimage to Asklepios at Pergamon and to pilgrims known in the
Sacred Tales: Or. 23.16; Or. 28.88, 133; Or. 36.10.

48 Or. 50.25 (composition of Oration 41, In Defence of Running, Athena and Dionysus); Or.
51.16 (composition of Oration 27, Panegyric in Cyzicus). See also Or. 50.42 (reference to the
Macedonian man’s dream of singing a paean to ‘Herakles Asklepios’, also referred to
in Or. 40.21); Or. 51.39 (reference to delivering Oration 34, Against Those Who Burlesque
the Mysteries, and amazing feeling of ease during delivery); Or. 52.3 (possible allusions to
Oration 1, Panathenaikos, and Oration 26, On Rome, in a dream).
49 Or. 42.4; Or. 28.116–118.
50 E.g. Or. 50.23; Or. 51.56.
Does Not Declaim, which deals directly with the issue, but also in numer-
ous other instances where the speeches open with an apology for the
fact that Aristides himself is not delivering the speech on account of
ill health or at the commands of the god.51 At the same time, one of
the key themes of the Sacred Tales is that of the god’s help to Aristides
in improving his oratory, and this directly connects the work with the
actual extant orations. The Sacred Tales, especially in Book IV, reveals
the way in which a symbiotic relationship develops between Aristides’
ill-health and his oratory, as the god’s communications begin and con-
tinue with great frequency on account of the former but gradually
become beneficial to the latter. Eventually this complicated relationship
between ill-health and oratorical success is interpreted both by Aristides
and apparently by the orator Pardalas along the lines that he became
ill ‘by some divine good fortune’ (τχMη τιν0 &ε!>α) in order to improve his
oratory (Or. 50.27 and 29). At various points in the Sacred Tales Aristides
discusses in detail how the god effected this improvement, including
exhortations not to abandon oratory (Or. 50.14), suggestions of partic-
ular topics of composition (Or. 50.39), exercises of ‘unseen preparation’
(Or. 50.26), oneiric introductions to the great authors of the past (Or.
50.59), actual prompting with specific phrases in dreams (Or. 50.25–27
and 39–41), and divine inspiration during delivery (Or. 50.22). In the
orations themselves there are countless references to divine commands
to take up the challenge of certain topics, pleas for divine aid, and
references to direct divine inspiration on the way.52 But whereas these
are brief and may appear conventional, the narrative of the Sacred Tales
reveals in depth the intimate processes of composition underlying the
other orations, and how these relate to Aristides’ body and the divine.
Where does this discussion lead us? I suggest that it offers us the model
of using the Sacred Tales as a guide to reading Aristides’ corpus not
only in a specific way, as I hope to have demonstrated in relation to
Oration 27, Panegyric in Cyzicus and in relation to the theme of travel and
landscape, but also in a fundamental way, as a key interpretative text
that reveals Aristides’ essential outlook. A reading of the Sacred Tales
prompts us to take very seriously the statement in Oration 23, Concerning
Concord that the area of Pergamon where the sanctuary of Asklepios
was situated was ‘the most honoured of all and ever in my mind’ (τ8 δ’
51 Or. 20.2; Or. 21.2; Or. 24.1; Or. 32.1; Or. 33, passim, e.g. 4; Or. 46.1.
52 E.g. Or. 22.1; Or. 26.1; Or. 28.21 and 105; Or. 30.14; Or. 36.124.
YπKντων τιμι,τατον κα0 δι πKσης ε0 μνμης μο0, Or. 23.14), and the
passage in Oration 46, The Isthmian Oration: Regarding Poseidon ‘when I am
mindful of the divine everywhere and when most of my lectures, more
or less, are concerned with this’ (μ4 πανταχο το &ε!ου μεμνημ νον, κα0
σχεδ8ν τ7ς πλε!στης μοι διατριβ7ς τ.ν λγων περ0 τατα οNσης, Or. 46.3).
Aristides’ deeply religious outlook can then be recognised throughout
his corpus as the prism through which everything is viewed and indeed
transformed, most importantly the landscape, his own body and his
oratory.
chapter eight
ARISTIDES AND PLUTARCH ON SELF-PRAISE
Dana Fields
This paper concerns the two longest and most elaborate discussions
of self-praise that survive from Greco-Roman antiquity, Plutarch’s On
Inoffensive Self-Praise and Aristides’ On an Incidental Remark.1 I propose to
read these texts in a way that sets each author’s treatment of the topic
against the social and political contexts that these same texts depict,
while taking into account their differences in aim and genre. The focus
of each work is on the arguments for or against self-praise (and in
Plutarch’s case helpful how-to tips). At the same time, it is crucial not
to overlook the fact that all of the advice, the complaints, and the self-
justifications expressed by these texts take shape against the political
and cultural background of the high Roman Empire. By comparing
two figures who position themselves in such strikingly different ways in
relation to the agonistic elite display culture of this period, we can tease
out elements of the complex relationship between epideictic rhetoric,
self-promotion, and political involvement.2
1 Περ0 το \αυτ8ν παινεν νεπιφ&νως and Or. 28, Περ0 το παραφ& γματος.
See Rutherford 1995, 199–201 for other sources on periautologia and self-praise more
broadly, plus Dio Chrysostom Or. 57 (a defense of Nestor’s boasting, which serves as a
preemptive deflection in case the same charge might be brought against Dio himself,
and in the course of which Dio manages to assimilate himself to Nestor—a strategy
that rivals Aristides’ for self-aggrandizement), and Alexander of Cotiaeum’s ‘On the
Difference between Praise and Encomium’ found at Rhetores Graeci 3.2–4 (ed. Spengel).
The texts that discuss this issue are predominantly Greek, with the exceptions of
Tacitus Agricola 1 and Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 11.1.16, where brief mentions appear.
See also Gibson 2003, esp. 245–248, for discussion of Pliny’s use of mitigating strategies
in self-praise and the place of self-praise in Roman culture more generally.
2 I use the terms ‘political’ and ‘politics’ (as they apply to the actions of an individ-
ual) in the narrow sense, here and throughout this essay, to refer to direct involvement
in civic or provincial institutions and the fulfillment of civic or provincial responsibil-
ities. This includes holding office, performing public benefaction (voluntary or oth-
erwise), and serving as an ambassador to other cities, the emperor, or one of the
emperor’s representatives. More generally, it also means taking an active part in ensur-
ing the well-being (however tendentiously defined) of the city in its internal affairs and
in its relations with other cities and the imperial authorities.
152 dana fields
Plutarch’s On Inoffensive Self-Praise is an instructional treatise probably

written during the first decades of the second century CE.3 Plutarch
sets out reasons why self-praise is off-putting to others, situations where
it is acceptable, and ways to use it without offending (or avoid using
it altogether). Aristides’ On an Incidental Remark is by contrast defensive
and polemical rather than didactic. The situation that prompted the
work can be gleaned from the text as follows: during his period of
‘incubation’ at the temple of Asclepius in the mid 140’s CE, Aristides
apparently committed a faux pas while presenting a speech in honor
of Athena. He inserted into his written remarks some extemporaneous
praise of the speech he was currently giving, allegedly provoking the
censure of an unnamed critic, who in turn convinced a friend of
the rhetor to criticize him privately. On an Incidental Remark represents
Aristides’ public response to this criticism, in which he defends his
comment by giving reasons for and examples of justified self-praise.
Self-Praise in the High Empire
It has been commonly observed that self-praise, or periautologia (literally:

talking about oneself), is a concern that appears frequently in texts of
the Roman imperial period, though, as has also been demonstrated,
interest in this topic originates earlier.4 My primary question in this
paper is what use Plutarch and Aristides in particular make of this
theme and what this tells us about how each author envisioned the role
of the prominent man in relation to his society, but I would also like
3 If the addressee Herculanus is in fact C. Julius Eurycles Herculanus L. Vibullius

Pius, descendant of Spartan dynasts who received their local rule and their citizen-
ship from Octavian, friend to Hadrian, and first senator from Sparta (under Trajan).
Herculanus was known also for his patronage locally in Sparta and to various other
Greek cities on a scale comparable to the benefactions of Herodes Atticus. See Half-
mann 1979, no. 29; Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 110–111. On the dating of Plutarch’s
works, see Jones 1966.
4 See Pernot 1998, though it does not necessarily follow that self-praise is not an
especial concern in the Roman period. See also Most 1989, arguing that throughout
Greek literature talking about oneself to strangers must take the form of a ‘tale of woe’,
which he regards as the least problematic mode of self-disclosure in such a situation. As
one might expect, self-aggrandizement and other issues related to aristocratic competi-
tion are also prominent in honorific inscriptions; see e.g. from third century Oenoanda
SEG XLIV 1182 (B), LIII 1689 (on which see Dickey 2003).
aristides and plutarch on self-praise 153
to raise the question of what this preoccupation with praising oneself

means more broadly during this era.
Diverse interpretations have appeared over the course of the last cen-
tury regarding the amount of attention that the problem of self-praise
receives during the high Roman Empire. These range from Mikhail
Bakhtin’s perception of a widespread alienation of the individual from
his society, which leaves the individual unsure as to how much self-
assertion is allowed (1981, 132–135),5 to Ian Rutherford’s view that the
issue is merely a matter of rhetorical decorum, an interpretation that
cuts loose the problematics of self-praise from their historical moorings
(1995, 193–204).6 In my opinion, the prevalence of the concern with self-
praise shows the individual (qua individual) making sense of his place in
relation to society. After all, such a pervasive concern with how to talk
about oneself suggests not individuals alienated from society, but just
the opposite: an elite culture in which people are intensely engaged
with others, even to the point where this engagement verges on blood
sport (as we will see in the course of this paper).
Rutherford is right to say that ‘most of periautologia tradition in
rhetoric is the working out of a problem of decorum created by a conflict
between the social pressure to assert oneself in public and the social
criticism of excessive assertiveness’ (ibid., 201). However, the agonistic
pressure to self-promote and the opposing forces of social unification
that aim to prevent any man from becoming too conspicuous must be
examined with reference to the particular historical contexts that give
meaning to these forces. For Plutarch and Aristides, this fundamental
tension was shaped to a large degree by the political and social envi-
ronment of the imperial Greek cities.7 Epigraphic sources reveal copi-
5 It is not unreasonable to suspect that this interpretation was colored by Bakhtin’s

own experiences under Stalin, including a six-year exile to Kazakhstan. Cf. his con-
temporary E.R. Dodds’s view of the second to third centuries as an ‘age of anxiety’ in
Dodds 1965 (and Swain’s historicization of that claim: 1996, 106–108).
6 Rutherford is followed for the most part by Pernot, who locates the problem of
periautologia in the tension between its usefulness and its ‘dénonciation unanime’, (1998,
at 117).
7 For surveys of local politics in the Greek East, see Jones 1940, 170–191; Sartre 1991,
esp. 126–133; Millar 2006 [1993]; Salmeri 2000, 69–76; Ma 2000, 117–122. For a study
of the robust political culture of Asia Minor in the High Empire (from which we have
the preponderance of our epigraphic material), see Mitchell 1993, 198–217; and for an
examination of the role of local officials as represented in inscriptions detailing civic
offices in the province of Asia, see Dmitriev 2005, esp. 140–188 (though see also the
reservations of Burell 2005; Habicht 2005).
154 dana fields
ous internal political activity in the Greek East, but the limited auton-
omy of these cities reduced their scope of action in external affairs.
Furthermore, there was at least some degree of direct oversight by
Roman magistrates, except among the few ‘free’ cities.8 Some of the
greatest threats to the stability of the Greek cities were internal rifts,
caused by aristocratic infighting, class conflict, or other factionalism, as
shown in the writings of Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, and Aristides, as
well as epigraphic and numismatic evidence.9 As a result, the potential
for Roman intervention always loomed, which provided elite orators
with a trope to use (opportunistically or not) in their attempts at con-
trolling the urban masses.
At the same time as we recognize the influence of the socio-political
environment in which Plutarch and Aristides wrote, we should also
acknowledge that the contrasts between their texts arise in part from
the cultural role in which each of the authors generally chose to present
himself—Plutarch as instructive philosopher and Aristides as rhetor
(or ‘sophist’, much as Aristides might dispute that label).10 The role
to which each author lays claim plays a large part in determining
his approach to the long-standing problem of negotiation between the
extremes of self-glorification and restraint in a highly competitive soci-
ety. Greek elite culture always had an agonistic bent, but during this
period the emphasis becomes more narrowly focused on the sphere of
oratorical performance as such. I argue that Plutarch’s and Aristides’
respective self-positioning in relation to this epideictic culture helps elu-
cidate the complicated interrelation of literary and political activity in
the Roman era.
The political dimension of self-praise is illustrated by the way these
authors’ treatments of the topic tap into a larger tension between
behavior that is advantageous locally and behavior that is advantageous
8 See Millar 2004a [1988], 203; id. 2004b [1981], 328 on the elusive definition of the
‘free city’.
9 For Aristides and Plutarch, see below; for Dio, see e.g. Or. 32, 34, 39, 46. Sheppard
1984–1986, 241–248, provides an overview.

10 In framing this essay, I take Plutarch and Aristides to be representative to a
significant degree of the cultural roles they adopt, but I do not mean to suggest that
they are identical to their roles. There are of course limits to how typical we can take
them to be, and I acknowledge that each was an idiosyncratic intellectual in his own
right. Furthermore, the roles themselves are malleable (i.e. each man takes an active
part in shaping the meaning of his role) and generally a matter of self-presentation:
in spite of the common contraposition of rhetoric and philosophy (traceable back to
Plato), Plutarch produced some sophistic works, while Aristides displays in his writings
a very thorough knowledge of Plato’s arguments (rather than just his style).
in a broader imperial context. Plutarch’s writings convey the message

that within the polis the time for fierce competition and its accompa-
nying self-promotion has passed (though self-praise always had to be
handled with care, as his examples from orators of the classical period
illustrate).11 By contrast, Aristides represents what later became for elite
Greeks the dominant mode of public life, in which ambition aimed
at the imperial center took priority over local participation and bene-
faction.12 In further support of this point we can note, for example,
Aristides’ pride in having given speeches before emperors and his resis-
tance to taking up local office.13 By comparing these two authors we
can attain a better perspective on the tension inherent in the very issue
of self-praise and on the range of approaches to it that were available to
prominent Greeks of the High Empire.
Plutarch: the Value of Harmony
When reading Plutarch’s On Inoffensive Self-Praise against Aristides’ work

on the same theme, one aspect of Plutarch’s piece that becomes par-
ticularly striking is its orientation toward the external viewpoint. This
should not be too surprising in and of itself—it is practically a cliché at
this point to say that the Greeks inhabited a culture carefully attuned
to judgment in the eyes of others14—but it is Aristides’ lack of inter-
est in discussing why self-praise creates problems and what effect it has
on its listeners that makes the attention to these issues so noticeable in
Plutarch.
11 For more on Plutarch’s relation to his political context, see Aalders 1982; Swain
1996, 135–186; Stadter and Van der Stockt (eds.) 2002; de Blois et al. (eds.) 2004,
esp. the contributions of Stadter, de Blois, Beck, and Cook. For the philosophical
background of Plutarch’s political prescriptions, see the papers of Hershbell, Secall,
and Trapp (ibid.).
12 See Swain 1997, 5–9. On evasion of local offices (and their accompanying litur-
gies), see Jones 1940, 184–190.

13 Pride in having given speeches to emperors: Or. 42.14; in his connection with the
emperors more generally: Or. 19.1. See also Philostratus, Vitae Sophistarum 582–583, and
Behr 1968, 111, 142–144. Resistance to office: Or. 50.71–108; cf. Pernot, pp. 176–179 in
this volume, for a reading of Aristides’ evasion of office as prioritizing Asclepius over all
else, including the imperial authority.
14 Cf. Dodds’s importation of the concept ‘shame culture’ from anthropology (1951,
28–63). Note also Swain’s insistence that the interest in the ‘self ’ during the Roman
Empire does not include a conception of an isolated individual, but a self that exists in
relation to others and is maintained with others’ judgments in mind (1996, 128).
156 dana fields
These other-oriented strategies are apparent in the ethical terms

Plutarch uses to describe self-praise: he calls it offensive (παχ& ς, 539a),
unpleasant (τ"ν ηδ!αν, 539b), emphasizes its role in inciting both
hatred and envy, and proclaims ‘we are appropriately disgusted at it’
(εOκτως δυσχερα!νομεν, 539c).15 He draws an even stronger connec-
tion between how one presents oneself and how others react when
he scolds that ‘praise of oneself is most painful/distressing to others’
(λυπηρτατον, 539d). The man who promotes himself in this way is also
taken to exhibit shamelessness and a selfish, unjust character. One rea-
son for this judgment is the fact that the auto-encomiast forces his lis-
tener into a choice between two undesirable reactions: to stay quiet and
seem envious, or to join in the praise and act as a flatterer (539d).16
It is almost as if the braggart is his own flatterer, inflating himself
just as inappropriately as a flatterer does for others, and with equal
shamelessness. Throughout this list of criticisms, it is precisely the self-
centeredness of the auto-encomiast, that is, his lack of attention to oth-
ers’ reactions, that comes under attack.
In trying to elucidate why self-praise is such a problem at the close of
the work, Plutarch maintains his focus on others’ reactions. In reference
to manipulative types who deliberately provoke someone into glorifying
himself, Plutarch states:
Εν :πασιν ο`ν τοτοις ε%λαβητ ον )ς *νι μKλιστα, μτε συνεκπ!πτοντα
τος πα!νοις μτε τας ρωτσεσιν \αυτ8ν προϊ μενον. ντελεστKτη δ4
τοτων ε%λKβεια κα0 φυλακ" τ8 προσ χειν \τ ροις \αυτο?ς παινοσι κα0
μνημονεειν, )ς ηδ4ς τ8 πρAγμα κα0 λυπηρ8ν :πασι κα0 λγος λλος
ο%δε0ς ο[τως παχ&"ς ο%δ4 βαρς. ο%δ4 γ ρ *χοντες εOπεν @ τι πKσχομεν
λλο κακ8ν Xπ8 τ.ν αXτο?ς παινοντων Sσπερ φσει βαρυνμενοι τ8
πρAγμα κα0 φεγοντες παλλαγ7ναι κα0 ναπνεσαι σπεδομεν. (547c–d)
In all these circumstances one cannot be too cautious, neither allowing
oneself to be drawn out by the compliments nor led on by the questions.
The best means of caution and guarding against this is to pay attention
to others praising themselves and to remember that the matter was
distasteful and painful to all and that no other speech is so annoying
or offensive. For though we cannot say that we have suffered any ill other
than having to listen to the self-praise, it is as if by nature that we are
15 The Greek text of Plutarch’s On Inoffensive Self-Praise is Pohlenz and Sieveking 1972;
the text of Political Precepts is Hubert and Pohlenz 1957.

16 The speaker demonstrates he is unworthy of praise by boasting; therefore any
praise of him must be flattery.

oppressed at the matter and try to escape it, and we are eager to be set
free and to breathe again.17
As an explanation for the offensiveness of self-praise, this passage
stresses the inexplicability of the irritation that the act causes. The
words used to convey the offense itself emphasize its weighty quality:
it is ‘heavy’ (παχ&ς), ‘burdensome’ (βαρς), and ‘oppressive’ (βαρυν-
μενοι), suggesting a quasi-physical dimension to the effects of self-praise.
Yet Plutarch is only able to account for the unbearable heaviness of
auto-encomium by attributing it to ‘human nature’ (φσις). In using
images of physicality to understand the effects of self-praise, Plutarch
occludes the evasiveness of his recourse to the mysterious and unques-
tionable ‘way things are’. However, as he continues, it becomes appar-
ent that this so-called ‘natural’ reaction is a cover for the resentment
caused by others’ flaunting of their social or material advantages, as
illustrated by the example of a resentful parasite (547d). Plutarch’s
avoidance of making this revelation explicit is as telling (if not more
so) than if he had said it outright: if the wealthy and prominent can
keep quiet about their privilege, he implies, the society as a whole will
be more stable, and those advantages will not come under threat. Here,
as elsewhere, Plutarch reveals that he is concerned with the reactions
of less privileged ‘others’ as well as those of the reader’s aristocratic
fellows.18
The preceding passage highlights not just the effects of self-praise
but also the vigilance over oneself necessary for avoiding the error.19
Plutarch follows with a tip for achieving that aim:
17 All translations are my own.

18 See below, n. 25.
19 The language used to prescribe this vigilance also appears in Plutarch’s How
to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, another text highly concerned with negotiating the
tensions inherent in elite (and would-be elite) interaction and with keeping watch over
oneself and others (ε%λKβεια and related forms in this connection: 49a, 58a, 70e, 71b;
φυλακ and related forms: 50e, 56f, 57a, 61d, 66e, 68d, 71d, 72d). See Whitmarsh
2006, passim, but esp. 102. The emphasis on both self-mastery and the monitoring
of others in this period has been widely recognized. This is especially so in the
wake of Foucault’s influential analysis (1986, 39–95), which takes this preoccupation
as indicating the relocation of ethical self-definition among elites to a more internally-
oriented plane (which he describes as an intensification and valorization of the relations
‘of oneself to oneself ’). However, Foucault’s explanation of the phenomenon in terms
of the individual’s declining political efficacy has been seriously questioned in light of
evidence that the political environment of the Greek cities continued to foster robust
158 dana fields
#ν μνημονεωμεν, @τι τος Oδ!οις πα!νοις λλτριος 5πεται ψγος ε0 κα0
γ!νεται τ λος δοξ!α τ7ς κενοδοξ!ας τατης… φεξμε&α το λ γειν περ0
αXτ.ν, #ν μ τι μεγKλα μ λλωμεν hφελεν \αυτο?ς D το?ς κοοντας.
(547e–f)
If we remember that censure of others always follows from praise of
oneself and that the end of this empty self-glorification is the opposite
of glory… we will avoid speaking about ourselves unless we intend some
great advantage to ourselves or our listeners.
This ambiguous expression, ‘λλτριος… ψγος’, manages to suggest

both criticism from others who are annoyed at having to listen to self-
praise and the implicit criticism of others that praising oneself entails
in a context where competition is perceived as zero-sum. Both readings
illustrate Plutarch’s great sensitivity to the volatile nature of agonistic
elite culture.20
In the course of this conclusion, Plutarch moves from discussing
annoyance at others’ self-praise to strategies for avoiding the act one-
self, but despite this switch he maintains the first person plural. This
‘we’, while didactic in tone, is also slippery in its identification, migrat-
ing throughout this work between the producers of self-promotion and
their audience, and thus creating a double perspective.21 The implica-
tion is that one must be able to imagine one’s actions from an external
point of view to determine the correct (i.e. the least offensive) behavior.
It is indeed crucial to Plutarch’s aims and to the kind of advice he is
giving that the desirable action is the one least annoying to others.
The last sentence of the text (as quoted above) reinforces (and com-
plicates) one more fundamental and recurrent theme: self-praise is jus-
tified if it has some end that promotes the collective good.22 But this
ending also throws into question the assumptions of the entire work by
raising the possibility that self-interest is also a justifiable reason—if one
local involvement. See e.g. Swain 1999, 89, demonstrating that the proper regulation
of the self and of private life was viewed in the high empire as a prerequisite for the
management of public life.
20 See also 540a–b, 546c, 546f–547a, as well as Sympotic Questions 2.1, 630c–d on
annoying self-praise.
21 Cf. Plutarch’s use of a similar tactic in How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend. The tricks
of shifting focalization in both these works illustrate the importance of keeping watch
over others as training for monitoring oneself.
22 See also 539e–f, 544d. Plutarch’s language here echoes that of Plato in his dis-
cussions of the exceptional ‘noble lie’ (π’ hφελ!>α τ7ς πλεως, Republic 389b; π’ hφε-
λ!>α τ.ν ρχομ νων, 459d; see also 414b–415d). Both authors share the aim of political
expediency.
manages to self-promote without causing a negative reaction. At this

point we must note that Plutarch’s suggestions in On Inoffensive Self-Praise
are generally aimed at the man taking an active part in local politics. A
generous reader might grant Plutarch that the true statesman’s interests
are always in some sense the public interest; and, in fact, at the opening
of the Political Precepts, Plutarch himself urges that a man should never
go into public life to glorify himself but rather to serve his community
with its best interests as his aim (798c–799a). However, this ending also
points to the fact that tension still remains between the value of self-
praise to an individual and the social forces that discourage it.
Plutarch’s Political Precepts can also be used to throw further light on
why the issue of self-praise is so relevant to Greek politics under the
Roman Empire. The advice in On Inoffensive Self-Praise is geared overall
toward maintaining social harmony and diminishing envy (phthonos) at
a local level.23 The title itself in Greek is Περ0 το \αυτ8ν παινεν
νεπιφ&νως: On praising oneself without engendering the odium that
accompanies too-eminent success.24 Terms such as μμελς (literally:
harmonious in the musical sense) come up fairly frequently and are set
in opposition to the unattractive quality of self-love and the undesirable
envy of others (542b, 544b). Furthermore, Plutarch explicitly states that
harmony should be an aim both in interaction with one’s equals and in
one’s relationship with the masses (hoi polloi).25
By comparing Plutarch’s presentation of harmony in the Political Pre-
cepts to that in On Inoffensive Self-Praise, we can see that for Plutarch the
value of social harmony lies in its necessity for maintaining local sta-
bility.26 He illustrates this when he cautions that ambition (φιλοτιμ!α)
23 Cf. Plutarch’s interest in harmony on an extremely local scale, i.e. among fellow-
diners, in Sympotic Questions, esp. 1.2, 615c–619a; 1.4, 620a–622b; 7.6, 709d. In expressing
his concern not only about aristocratic phthonos but also about mitigating strategies for
dealing with that envy, Plutarch echoes Pindaric themes, illustrating a parallel between
the social function of his text and that of Pindar’s apotropaic treatment of (human)
phthonos; for an analysis of Pindar’s strategies for counteracting envy, see Kurke 1991,
195–218.
24 On this definition of phthonos, see Konstan 2003.
25 Envy and resentment of hoi polloi specifically: 542c, 544d; envy explicitly among
elites: 540b, 546c, 546f–547a. Envy among elites is mainly discussed as the cause of
self-praise, which would in turn exacerbate the problem, while the masses’ envy is
prompted by the self-praise of a public speaker.
26 Expressed as homonoia: 824b–e; and in a musical metaphor: 809e. See Sheppard
1984–1986 on the importance of homonoia as an ideal in the works of Plutarch and in

this period more generally, as attested by literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence;
Swain 1999 on Plutarch’s depictions of the interrelation of domestic/interpersonal
160 dana fields
and contentiousness (φιλονεικ!α) destroy a state,27 and urges local lead-

ers not to involve Rome in order to assert themselves over their rivals—
this tactic results in more subjection to the Romans than is necessary
and weakens the authority of local governments (814e–815a).28 As in
On Inoffensive Self-Praise, Plutarch once again shows his concern over the
dangers of class conflict: he warns that faction in the sense of quarrels
between the elites and (as he puts it) their ‘inferiors’ can destabilize a
city, and cites the current ‘weak state of Greek affairs’ as a reason to
be especially careful in maintaining internal concord (homonoia).29 Seen
against this background, it becomes clear that the importance of not
offending with self-praise during this period is so much more than a
strategic way to make friends and influence people. Exercising discre-
tion in talking about oneself is crucial to maintaining the limited inde-
pendence that Greek cities enjoyed, at the same time as it helps safe-
guard the advantages of the wealthy and prominent.
Aristides: Self-Promotion in the Service of Truth
Moving now to Aristides’ On an Incidental Remark, we find a very different

emphasis from that of Plutarch. Aristides’ work devotes far more space
than Plutarch’s to providing justifications for self-praise and shows al-
most no interest in the reactions of the listener. This emphasis, and
more specifically the kinds of justification Aristides produces, suggest
a view of self-praise that focuses more on the qualities of the man
speaking and less on his social context.
Aristides repeatedly insists that it is his own talent as an orator, along
with the inspiration and favor of the gods, that enables him to make
comments in praise of himself. The idea that self-praise is justified by
the nature of the man speaking is a theme that pervades the text, but
Aristides sets it out most succinctly in this formulation: ‘I believe it is a
homonoia and the smooth running of a city; Cook 2004 on the way Plutarch’s preferred
rhetorical exempla in the Political Precepts also emphasize harmony.
27 809c, 815a–b, 819e–820a, 824f–825f. Plutarch also notes that this ambition and
contentiousness are equally destructive to a statesman’s career: 811d–e, 816c–d. (N.B.

that Hubert and Pohlenz prefer φιλονικ!α at 811d, 815a.)
28 This advice is supported by episodes from the history of the Roman conquest of
mainland Greece as depicted in Plutarch’s Life of Flamininus 12.9–10.

29 815a–819d, 823e–824e. Cf. Aristides on ceasing from faction, rather than from
aristocratic rivalry, to avoid Roman intervention (Or. 24.22).

trait of an intelligent and moderate man to know his worth, and of the
just man to pay himself and others their due, and of a brave man to
speak the truth unafraid’ (φρον!μου μ4ν γ ρ, οBμαι, κα0 σ,φρονος γν.ναι
τ"ν ξ!αν, δικα!ου δ4 τ πρ ποντα κα0 αXτF. κα0 \τ ροις ποδοναι,
νδρε!ου δ4 μ" φοβη&7ναι τλη&4ς εOπεν, 145).30
The assumption that underlies the first part of this statement is one
that recurs often in this speech: self-knowledge is reliable.31 Here we can
compare the attitude of Plutarch, who warns in On Inoffensive Self-Praise
and elsewhere that self-love makes self-knowledge extremely difficult to
attain.32 Clearly this sense of caution is not shared by Aristides, who
proclaims, ‘I understand oratory better than the critic and those like
him and am more capable of judging what deserves praise than a
member of the audience’ (κα! μοι παρ!ει περ0 τοτων μεινον σο κα0
τ.ν σο0 προσομο!ων π!στασ&αι, σκοτοδινι>A δ" πAς ντα&α κροατ"ς
κα0 ο%κ *χει τ!ς γ νηται, 120). As this statement suggests, self-knowledge
for Aristides is closely tied to an understanding of the art of oratory.
Early on in the speech, he presents the matter this way: if the critic
thinks Aristides is a better judge than himself of what is suitable to say
in a historical declamation in the person of a famous ancient orator,
how can he think that he is a better judge than Aristides when it comes
to what is suitable for Aristides to say about himself ? While, as Aristides
says, he has to guess at the character of figures like Demosthenes, he
thinks he knows his own character clearly (6–7).33
Besides the belief that one can be clear-sighted about oneself, the
statement quoted above (145) relies on two other suspicious assump-
tions. The clause at the center of the sentence suggests that speaking
well of oneself is equivalent to speaking well of someone else, which
implicitly locates the value of speech in its truth-content and thereby
denies the importance of its role in social interaction.34 In connection
with this, the belief underlying the final phrase is that speaking the
truth is valuable in itself, no matter what effect it has.
30 See also 11, 150–151.

31 See also 4–5, 14, 118.
32 On Inoffensive Self-Praise 546b; How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend 48e–49a; On
Tranquility of Mind 471d–e.

33 The οBμαι in ‘τ8 δ’ μαυτο σαφ.ς, οBμαι, π!σταμαι’ is likely sarcastic.
34 Cf. Plutarch on the limited circumstances (καιρς κα0 πρKχις) that might allow this
approach: On Inoffensive Self-Praise 539e.

162 dana fields
These assumptions are part of a tendency throughout this speech to

reframe the issue of self-praise as a matter of frankness, parrhêsia.35 Aris-
tides accuses his critic of disallowing candor entirely if he prevents Aris-
tides from praising himself (at least without showing that the self-praise
is untrue) (47). This argument, like many of those that Aristides makes
about himself in this speech, is based on the fundamental premise that
assertions should fit what they refer to (in this case, the quality of Aris-
tides’ oratory) rather than the social context in which they take place.
As Aristides says:
ο[τω το!νυν κα0 τ.ν ν&ρ,πων @σοι &εοφιλες κα0 τ.ν -μοφλων προ χου-
σιν, ο%κ αOσχνονται τλη&7 λ γοντες, λλ’ Tγονται το?ς λτας Xπ8 πο-
ρ!ας πολλ ψευδομ νους κα0 κατ τ"ν τ7ς χρε!ας αOτ!αν ποι7σαι τοNνομα
τοτο ] σ? φεγεις, τ8ν λαζνα, Fp πAσαν τ"ν ναντ!αν *ρχεται δπου&εν
- τλη&7 λ γων. (49)36
All men dear to the gods and excelling their fellows are not ashamed
to speak the truth, but they believe that beggars tell many lies out of
poverty and because of their need have made up this name which you
shun, ‘braggart’. This ‘braggart’ is entirely opposite to the direction the
truth-speaker proceeds.
With this ‘fanciful etymology’,37 the ‘god-cherished’ truth-speaker is set
up as the opposite of the λαζ,ν, the braggart, who is implicitly an
impostor because he praises himself dishonestly.38 Aristides even goes
so far as to claim that his speech (or any true statement) cannot be
blameworthy on the very basis that it is true when he reminds his
audience that insult is not illegal, only slander. By the same logic, he
continues, ‘if someone praises himself, he would not justly be blamed,
so long as he does not tell lies’ (ο[τως ο%δ’ #ν περ0 \αυτο τις ε%φημM7,
δικα!ως #ν *χοι μ μψιν, 5ως πεστιν τ8 τ ψευδ7 λ γειν, 50).
Another ploy Aristides uses to shed a more positive light on his
behavior is the depiction of his self-praise as having philanthropic
motives (a tactic which is in line with Plutarch’s advice). In one instance
35 For more references to parrhêsia, see 53, 85, 88.

36 Cf. 11.
37 Behr 1981, 384 n. 72. The pun relies on similarities between λτης (beggar/wan-
derer) and λαζ,ν (braggart) and builds off a much older pun on λη&ς (truth) and
λτης, which is first attested at Od. 14.118–127. Cf. Plutarch On Exile 607c–d; Dio
Chrysostom 1.9, 7.1, 13.9–11. Cf. also Strabo 1.2.23, which connects the λαζ,ν with
πλKνη (wandering)! On Homer, see Goldhill 1991, 38; Segal 1994, 179–183. On Dio, see
Whitmarsh 2001, 162.
38 On the history of the term λαζ,ν, see MacDowell 1990.
he even proposes that he is duty-bound to point out what is good about

his speech since otherwise the crowd simply would not be capable
of noticing all of its fine elements, much less judging which of its
qualities are most deserving of praise. Therefore the act of self-praise
is characteristic of a man who is ‘completely forthright and generous’
(κα&αρ.ς Yπλον κα0 φιλKν&ρωπον, 119).39 This formulation once again
depends on Aristides’ superior understanding of the oratorical art. In
a metaphor that oozes condescension, he compares his naïve audience,
in their ignorance at how to judge his speeches, to soldiers in a battle
line who have been surrounded and are thrown into confusion (120).
In other words, his speeches are so good that they practically attack
the listener with a barrage of excellent techniques! Only with Aristides’
help can the audience survive this onslaught by learning the true value
of his oratorical skill.
Aristides: Divine Sanction
In addition to the admirable qualities of frankness and benevolence that

Aristides claims for himself, another factor that is crucial to justifying
his self-praise is his self-presentation (in this speech and elsewhere) as
both a favorite of particular gods and the recipient of divine help.
According to Aristides, help from the gods is part of what makes a
man great,40 and (as we have seen) a great man must be honest and
open about his greatness. Honesty therefore includes attributing this
excellence to the gods that made it possible; in Aristides’ case these
are Asclepius, Athena, and even the Muses. Aristides’ argument rests
in part on the notion that his self-praise is indirectly praise of these
divinities and that barring him from remarking on the greatness they
have allowed him to attain is in some sense to disallow praise of the
gods themselves.
Aristides’ comments about his connection to the gods range from the
general, as when, for example, he groups himself among those dear to
39 See also 103, 105, 147.

40 Precedents for divine inspiration of oratory include: Plato as skeptical of oratorical
inspiration, Phaedrus 234d–e, 245a; Ion 534c; Aristotle on the ‘enthusiastic’ style, in
connection with ‘what is fitting’ (τ8 πρ πον), Rhetoric 1408a36–b20. See also Cicero De
Oratore 2.193–194; Seneca Major Suasoriae 3.6; Quintilian on Plato as divinely inspired,
Institutio Oratoria 12.10.24.
164 dana fields
the gods,41 to the very personal, as at the end of the speech when he
refers to Asclepius as his patron or protector (προστKτης) and his only
guide (παιδαγωγς, 156).42 This image of Asclepius as a teacher and
patron is one that appears frequently in the Hieroi Logoi. Aristides relates
how, through the medium of a dream, the god encouraged and even
commanded him not to give up his oratorical training while he was
convalescing in the temple at Pergamum (Or. 50.14–15). He also tells
of how his oratorical powers increased, not only because of the god’s
encouragement of his practice, but also due to the god’s more specific
instruction in that training: for example, Asclepius tells Aristides which
ancient authors he should study, and Aristides says that from then
on those authors were like comrades to him, with Asclepius as their
common patron (κα! μοι πKντες οiτοι μετ’ κε!νην τ"ν Tμ ραν \ταροι
σχεδ8ν φKνησαν, το &εο προξενσαντος, Or. 50.24).43
Oratorical assistance from the gods often takes the form of a dream
in Aristides’ writings. Early on in his speech on the ‘incidental remark’,
Aristides explicitly compares his oratorical inspiration to the poets’ rela-
tionship to the Muses. Like Hesiod, Aristides presents himself as visited
by the goddess in a dream—Athena herself in this case, to aid him
in composing the speech in her honor—and he insists that in praising
himself he acknowledged the goddess’ inspiration (20–21).44 Likewise,
Aristides attributes his own speeches to Asclepius in the Hieroi Logoi (Or.
48.82),45 and refers in that work to dreams in which he found him-
self speaking ‘better than I was accustomed to and saying things I had
never thought’ (πολλ δ’ α%τ8ς λ γειν δκουν κρε!ττω τ7ς συνη&ε!ας κα0
e ο%δεπ,ποτε νε&υμ&ην, Or. 50.25). These dreams not only provide a
connection to the god, but also assimilate Aristides’ source of inspira-
tion to that of great literary figures of the past, bolstering his image
as rival to the ancients. Aristides further emphasizes the importance
of these dreams to his self-fashioning as a great rhetor when he states
that he later incorporated these exalted dream orations into waking
41 See above p. 158.

42 See also Asclepius’ dream message at 116, identical to one that appears at Or.
50.52.
43 Here as elsewhere, Asclepius sets himself up as an equal to the great ancient
writers; on other occasions he recalls dreams that tell him he even excels them. For the
god as guide, see also Or. 50.8.
44 See also 53, 75, 94, 102.
45 See also Or. 42.12.
speeches and calls the dreams ‘the most valuable part of my training’
(κα0 μ"ν τ γε πλεστον κα0 πλε!στου ξιον τ7ς σκσεως T τ.ν νυπν!ων
_ν *φοδος κα0 -μιλ!α, Or. 50.25).
A more extreme version of assistance from the gods takes the form of
divine possession during the course of an oratorical performance.46 By
this tactic, Aristides absolves himself of responsibility for the offense
he caused, since, as he claims, the god is truly in control. Aristides
describes this experience as a series of quasi-physical sensations, height-
ening the suggestion of the god’s presence: the light of god comes over
the speaker; it possesses his soul like a drink from the springs of Apollo,
and it fills him with intensity and warmth and cheer (114). He com-
pares those possessed to priests of Cybele (109) and Bacchants (114),
both famous for their transgressive manner of worship. He also claims
that inspired speech, once set in motion, is like an automaton, like an
object moving by the force of its own inertia (111–112). And it is not the
speeches of Aristides’ alone that are heaven-sent. ‘This is the one font of
oratory’, he says, ‘the truly holy and divine fire from the hearth of Zeus’
and the speaker is figured as an initiate (λγων δ’ α[τη πηγ" μ!α, τ8 )ς
λη&.ς Jερ8ν κα0 &εον πρ τ8 κ Δις στ!ας, 110).47 The upshot of this
collection of mixed metaphors is the generalized connection between
oratory and divine possession, which has a number of implications. For
one thing, it defines the true rhetor by his communion with the god,
implying that all others are shams. It also simultaneously censures any-
one who criticizes Aristides’ remark for defaming the mystical art of
oratory as a whole.48
To stress even more emphatically the importance of the god in sanc-
tioning self-promotion, Aristides goes so far as to use divine involve-
ment to trump the other arguments he himself is making. Aristides
informs his audience that even if there were no precedents for self-
praise, divine possession would be enough to justify it, stating:
Sστ’ εO κα0 μηδ να μηδ’ φ’ \ν8ς ε$δους ε$χομεν εOπεν π’ α%τF. τι φρο-
νσαντα, μηδ’ _ν ναγκαον τ.ν λγων τ8 τοιοτον πK&ημα, TμAς δ’ εOς
τατην - &ε8ς νν _γεν, ο%κ #ν τ πρεσβεα δ που συμφορ ν ποιομε&α.
σ? δ’ αOτι>A τ8 σμβολον α%το το <τορος. (117)
46 Cf. the more common trope of poetic or rhapsodic possession, as depicted in
Plato’s Ion 533d–536d, 542a–b. Aristides seems to be playing on the traditionally poetic
triangulation of possession-prophesy-(misunderstood) truth. See Detienne 1967, 9–50.
47 Cf. the metaphor of Or. 34, Against Those Who Burlesque the Mysteries of Oratory, bor-
rowed, according to Swain (1996, 255 n. 5), from contemporary Platonizing philosophy.
48 See also 105.
166 dana fields
Therefore, even if we could name no one in any genre who was proud
of himself, and if this condition were unnecessary in oratory, but the god
led us now to this—we would not count this privilege as a misfortune.
You, however, would criticize what is the very token of an orator.
Given that a very large portion of this text is taken up by literary and
historical examples of self-praise that Aristides uses to justify his own,
the effect of the counterfactual construction above is both to overwrite
the earlier arguments and to prove twice over that Aristides’ self-pride
is defensible. And, what is more, by the assertion that this behavior is
the orator’s defining characteristic, Aristides strengthens his claim to be
the consummate public speaker.
Aristides: the Critic’s Critic
Next we will examine the relationship between these defense tactics and
Aristides’ self-promotion. It has been noted that Aristides performs a sly
maneuver in this speech by using the premise of a defense against the
charge of self-praise to praise himself further, and the speech is indeed
full of ruthless self-promotion.49 For instance, the examples Aristides
uses implicitly compare him to (inter alia) great poets, mythical heroes,
victorious athletes, conquering armies, and even Zeus himself.50 Self-
aggrandizement is even implied by the premise of the speech in that
it rests on Aristides’ claim to be so famous and important that he
is the subject of others’ conversations. Likewise, the extensive length
and the public performance of his response to what was originally a
private critique further adds to the promotional value of the text. We
might even suspect that there was no such critic and that the whole
issue was invented purely for the sake of self-promotion.51 Regardless of
49 Rutherford 1995, 203.

50 Though Plutarch uses several of the same sources to discuss self-praise, Aristides’
polemical rather than didactic tone and his explicit discussion of himself dramatically
change the effect of these examples.
51 Isocrates, Antidosis 8–14 provides a classical model for the same tactic, but one
in which the author is open about the fictionality of the attack against him. Isocrates
explains this choice by stating that he is trying to avoid phthonos, an aim that Aristides
does not seem to share. But, as in Aristides’ text, issues of truth and frankness figure
large in the Antidosis, which is itself modeled on Plato’s Apology—see Norlin 1966, xvii;
Too 1995, 192–193; Nightingale 1996, 28–29; Ober 1998, 260–263. For an extended
discussion of envy in the Antidosis and in Isocrates generally see Saïd 2003; as well
whether one believes the premise of this speech, Aristides seems highly
concerned with individual glory throughout, even as he attributes that
glory to the gods and presents it as a conduit for their glorification. A
claim of divine favor is after all one more type of boast.
Another method Aristides uses to promote himself in this work is a
series of vicious attacks against his anonymous (and possibly invented)
critic. Aristides’ avoidance of mentioning the critic’s name could be
interpreted as part of an attempt to belittle him, a subtle hint that there
was no such critic, or even an elaborate fiction to give the impres-
sion of belittling.52 In addition, every item of vituperation against this
critic can be taken as an attempt to increase the status differential
between him and Aristides, in some instances more explicitly than in
others. This abuse includes suggestions that the critic is ignorant (μα-
&ς, 135), insolent, a slanderer, a meddler (Xβριστ"ν 'ντα κα0 συκοφKν-
την κα0 περ!εργον, 95), in need of re-education (μεταπαιδεειν, 3), and
even nausea-inducing (πλεον D ναυτιAν, 1). More explicitly competitive
remarks characterize the critic as wretched and far from the gods (&λιε
κα0 πρρω &ε.ν, 103),53 call him a ‘nobody’ (ο%δε!ς, 97)54 who ought
to be pleased if he is even allowed to attend Aristides’ speeches in the
capacity of a slave (λλ’ γαπAν σοι προσ7κον, εO κα0 ν οOκ του τKξει
παρ7σ&α τος γιγνομ νοις, 97), and speculate that he would probably
like his children to turn out like Aristides (155).55 On the whole, it is
clear that On an Incidental Remark is a sharply competitive, vindictive,
and, above all else, self-promoting speech.
as Ober 1998, 258, 264; Cairns 2003, 244. Cf. also Lucian’s works in the genre of
apologia (defense speech): Fisherman, Defense of ‘Portraits’, and Apology, which have raised
comparable suspicions that the attacker is a fabrication. Similarly, at the end of Lucian’s
A Slip of the Tongue (another contentious response to having committed an embarrassing
error in speech), the author suggests that his critics may accuse him of inventing
the story of his greeting gaffe merely for the sake of display (epideixis)—a reaction he
provocatively seems to encourage as an indication of the quality of his prose (19). For
more on rhetorical apologetics in Lucian and in the High Empire more generally, see
Whitmarsh 2001, 291–293; id. 2005, 79–83.
52 The text does seem to suggest that the man’s name was intentionally excluded.
See 3, 14, 73. Cf. Isocrates’ invention of a name for his pretend prosecutor at Antidosis
14.
53 In contrast to Aristides’ close relationship with them.
54 This comment can be taken to support the view that the critic is non-existent or
the reading that sees Aristides as deliberately suppressing the critic’s name.
55 See also 8, 61, 113, 145.
168 dana fields
Comparison: Perpendicular Lives?
When we set these two texts against one another, sizeable differences
in the authors’ attitudes become apparent. Overall, while both authors
are negotiating the same tensions inherent in the issue of self-praise,
their cultural roles and related generic aims cause them to approach the
issue in strikingly dissimilar ways. Plutarch’s didactic, philosophically-
oriented piece focuses more on social cohesion while, in the context of
Aristides’ self-promotional harangue, individual glory is more impor-
tant. Differences also become apparent when Aristides calls justified
pride a particularly Greek characteristic, a tactic that challenges his
audience to condone his behavior or discard some part of their cul-
tural tradition.56 For Plutarch, by contrast, such ‘Hellenizing’ ideology
is beside the point: he is less interested in discussing whether a man
merits pride in himself than in the modesty and subtlety that make
possible harmony and political expediency (factors that could have real
effects on how the Greeks lived under Roman domination).57 This atti-
tude is not completely foreign to Aristides58—there are a few speeches
where he promotes concord between Greek cities and avoidance of fac-
tion within then59—but his presentation of himself in On an Incidental
Remark clearly takes no interest in interpersonal harmony.60
56 18, 152.
57 Here we might compare the pragmatic advice of the Political Precepts, which
urges local officials to avoid topics fraught with a kind of nationalistic pride, such as
Marathon or Plataea, because the reaction they incite is harmful to the common good
in the circumstances of Roman rule (814a–c). One might argue that the problem in
this passage is that contemporary Greeks (compared to children trying on their father’s
shoes or garlands) do not merit this pride, but in fact it is their ancestors in whom they
take pride—it is only the actions to which this pride leads them that are inappropriate
to the ‘present times and matters’ (παροσι καιρος κα0 πρKγμασιν, 814a).
58 Though cf. To Plato: In Defense of Oratory for self-referential comments on the
limited relevance of contemporary oratory (Or. 2.430, quoted on p. 168 below), and
also Or. 23.4 on what he characterizes as the rare opportunity to make his oratorical
practice useful.
59 Or. 23, 24, 27. In fact, the opening of Aristides’ On Concord between the Cities scorns
exactly the sort of behavior he is displaying in On an Incidental Remark, referring to

oratory that is characterized by contentiousness (*ρις) and is not beneficial to the
audience (Or. 23.1). On Or. 24, see Franco in this volume, esp. pp. 232–243.
60 Cf. e.g. Or. 24.15 on the value of friendship. Overall, Aristides puts much less
emphasis than Plutarch on homonoia between individuals. Here we can once again
compare Plutarch’s Political Precepts, this time on the potential for private quarrels to
spiral out of control and cause large public problems: 824f–825f.
Let us return now to Rutherford’s suggestion that the issue is a

matter of decorum.61 There is something to this, as I suggest above,
if we remember that decorum is never just decorum. In some sense the
tension between Plutarch’s approach to self-praise and Aristides’ lies
in an implied contest over the definition of what is suitable, that is,
whether the social context or the man speaking is more important for
determining what is appropriate. For Aristides, his relationship to the
god even figures into the determination of oratorical kairos, the critical
or opportune moment. Instead of referring to fitting one’s speech to
its context or providing what is necessary for the public good at some
critical juncture, as in Plutarch’s work on self-praise,62 kairos, according
to Aristides, is the point at which not saying what is inspired becomes
unbearable and impossible (115). In this passage and throughout the
speech, it is clear that Aristides’ position in this pseudo-debate is one
that considers fidelity to himself (and thereby to the god) to be the
highest good.63
In considering these stances we can perhaps also look to the ways
Plutarch and Aristides depict their own lives for parallels. Aristides’
avoidance of public office, as narrated in the Hieroi Logoi, raises the
question of whether we should read these actions as a claim that Aris-
tides’ allegiance to the god is a higher priority than responsibility to his
fellow citizens. The great lengths to which Aristides goes to avoid public
service are aimed partly at establishing his cultural status, since exemp-
tions serve as official confirmations of their recipients’ perceived value.
We should note as well that Aristides does in fact get involved in the
affairs of Greek cities to some degree, for example in his intervention
with Marcus Aurelius in favor of aiding Smyrna, his speech on behalf
of Rhodes after a similarly devastating earthquake, and the speeches
on concord mentioned above.64 But it is significant that he is willing to
contribute only in the role of an orator and a go-between rather than
providing any material help himself.65 Furthermore, whereas these texts
61 See above p. 149.

62 539e, 542c, 545c, 546b.
63 This can be interpreted as supporting the view that religion took over as the
primary determinant of identity in late antiquity (see e.g. Stroumsa 2005, 183–184).
However, characterizing Aristides’ connection to Asclepius as a religious identity raises
methodological problems concerning ancient religion that cannot be addressed here.
Cf. also Plutarch’s role as priest of Delphi, which was a part of (rather than something
set apart from) his public career; see Stadter 2004.
64 On the letter to Marcus and Commodus, see Quet 2006.
65 Cf. Or. 23.80, for the claim that oratory is a preferable kind of benefaction!
170 dana fields
blend self-promotion and political involvement,66 the Hieroi Logoi and

On an Incidental Remark set Aristides’ rhetorical career at odds with any
political participation required of him. By comparison, we might note
Plutarch’s active public career, discussed most explicitly in the Life of
Demosthenes (2.2) where he strikes a careful balance in presenting himself
as both prominent abroad and loyal to home.67
Perhaps also significant is Plutarch’s address of On Inoffensive Self-Praise
to a great benefactor to the cities of Greece.68 These very different
approaches to civic involvement illustrate the wide gulf between the
priorities of Plutarch and those of Aristides regarding public life, and
that gap also matches the disparity in their treatments of the issue of
self-praise.
Conclusion: the Cost of Self-Praise Versus its Value
What then do these two approaches to the issue of self-praise tell

us about the contemporary concern surrounding writing and talking
about oneself and about imperial-era political culture more broadly?
The divergence between Plutarch’s and Aristides’ treatments of the
issue can largely be attributed to the vast difference in the cultural
roles they play as well as the genres in which they choose to work.
But these roles and their associated genres do not exist in a vacuum.
When we look at Plutarch’s and Aristides’ texts in conjunction with
one another, a strong connection emerges between how one talks about
oneself and what position one takes in relation to the political and social
environment. Each of these works is trying to persuade its audience or
reader of something. In Plutarch’s case, taking his advice on public self-
assertion also involves privileging broader social stability over individual
self-promotion. Likewise, if one excuses Aristides for praising himself
66 Cf. the orations of Dio Chrysostom addressed to eastern cities.

67 For an extended discussion of self-presentation in the opening of the Lives of
Demosthenes and Cicero, see Zadorojnyi 2006. On Plutarch’s public career, see Jones 1971,
20–21, 25–26 (contra Russell 1968, 130), and 28–30, 32–34 (though cf. Swain 1991, 318;
id. 1996, 171–172 for warnings against the credulous acceptance of reports in the Suda
and Syncellus of various imperial honors awarded to Plutarch in his dotage).
68 See above n. 3, although the reader is of course free to interpret the dedication as
an attempt to correct the behavior of a man who bragged too much, benefaction being
another form of self-aggrandizement (hence often denoted by the word φιλοτιμ!α).
on the grounds that the nature of the man speaking is enough to justify
what is said, this requires taking a stance that puts less value on public
responsibility.
The task of the politician in this period is trickier and more fraught
than ever, and the same rhetorical skills needed for political effec-
tiveness can be used to much more self-serving ends if the educated
and privileged man chooses not to engage in local politics. I do not
mean to suggest by this that the agonistic elite display culture of the
High Empire is as a whole fundamentally incompatible with political
engagement—far from it, as is illustrated by ample literary and epi-
graphic evidence.69 My point is rather that the culture of agonistic self-
promotion associated with epideictic oratory, in its privileging of the
status of the individual, serves as one frame for discussions of self-praise
in the Roman imperial era. At the same time, the political context cre-
ates another means of framing the issue by necessitating at least the
appearance of solidarity on the part of the elites in order to main-
tain local stability and avoid Roman intervention. ‘Sophists’ are among
the social and cultural types who, according to Plutarch, tend to self-
promote,70 but I want to make very clear that I do not mean to draw
a facile correlation between epideictic, self-praise, and the avoidance of
political responsibility. Rather, many options were open to those with
rhetorical training.71 A rhetor who takes an active part in political life
must negotiate between the requirements of these two contexts, and this
negotiation necessitates putting limits on self-aggrandizement (as well
as on other techniques of rhetorical display). The way to avoid these
restrictions, as Aristides does, is to dodge one’s political responsibilities.
An imperial-era Greek author’s discussion (and use) of self-praise there-
fore serve as an indicator of how he is handling this tension and to what
degree he places his priorities with his own reputation or with the good
of his community.
69 See Bowersock 1969. Bowie (1982, 29–44) emphasizes in response that this partic-
ipation was simply part of normal elite activity and did not in itself set the ‘sophists’
apart, but this critique only supports my general point. Brunt (1994, passim, but esp. 26,
34–35), while rightly skeptical of taking details from the literary sources at face value,
overstates the case for dismissing reports of the political significance of the ‘sophists’
for the Greek cities. See also Heath 2004, 277–331, on the continuing relevance of
rhetorical training to various aspects of public life in the second and third centuries, as
complementary to and often coexisting with participation in epideictic performance.
70 On Inoffensive Self-Praise 543e–f, 547e. But N.B. that philosophers are mentioned too
(547e)!
71 As Heath has convincingly demonstrated. See n. 69 above.
172 dana fields
Because the statesman to whom Plutarch directs his advice operates

within the larger hierarchy of the Roman Empire, he must of necessity
be more careful than his classical predecessors in avoiding contentious
self-promotion so that the remaining local Greek autonomy might not
be lost. Plutarch’s ideal statesman recognizes that modesty is necessary
for the politician, given the ‘weak state of Greek affairs’, but devotes
himself to his city all the same (Political Precepts 824e). The flip side of
this response is the rhetor who, in Aristides’ own words, ‘does not easily
appear before the people with his oratory and engage in political dis-
putes, since he sees that the government is now differently constituted’
(Or. 2.430). When an orator does not take part in political discourse,
there is plenty at stake for himself because of the value of his rhetori-
cal skill for self-promotion, but for the public the stakes as a whole are
considerably lower.72
72 My thanks go to Tim Whitmarsh, Simon Goldhill, Marc Domingo Gygax, Joseph
Streeter, the participants of the Aelius Aristides conference, and the editors and anony-
mous readers of this volume for suggestions and critiques. I am particularly grateful
to conference organizer William Harris for allowing me to join such a distinguished
program.
part three
ARISTIDES AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE OF HIS TIMES

chapter nine
AELIUS ARISTIDES AND ROME
Laurent Pernot
Aristides sang the praises of the Roman emperors and of the Roman
Empire in many of his works: in the Smyrnean Orations, in the speech
To the Cities Concerning Concord, in the Panegyric in Cyzicus, in the Funeral
Oration in Honor of Alexander of Cotiaeum, and of course, in his speech To
Rome. He repeatedly expressed the greatest respect for the emperors;
he celebrated the advantages of Roman rule, and he asked the gods
to keep the imperial family in their favor. Such a display of loyalty
is not surprising from a man who was a member of the provincial
nobility, possessed Roman citizenship and had numerous contacts with
influential Romans and even with the imperial court.
Scholars have often said and written, and rightly so, that Aristides
is representative of the fidelity of Greek-speaking elites to the Roman
Empire. He contributed to what L. Robert called, in a phrase that sum-
marizes the spirit of the age, ‘la symbiose gréco-romaine dans l’empire
romain’.1 Aristides’ works are marked by the ideology of concord and
consensus, an ideology that he himself shaped and spread with the aid
of epideictic rhetoric. On account of its elevated language and cultural
and moral authority, as well as the public and ceremonial conditions
of performance, epideictic rhetoric gave political messages persuasive
force.
All of these facts are known, and I myself have contributed to some
extent to establishing them in regard to the rhetoric of praise and to
the speech To Rome in particular.2 Therefore, the subject of the present
paper may seem paradoxical. It is thus necessary to begin with some
preliminary comments. Reading and re-reading Aelius Aristides, with a
view to the edition being prepared for the Collection des Universités de
France by an international team based in Strasbourg, my attention was
1 Robert 1970, 16.

2 Pernot 1993a; id. 1997.
176 laurent pernot
piqued by passages that seemed to me to contain dissonances, cracks

and doubts regarding the Empire and the emperors. These passages
betray, often implicitly, a sort of malaise; they seemed to be worthy of
an explanation.
Generally speaking, there are two reasons that make it possible and
likely, a priori, that Aristides could have had reservations about or hesi-
tations towards Rome. Behind the brilliant façade, certain complex fac-
tors were at work.
The first reason is of a personal and psychological order. When Aris-
tides went to Rome in 144 AD at the age of 26, his stay in the capital
was extremely difficult, since it was at that time that his illness first
began (or, more precisely, the series of illnesses that would overshadow
the rest of his life). In Rome, as he himself wrote in his Sacred Tales,
he suffered greatly. The doctors were powerless to help him, and after a
certain amount of time he ended up going back to his homeland, where
Asclepius took over the responsibility for his care. The time spent in
Rome, during which he probably delivered his speech To Rome, looks
like a failure. In any case, Aristides chose to describe it in precisely this
way in his Sacred Tales. During his first stay, Rome disappointed Aris-
tides, a sentiment that C.A. Behr described with these expressive words:
‘Rome, the stage of his ambitions, became the cemetery of his hopes’.3
One should not overlook the fact that, in Aristides’ personal history,
Rome was first associated with sickness and failure, circumstances that
could have exerted an influence over the way that he judged the city.
Second, it is necessary to take into account a reason drawn from
historical sociology. Here it will be enough to indicate an idea that
deserves a much longer discussion. In brief: it was not the case that
in accepting and cooperating with Roman rule, the Greeks were deeply
satisfied with it; nor did they completely adhere to it, despite seeing
advantages in it; nor did their privileged position within the Roman
Empire blind them to other aspects of their situation. The Greeks were
convinced of their distinctiveness and their superiority in regard to
other peoples, even the Romans. One should not accept too quickly
the impression of enthusiastic support for Rome that some ancient
speeches give, and it is very possible that the authors’ experiences
were, in reality, more complicated. There is always dissatisfaction: it
3 Behr 1968, 24.

aelius aristides and rome 177
would not be wise to postulate total unanimity or uniformity. On the

one hand, the cooperation and accord between Greeks and Romans
within the Roman Empire was a reality; on the other hand, some
Greeks of the Imperial Era had mixed feelings towards the glorious
Hellenic past and the Roman Empire.4 It is well known that authors
like Dio of Prusa and Lucian, for instance, in some of their works and
in some periods of their lives, uttered critical judgments of the Roman
Empire or fostered a difficult relationship with it. Unlike rebellious and
philosophical types like Dio and Lucian, Aristides outwardly resembled
an applied panegyrist, the good student in the class. Yet even good
students can have misgivings.
Here, then, are two reasons that might lead one to think that it
is not impossible that Aristides could have had ambivalent feelings
towards Rome. It is neither a matter of frontal attacks, nor of being
‘pro-Roman’ or ‘anti-Roman’. We are not speaking of opposition or
dissidence, phenomena that did exist in other contexts in the Roman
Empire.5 It is more a question of psychological complexity and subtle
undertones. Indeed, it is interesting to note that some scholars have
recently begun to take into account the less obvious aspects of Aristides’
writings and their polyvalent meaning.6 The present study will examine
the emergence of an ambivalent attitude, first in passages from The
Sacred Tales, in which Aristides writes about significant dreams and
biographical events, and then in passages from other discourses, where
the thoughts of the author seem to be expressed in veiled terms. This
dossier is composed of texts that have never before been put together,
and it could certainly be enriched by the addition of other passages.
It should be clear to the reader that this is a case study, centered on
Aristides alone. It is not intended as a study of the immense and much
disputed question of the relations between Greeks and Romans as a
whole.
4 On these mixed feelings see e.g. Schmid 1887–1897, I.38–40 n. 13; W. Schmid in
von Christ 1920–1924, II.664–665; Bowie 1970; Reardon 1971, 17–21; D’Elia 1995, 108;
Veyne 1999; id. 2005, 163–257.
5 Fuchs 1964; MacMullen 1966; Giovannini-Van Berchem 1987; Rudich 1993; id.
1997.
6 Klein 1995; Quet 2002, 86–90: ‘Les silences volontaires d’Aelius Aristide’; Franco
2005, 401–408: ‘Selezioni e omissioni’; P. Desideri, in Fontanella 2007, 3–22: ‘Scrittura

pubblica e scritture nascoste’.
178 laurent pernot
1. Aristides Rebels in the Name of Asclepius
Dreams and a Biographical Anecdote

Our first text, taken from The Sacred Tales, is an account of a dream. It
is a dream, however, that has its roots in actual events from Aristides’
life:
προσειπντος δ4 κμο κα0 στKντος &αμασεν - α%τοκρKτωρ, )ς ο% κα0
α%τ8ς προσελ&cν φιλσαιμι. κγc εBπον @τι - &εραπευτ"ς ε$ην - το
Ασκληπιο· τοσοτον γKρ μοι Zρκεσεν εOπεν περ0 μαυτο. ‘πρ8ς ο`ν τος
λλοις’, *φην, ‘κα0 τοτο - &ες μοι παργγειλεν μ" φιλεν οXτωσ!’· κα0
@ς, ‘ρκε’, *φη· κγc σ!γησα. κα0 ]ς *φη, ‘κα0 μ"ν &εραπεειν γε παντ8ς
κρε!ττων - Ασκληπις’ (Or. 47.23).7
When I too saluted him and stood there, the Emperor wondered why
I too did not come forward and kiss him. And I said that I was a
worshipper of Asclepius. For I was content to say so much about myself.
‘In addition to other things’, I said, ‘the god has also instructed me not
to kiss in this fashion’. And he replied, ‘I am content’. I was silent. And
he said, ‘Asclepius is better than all to worship’.
When Aristides went to Rome in 144, he was welcomed by his former
professor, the grammarian Alexander of Cotiaeum, who was living in
the capital as one of the tutors of Prince Marcus, the future Marcus
Aurelius. There is a hint of these events in two speeches, To Rome and
The Funeral Oration in Honor of Alexander of Cotiaeum. In the Funeral Oration,
the author recalls the eminent role that Alexander had with regard to
the emperors, as well as how he helped Aristides during his visit.
In 166, twenty-two years later according to C.A. Behr’s dating, Aris-
tides, for unknown reasons, has a dream that takes him back to these
past events (Alexander has been dead for fifteen years). In his dream, he
sees Alexander introduce him to the reigning emperor, who was Anton-
inus Pius at the time of the events recounted in the dream. The cere-
mony at court included speeches (this rhetorical aspect of the situation
in particular held Aristides’ attention). Alexander delivers an address to
the emperor, and then the emperor responds, as do the members of his
entourage. Then it is Aristides’ turn to speak, and the situation turns
upside down.
7 Throughout this paper I have used the editions of Lenz-Behr 1976–1980 for
Orations 1–16 and Keil 1898 for Orations 17–53. Translations of Aristides are from Behr
1981–1986.
According to court etiquette, Aristides should have kissed the em-

peror (the Greek word used is the verb φιλεν). There are numerous
sources that note the custom of saluting the emperor by means of a kiss
that could be placed on the hands, the mouth, the eyes, the neck or
the chest. In the court ceremony, the privilege of kissing the emperor is
attested to most notably by Fronto.8 But Aristides refuses to pay homage
to the emperor by giving him a kiss, as he is invited to do. The reason
he gives for his refusal is that it is the will of Asclepius: he is, he says,
‘a worshipper of Asclepius’ (&εραπευτς),9 and the god has ordered him
not to kiss the emperor in this manner.
The text does not say any more about this, so we do not know why
exactly Asclepius established this ban. The commentators on this pas-
sage have not found a precise explanation. But, in any case, the general
sense of the scene is clear. Aristides adopts a peculiar manner, refus-
ing to submit to court protocol and to pay the expected homage to the
emperor, and his behavior is attributed to his bond with Asclepius. His
identity as a devotee of Asclepius has given him a reserved attitude, an
attitude almost of insolence, even of rebellion, that arouses surprise in
the Emperor. One is tempted to compare this scene—mutatis mutandis—
to stories of the acts of the martyrs, in which one sees Christians refus-
ing to sacrifice in the context of the imperial cult, giving as grounds for
their refusal the ties that unite them to their God.10 Here, luckily for
Aristides, it is all a dream, and everything ends well. Antoninus recog-
nizes in Aristides the quality of a &εραπευτς (using the verb &εραπε-
ειν), and he accepts, without getting angry, that devotion to Asclepius
comes before the respect due to an emperor.
The following text is about a dream that Aristides had in 166, about
two weeks later, and it illustrates a similar attitude:11
εBπον δ4 ο[τω πως· ‘Sστ”, *φην, ‘εO μ" γεγυμνασμ νος _ν ν &ε!αις 'ψεσιν,
ο%κ ν μοι δοκ. <>αδ!ως ο%δ4 πρ8ς α%τ"ν τ"ν πρσοψιν ντισχεν, ο[τω
μοι δοκε &αυμαστ τις εBναι κα0 κρε!ττων D κατ’ ν&ρωπον’. *λεγον δ4
&ε!ας 'ψεις, μKλιστα δ" νδεικνμενος τ8ν Ασκληπι8ν κα0 τ8ν ΣKραπιν
(Or. 47.38).
8 Fronto, Ad M. Caes. 3.14.3, with the commentary of Van den Hout 1999, 124, 185.
9 See some contrasting views on the significance of this word in Festugière-Saffrey
1986, 130 n. 51; Schröder 1986, 26 n. 48.
10 See also Musurillo 1954, 242 for pagan parallels.
11 Compare Or. 27.39.
180 laurent pernot
I spoke somewhat as follows: ‘Therefore’, I said, ‘if I had not been

trained in divine visions, I think that I would not easily endure this
spectacle. So wonderful does it seem to me and greater than man’s
estate’. I said ‘divine visions’, meaning especially Asclepius and Sarapis.
This time Marcus Aurelius appears to Aristides (evidently, the sophist
was very preoccupied with emperors), together with the king of the
Parthians, Vologeses III (whose presence in the dream is explained by
the fact that it occurs during the time of the Parthian Wars). In his
dream, Aristides sees himself giving a speech addressed to the two
sovereigns. This speech, in technical rhetorical terms, is a διKλεξις or
προλαλιK, that is to say a brief address serving as an introduction
to the recitation of a longer work and containing compliments to
the audience.12 In this address, Aristides tells Marcus Aurelius and
Vologeses how happy and flattered he is to have the privilege of giving
a reading of his works before them. He then adds that his divine visions
have prepared him for the occasion and given him the ability to endure
the gaze of the two sovereigns before whom he is standing.
These words are certainly intended as a compliment, since Aristides
emphasizes the superhuman character of the sovereigns and compares
the spectacle that they present to those presented by the gods. But if
he is comparing the two types of vision, Aristides does not assimilate
them. He carefully distinguishes between divine visions, that is to say
the apparitions of Asclepius and Sarapis that he has seen in his dreams,
and the spectacle presented by the kings. The vision of the gods was an
exercise, a preparation for the vision of the sovereigns. The word ‘exer-
cise’ (εO μ" γεγυμνασμ νος _ν) is a flattering means of expression, but it
does not imply that it is easier for Aristides to look at the gods than
it was for him to look at the kings. On the contrary, it is because he
was used to seeing the gods that he can ‘easily’ look at the sovereigns:
he who can do more can do less. As in the preceding text, Aristides
describes himself as being, above all, a man of Asclepius. When he
appears before emperors and the kings, he is crowned with the glow of
his relationship with the divine. In his dealings with temporal author-
ity, he remains detached and distant since there is in him a spiritual
richness by which he measures everything else.
12 Pernot 1993a, II.552.

A third passage is again the account of a dream, one that takes place a
little later than the others:
- δ4 &αμασ ν τε [κα0] πειρ,μενος τ.ν λγων ντ0 πKντων τε *φη τιμA-
σ&αι χρημKτων α%το?ς κα0 πεπεν ‘τοτοις τος λγοις εO προσ7σαν κρο-
ατα0 @σον κα0 πεντκοντα’· κγc Xπολαβ,ν, ‘σο γε, *φην, βουλομ νου,
βασιλε, κα0 κροατα0 γενσονται, κα0 @πως γ”, *φην, ‘&αυμKσMης, τατα e
νυν0 λ γεις μο0 Xπ8 το Ασκληπιο προε!ρηται’ (Or. 51.45).
He was amazed; and when he had tested my speech, he said that
he valued it at any price, and added, ‘Would that there were also an
audience of about fifty present at this speech’. And I said in reply, ‘If you
wish, Emperor, there will also be an audience and’, I said, ‘so that you
may well be amazed, these things which you now say have been foretold
to me by Asclepius’.
As at Or. 47.23, Aristides evokes the surprise of the emperor (who is
Marcus Aurelius here): &αμασεν. As at Or. 47.23 and 38, Aristides
invokes, while facing the emperor, his own relationship with Asclepius.
What the emperor says had already been predicted by Asclepius, as
a written text proves (that is to say the parchment on which Aristides
noted the premonitory dream that Asclepius had sent to him). Once
again, Aristides, in his connection to political power, displays a sense of
superiority that comes to him from his company with the divine.
These analyses may allow a passage of Philostratus to be clarified by

giving it its full weight. The extract is taken from the biography of
Aristides, written by Philostratus fifty years after his death. Philostratus
says that he received this anecdote directly from Damianus of Ephesus,
who was a student of Aristides:13
προσειπcν δ4 α%τ8ν - α%τοκρKτωρ ‘δι τ! σε’, *φη, ‘βραδ ως ε$δομεν’; κα0
- Αριστε!δης ‘&ε,ρημα’, *φη, ‘{ βασιλε, oσχλει, γν,μη δ4 &εωροσK
τι μ" ποκρεμαννσ&ω οi ζητε’. Xπερησ&ε0ς δ4 - α%τοκρKτωρ τF. Z&ει
τνδρ8ς )ς YπλοικωτKτFω τε κα0 σχολικωτKτFω… (Philostratus, Lives of the
Sophists 2.9.2 [582]).
The Emperor addressed him, and inquired: ‘Why did we have to wait so
long to see you’? To which Aristides replied: ‘A subject on which I was
meditating kept me busy, and when the mind in absorbed in meditation
it must not be distracted from the object of its search’. The Emperor was
greatly pleased with the man’s personality, so unaffected was it and so
devoted to study… (trans. Wright).
13 Another version of the same anecdote can be read in the Prolegomena: Lenz 1959,
113–114.
182 laurent pernot
The scene takes place in Smyrna in 176 AD, near the end of Aris-
tides’ life. Marcus Aurelius is passing through the city and is surprised
that Aristides has not yet come before him to greet him. The great
man is sought out and eventually brought before the emperor. Aris-
tides’ excuse for not presenting himself to the emperor earlier is that he
was absorbed in a ‘meditation’, a ‘contemplation’ (&ε,ρημα). The story
does not tell us what this meditation was about. It is doubtful that the
episode was due, as some scholars have suggested,14 to uncertainty on
Aristides’ part about the proper protocol to follow from a political point
of view. It was due, rather, to Aristides’ intellectual reflections and his
preparation of a speech. In any event, the structure of the anecdote is
similar to that of the episodes in his dreams: the absence of Aristides,
the surprise of the emperor, a justification in terms of higher preoccu-
pations, and the emperor’s acceptance of this justification.
All of these texts converge to give the impression that Aristides took
on an air of detachment in the face of his obligations as a Greek-
speaking public figure and a Roman citizen. His devotion to Asclepius,
in particular, could prevent him from paying the respect due to the
emperor.
In Search of Immunity
Let us now consider the biography of Aristides and the problem of his
refusal of official duties. It is well known that, in the Greek-speaking
world of the second century AD, the wealthiest citizens were obliged
to fulfill official duties by paying costly public and honorary expenses
in accordance with the system of euergetism. Such duties were offered
to Aristides several times in Smyrna and in the province of Asia, but
each time he got out of this responsibility, taking advantage of the legal
measures that provided an exemption for rhetoricians working as teach-
ers. He expended a great deal of effort on obtaining the ‘immunity’
(τ λεια) from public expenses that he so desired, and he was eventu-
ally successful. He wrote about the struggle himself in his Sacred Tales:
approximately half of the fourth Tale was reserved for this judicial-
administrative saga.
The fact that Aristides was looking to obtain an exemption does
not signify, by itself, any opposition to Rome. We know that other
14 See Civiletti 2002, 569, 571–572, on this suggestion.

rhetoricians and sophists were looking, like Aristides, to obtain this

privilege. What is amazing it that Aristides discusses it at such length.
G.W. Bowersock, who undertook an in-depth study of this episode in
Aristides’ life, has observed, quite rightly, that the narrative is excep-
tionally detailed: ‘Thanks to [Aristides’] prolixity, we know more about
his case than anyone else’s’.15
In general, one did not flaunt behavior that could pass for a refusal
to fulfill one’s obligations. If Aristides displayed prolixity, it is, I suggest,
because he had reason to do so, a reason that is made clear from the
whole narrative of the Sacred Tales. By speaking at length about his
efforts to avoid paying public expenses and about the problems that
pitted him against his fellow citizens and the Roman authorities on this
subject, Aristides constructs his own image of himself: the image of an
exceptional man, whose talent was recognized, but who held himself
apart on the margins of society and ordinary professional life because
he was bound by membership in a superior order, that is, by his ties to
Asclepius. Aristides felt that he possessed two identities: his identity as a
public figure and his identity as a protégé of Asclepius. When he had to
choose, he chose Asclepius.
Aristides’ preference for Asclepius is what Or. 50.100–102 illustrates.
The passage is an excerpt from the exemption narrative as the process
is just beginning in 147—Aristides is 30, according to C.A. Behr’s
chronology—and it ties together the twists and turns of the affair as
a kind of comedy.
Act One: The people and magistrates of Smyrna nominate Aristides
for the high priesthood of Asia, but he refuses. By means of a speech,
that is, through his rhetorical talent, he manages to persuade the assem-
bly not to choose him (*πεισα). Aristides does not say exactly what argu-
ments he used to decline the nomination. Probably, in view of the logic
of the entire passage, his arguments had something to do with Ascle-
pius.
Act Two: After Aristides refuses the high priesthood, the assembly
offers him the priesthood of Asclepius. It seems as though the Smyr-
naeans were looking to catch Aristides in his own trap: since he has
invoked his relationship with Asclepius, they take him at his word and
propose to put him in charge of the service to the god to whom he has
said he is particularly attached.
15 Bowersock 1969, 36.

184 laurent pernot
But our sophist had other resources, as Act Three shows. Resisting
bit by bit, he declines the new proposition, saying that he needs an
order directly from the god to accept the offer, an order that he has not
received:
κα0 οBδα ε%δοκιμσας οLς πεκρινKμην· *φην γ ρ )ς ο%δ4ν οNτε μεζον
οNτε *λαττον οLν τ’ ε$η πρKττειν μοι νευ το &εο, ο%δ’ ο`ν α%τ8 τ8
JερAσ&αι νομ!ζειν ξεναι πρτερον, πρ0ν #ν α%το π&ωμαι το &εο. οJ δ’
&αμασKν τε κα0 συνεχ,ρουν (Or. 50.102).
And I know that I found approval with my reply. For I said that it was
impossible for me to do anything, either important or trifling, without the
god, and therefore it was not possible to think even of serving as a priest,
until I had inquired about this from the god himself. They marveled and
yielded.
Thus Aristides turns his fellow citizens’ arguments upside down. The
close relationship between Aristides and Asclepius is, for the Smyr-
naeans, a reason for him to accept the priesthood. For Aristides, on the
contrary, it is a reason to refuse (since he can do nothing without the
permission of the god, and in this case, such permission is lacking). The
argument is completely turned around, as in a sophistic debate. Aris-
tides himself emphasizes the skillfulness of his response, which allows
him to win over the Smyrnaeans.
Later, the Smyrnaeans make another attempt, forcing Aristides to
call on the governor of the province, who gives him at least temporary
respite.
The reasons for Aristides’ refusal were many. One discerns a finan-
cial reason: if the temple of Asclepius was under construction, as the
text says, the priesthood would have entailed covering some of the con-
struction costs, which risked being very expensive. There were also psy-
chological reasons: Aristides showed during his entire life that he had a
solitary, irritable temperament. But above all, his devotion to Asclepius
was the main reason.
Aristides’ behavior appears to have been dictated by Asclepius. Aris-
tides’ submission to the god was so great that he did not want to do
anything without his permission. He was deprived of autonomy, as if
dispossessed of himself. Public life and concern about general interest
no longer counted for him, absorbed as he was in his exclusive rela-
tionship with the god. Therefore, service to Asclepius conflicted with
integration into the city.
In comparison with the dream texts examined above, these passages
reveal a new angle on Aristides’ reluctance to fulfill his social duties.
Aristides’ resistance to these duties appears not only when he is con-

fronted by the emperor, but also when he is confronted by his city and
his province. He resists all types of functions, municipal magistracies, as
well as the priesthood, and even the priesthood of the imperial cult. It
is a form of resistance to all official responsibilities, which placed him
outside the political and social system.
2. Messages in Veiled Terms
The Rhetorical Notion of ‘Figured Speech’

To complete this analysis, it is necessary to bring into play one last
aspect of a rhetorical nature.
If we admit that Aristides had reservations about Rome and the
Roman Empire, these reservations could only be expressed in a subtle
and implicit manner, first because Aristides might not have admitted
these reservations to himself, and second because a frank expression of
distance from Rome was inconceivable for a man of his social standing:
it would have cost him his position in society and could have put
him in danger. The reservations, if there were reservations, had to be
expressed in a roundabout way. Dream narratives and autobiographical
accounts, which we have been looking at until now, are two such
oblique methods.
There also exists in Greco-Latin rhetoric a theory and a practice
of indirect expression that carries the name ‘figured speech’ (σχημα-
τισμ νος λγος, figuratus sermo, figurata oratio). This important concept
offers a key to a rhetorical reading of some of the passages from Aris-
tides.
By ‘figured speech’ ancient rhetoricians mean cases in which an
orator has recourse to a ruse in order to disguise his intentions, using
indirect language to communicate the point that he wants to make in
an oblique manner. In this specialized use, the terms σχ7μα or figura
(with the verbal forms σχηματισμ νος, figuratus) do not designate figures
of style, but assume a particular significance and indicate a process that
consists of saying one thing to mean another.
Many theoretical texts, dating from the Hellenistic Age to the Impe-
rial Age and Byzantium, deal with the technique of figured speech.
Among Aristides’ contemporaries writing in Greek on the subject were
Hermogenes (or Pseudo-Hermogenes), Apsines, and the Pseudo-
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Dionysius of Halicarnassus.16 Figured speech was widely used in Latin

and Greek declamation, as can be seen in the Elder Seneca and Philo-
stratus. There were different kinds of figured speech. One consisted
of saying what needed to be said, but with gentleness and soft words;
another kind, called ‘oblique’, consisted of saying one thing while mak-
ing another meaning understood, that is to say, of introducing a supple-
mentary level of meaning into the debate; finally, the type called ‘con-
trary’, which was particularly acrobatic, consisted of saying the opposite
of what one really wanted to say and hoping that one would be under-
stood by the audience a contrario.
The main reasons why an orator resorted to these ruses were,
according to the theoreticians, security and propriety. In the first case,
the orator wants to avoid attracting the anger of the audience and
putting himself in danger when he has something unpleasant to say.
In the second case, he does not feel afraid, but feels obliged to respect
certain norms lest he upset his audience, compromise his message, and
fail to accomplish what he has set out to do. Such is the situation, for
example, for one who must accuse a superior while recognizing that it
is not in his best interests to do so openly.
It is a technique of doublespeak, then, that rhetoric made available to
its practitioners. This technique was used not only in schools of rhetoric
and in literary criticism, but also in actual discourse, as passages from
Demetrius’ On Style and Quintilian indicate.17 Thus rhetoric furnishes
us with a concept whose usefulness is not slight, if figured speech can
indeed allow us to better decipher ancient works, and in particular
those of the rhetorical authors of the Imperial Age. This trail has
hardly been explored, since figured speech has been studied by scholars
primarily from a narrowly technical point of view.
It is logical to apply this key to Aelius Aristides, because Aristides,
a grand orator and an expert in rhetorical matters, was not igno-
rant of the notion of figured speech. The verb σχηματ!ζεσ&αι appears
in his work, with technical validation. Aristides is talking about his
own method of debate against Plato, and he emphasizes: γc μ4ν γ ρ
16 Hermog. Inv. 4.13; Meth. 22; Apsines On Fig. Probl.; Ps.-Dion. Hal. Rhet. 8–9. On
figured speech, see Ahl 1984; Ahl-Garthwaite 1984, 82–85; Schouler 1986; Desbordes
1993; Chiron 2003; Calboli Montefusco 2003; Heath 2003; Morgan 2006; Milazzo
2007, 46–125. More references, ancient and modern, in Pernot 2007a and Pernot
2008.
17 Demetr. On Style 287–295; Quint. Inst. Or. 9.2.74.
φαινμην ο%δ’ ν α%τος τος ναγκα!οις ποτμως τF. λγFω χρ,μενος,
λλ πεφεισμ νως κα0 σχηματιζμενος τ πρ ποντα (‘Even in the neces-
sary points clearly I did not argue brusquely, but with restraint and in a
decorous way’, Or. 4.33). The last words, σχηματιζμενος τ πρ ποντα,
are probably an allusion to the sort of figured speech that consists of
softening the blame in order to respect social propriety, ε%πρ πεια.18
Aristides also isolates another type of figured speech. The author
is addressing his adversaries, who are reproaching him for not giving
classes in oratory, while couching this reproach in terms of flattery
by saying that he could give excellent classes…if he only wanted to.
But Aristides sees through their game: he is perfectly aware that they
are only praising his talent as a teacher to better reproach him for
not practicing it. He unveils their tactic by saying: βλασφημετε μετ’
ε%φημ!ας (‘you malign me with your praise’), an expression that defines
the strategy of disguising blame as praise (Or. 33.25). We will come back
to this device later.
Still another passage, from Oration 28, is more or less the same as the
previous quotation, that is, censure disguised with apparently favorable
words: πολλ τοιατα χαρ!ζετο το παραδ ξασ&αι τ"ν αOτ!αν TμAς (‘he
attempted to ingratiate himself in many such ways so that we might
admit the charge’, Or. 28.2).
Let us also add as a subsidiary consideration the fact that figured
speech is to be seen in a larger framework. It must be restored to its
intellectual context, which is constituted by the precise techniques of
encryption and deciphering that had currency in the ancient world.
Such techniques were, for example, the genre of the fable, a narrative
incorporating an implicit or explicit meaning; enigmas and oracles that
called for deciphering and interpretation; Socratic irony, which offers
another case of double meaning; the notion of ambiguity (μφιβολ!α);
allegorical interpretation; judicial interpretations taking into consider-
ation the spirit behind the letter of the law; and the interpretation of
dreams. This long list can only be itemized in a cursory manner. Nev-
ertheless, these examples prove that the Ancients were used to under-
standing speeches without having to have every word spelled out for
them. The practice and the theory of the double entendre are ubiqui-
tous, appearing in literature, philosophy, law, religion, and medicine.
18 For ε%πρ πεια in figured speech, see Demetr. On Style 287–288; Ps.-Dion. Hal. Rhet.
8.2.
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In the field of rhetoric, a striking example is offered by the funeral

oration delivered by Socrates in Plato’s Menexenus. This speech purports
to be an encomium of Athens from the point of view of the city’s
historical and political achievements. It was taken seriously by most
readers, and only in recent times has it been fully recognized as ironical
and parodical.19 The case of the Menexenus illustrates the possibility that
a rhetorical speech could play with the rules of praise and convey
concealed messages accessible only to part of the audience and some
readers.
Now it is time to return to Aristides’ texts. We will present remarks
on an entire discourse, whose very conception and construction are
revealing, before examining specific passages.
The Implicit Significance of To Rome

Both in its structure and its style, To Rome follows the rules of the rhetor-
ical encomium.20 The orator starts by emphasizing the difficulty of the
subject, then describes the place and situation of Rome. He next praises
at length the civil and military organization of the Empire before fin-
ishing with a brilliant synthesizing tableau. The presentation involves a
large number of comparisons; the tone is admiring and hyperbolic. In
all these respects, Aristides’ demonstration is in accordance with enco-
miastic norms. But the speech is interesting for what it does not say.
In more than thirty pages, representing approximately one hour of
speaking, Aristides finds a way to say nothing about the origins of the
city, the relations supposedly shared between the Greeks and Romans,
or the stories surrounding the founding of Rome. He says nothing
about the history of Rome. He completely neglects its monuments,
architecture, art, literature and language. He says not one word about
Romulus, the Scipios, Caesar or Augustus. He contents himself with
refering once to Aeneas, through an allusion to Homer. He does not
mention a single Roman proper name, nor does he speak a word of
Latin.
How should one interpret these omissions? It would have been
appropriate to mention such points in an encomium of Rome. Con-
sequently, one has to deal with a series of deliberate choices. Aristides
19 See e.g. Méridier 1931, 51–82; Clavaud 1980; Loraux 1981; Coventry 1989; Tsit-
siridis 1998.
20 For the following analysis see Pernot 1997, 5–53.
wants to see Rome only as the imperial capital, the city from which
the rule over the provinces was exercised. He chooses to consider only
the current state of affairs and the present functioning of the Empire
in the political domain, which leads him to avoid local color, as well as
all the artistic, religious, mythological, and historical facts (those which
concern Rome, of course, since there are abundant references to Greek
mythology and history). The only Roman fact that interests Aristides
is the rule that Rome exerts over the Empire, and, more precisely, the
Roman links to the Greek-speaking provinces, the provinces to which
he belonged. This is why the speech To Rome is actually a discourse
in honor of the Roman Empire and the manner in which this empire
exerted control over the Greek world. Aristides is very careful not to
express any contempt for Roman history and civilization: he simply
does not talk about them. By reducing Rome to nothing more than a
governmental power and neglecting the rest, he imposes a Hellenocen-
tric point of view on the speech.
In addition, there is a second series of notable omissions in the
speech: omissions concerning the Roman conquest. Aristides avoids
saying that the Roman Empire was forced upon the Greeks. At the
very most he allows himself to allude to the traditional play on the word
<,μη, which means both ‘Rome’ and ‘force’ (in section eight).21 But he
does not develop this idea. He says nothing about the Roman conquest
or the military and political processes that led to the installation of
Roman rule over the Greek world.22
What is brought into play here is silence, eloquent silence, a device
attested to in the rhetoric of figured speech. The theorists of figured
speech observe that sometimes orators can be confronted with a ban
on speaking that they do not have the right to break; for instance, in
the judicial sector, there might be such a ban on speaking about a case
of incest, which would be indecent to mention, or about a deed at the
limits of legality; or, in the public domain, about past crimes protected
by an amnesty law forbidding mention of them. The theory of figured
speech concerns the case where the orator is confronted with a heavy
and well-known situation, of which he does not have the right to speak
and to which he can refer only implicitly.23
21 On this traditional play see Rochette 1997.

22 Along the same lines, see F. Fontanella’s conclusion in this volume.
23 See for instance Quint. Inst. Or. 9.2.74: Ita ergo fuit nobis agendum ut iudices illud
intellegerent factum, delatores non possent adprendere ut dictum, et contigit utrumque (‘I therefore
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In the case of To Rome, the secret that everybody knows about is

that of the ‘ruling power’.24 This heavy truth weighed on the speech,
but Aristides could not allow himself to speak about it openly. He
therefore proceeded by means of an omission, an omission so drastic
that is becomes significant in itself as the carrier of a hidden message.
To summarize, Aristides suggests that Rome consists merely of the
imperial power that it exercises, that its history and culture do not
matter, and that the only important issue, in the eyes of the Greeks,
is the reality of the authority to which they are subjected. As it was
too risky, Aristides thought, to express this opinion directly, he made it
understood indirectly.
Therefore, this speech is much less flattering than has previously
been thought, and it incorporates a certain audacity. Aristides sug-
gests that the Empire is a system imposed on the Greeks from the
outside and that the Greeks have submitted according to the rule of
the stronger without feeling any admiration for Roman civilization and
culture. Such is, we can believe, the encrypted message of To Rome,
a deeply realistic and embittered message if one knows how to read
between the lines. Aristides weighs his praise, and he concentrates on
what he approves of, namely the material benefits of Roman peace. As
for the rest, he makes himself understood without having to spell out
his meaning by suggesting that Roman culture does not matter and
that Roman rule must be endured with pragmatism.
The Hidden Key

We can now turn to the examination of some scattered passages that
express Aristides’ disenchanted attitude towards the Roman Empire.
The device of ‘figured speech’ that is implemented here could be
had to plead in such a way that the judges understood what had happened, but the
informers could not seize on any explicit statement. I succeeded on both counts’, trans.
Russell); Hermog. Inv. 4.13, (Rabe 206): κατ *μφασιν δ στιν, @ταν λ γειν μ" δυνKμενοι
δι τ8 κεκωλσ&αι κα0 παρρησ!αν μ" *χειν π0 σχματι λλης ξι,σεως μφα!νωμεν κατ
τ"ν σν&εσιν το λγου κα0 τ8 ο%κ ξ8ν εOρ7σ&αι, )ς εBνα! τε νο7σαι τος κοουσι κα0
μ" πιλψιμον εBναι τF. λ γοντι· (‘It is by implication whenever we are not able to speak
because hindered and lacking freedom of speech, but in the figure of giving a different
opinion we also imply what cannot be spoken by the way the speech is composed, so
that the hearers understand and it is not a subject of reproach to the speaker’, trans.
Kennedy); Apsines, On Fig. Probl. 27 (Patillon 120): κατ παρKλειψιν κα0 ποσι,πησιν (‘by
omission and abrupt pause’). On significant silence in general, see Montiglio 2000.
24 According to the title of Oliver 1953.
called the ‘hidden key’; it involves a particularly recherché variant on

the general method of saying one thing while suggesting something
different.
It is a question in this case of slipping a parenthetical remark into
a speech that casts a new light onto the whole argument. The pro-
cess is analyzed by Pseudo-Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who perceived
the model of this process in the texts of Homer and Plato: ‘What is
this art? It is, after having spoken on a subject that carried convic-
tion, to introduce at the end, incidentally, the most pertinent subject’
(α[τη ο`ν T τ χνη τ!ς στι; τ8 π’ λλης Xπο& σεως πεπεικυ!ας πρτε-
ρον εOπντα π0 τ λει )ς πKρεργον ρρ!πτειν τ"ν οOκειοτ ραν Xπ&εσιν,
Rhet. 9.6= Usener-Radermacher 335). The orators who use this pro-
cess, according to Pseudo-Dionysius, begin by developing at length an
opinion that the audience already agrees with, then throwing out ‘as
an afterthought’, ‘at the end’, an additional point, which is the one
in which the orator truly believes. In any other speech, such uneven-
ness in composition, which produces the effect of an inverse proportion
between the essential and the incidental, would be quite a grave error.
But the peculiarity of ‘figured speech’, that prodigious art, is that all
that is vice elsewhere here becomes virtue, as the theorists are fond of
repeating. I would like to draw the attention to three passages that fit
this definition.
‘The City is Almost as Fortunate as Before’

In the Panathenaic, Aristides sings the praises of Athens. He reviews the
history of the city from mythological times to the battle of Chaeronea
(338 BC), which established the rule of Macedonia over Greece. Here,
he stops, on account of a lack of time, or so he says. A development
on the dissemination of the Attic dialect follows, and then the ora-
tor seems to remember that the history of the world did not stop in
the fourth century BC. In a brief chapter dedicated to the honors
received by Athens, he comes back to the Macedonians in order to
emphasize that they, after defeating Athens, treated the city with par-
ticular consideration. In this passage he slips in two sentences about
the present situation to show that once again Athens enjoyed special
treatment:
τοσοτον \τ ρως T πλις πρKττει τ νν, @σον ο% πραγματεεται. τ δ4 τ7ς
λλης ε%δαιμον!ας μικρο δεν παραπλσιK στιν α%τM7 τος π’ κε!νων τ.ν
χρνων, @τ’ εBχεν τ7ς =ΕλλKδος τ"ν ρχ"ν … π0 δ4 τ7ς πKντα ρ!στης κα0
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μεγ!στης τ7ς νυν0 κα&εστηκυ!ας τ πρεσβεα παντ8ς *χει το =Ελληνικο

κα0 π πραγεν ο[τως, Sστε μ" <>αδ!ως ν τινα α%τM7 τρχαα ντ0 τ.ν
παρντων συνεξασ&αι (Or. 1.332, 335).
Now the only difference in the city’s condition is that it is not involved in
troublesome affairs. But for the rest, it is almost as fortunate as in those
times, when it held the empire of Greece… Under the one (sc. empire)
at present existing, which is in every way the best and greatest, it (sc.
Athens) has precedence over all the Greek race, and has fared in such a
way that no one would readily wish for its old state instead of its present
one.
Aristides acknowledges that the situation of Athens has changed, and
he makes it clear that the new situation is due to the ‘current empire’,
that is to say the Roman Empire, which he does not name (although
the scholia on this passage do).25 Following the method to which we
are beginning to become accustomed, Aristide expresses no criticism.
On the contrary, he extols the happiness of Athens under the power of
the Roman Empire, and he displays his own loyalty by expressing the
wish, twice, that this power would last forever, in accordance with the
custom of praying for the immortality of the Empire. Under Roman
rule Athens is happy, because it is set free from the political and
military responsibilities that it had assumed before and enjoys honors
and supremacy among the Greeks. In sum, the city is rid of all the
inconveniences of power and only the advantages remain. Is everything
better then? Let us take a look at the text more closely, and take note of
two nuances: Athens is today ‘almost’ (μικρο δεν) as happy as it was
in the past, and one would not ‘readily’ (<>αδ!ως) wish for it to return to
its former state. If one gives to these words their full weight, they betray
some reservation and throw doubt on the encomium of Rome being
pronounced.
In the same passage, again concerning the present situation of
Athens, the phrase ε$ τFω κα0 τοτων φ!λον μεμν7σ&αι (‘if someone wishes
to mention these points too’) also conveys the impression that the cur-
rent state of affairs is not the favourite subject of the orator, who prefers
to praise the past.26
Out of a hundred pages of mythological and historical account, these
remarks occupy a total of ten lines. Yet they raise the essential question
25 Dindorf 1829, III.308–309, 311, 312.

26 Or. 1.335. The scholiast rightly comments: κ το εOπεν ε$ τFω κα0 τοτων φ!λον
μεμν7σ&αι δε!κνυσιν @τι, εO κα0 τ παρντα &αυμαστK, λλ’ ο%χ οLα τ πρσ&εν, pν κα0
μεμν7σ&αι μAλλον κα0 &αυμKζειν προσ7κεν (Dindorf 1829, III.321).
of the situation of Athens in the Roman Empire (and, through Athens,

the situation of all the Greeks), and suggest that the evaluation of this
situation, which was the heart of the problem of Greece under Rome, is
not so simple. For precisely this reason, Aristides did not want to keep
silent on the subject, but neither did he wish to address it head-on. He
deemed that it would be cleverer and more prudent to resort to the
strategy of ‘figured speech’ by slipping into his text, fleetingly, words
with far-reaching implications. That ‘almost’ (μικρο δεν) is a nugget of
truth. It was up to his audience and his readers to discover it and draw
conclusions from it themselves.
‘Seeing that the Situation is Other’

In the speech To Plato in Defense of Oratory, Aristides offers an assessment
of the Greek situation under Rome identical to that found in the
Panathenaic Oration and expressed in the same terms: ‘the situation is
other’:
εO το!νυν τις κα0 τοιοτος γγ νοιτο οLος <ητορικ"ν *χων εOς μ4ν δμους
<>αδ!ως μ" εOσι ναι, μηδ4 περ0 πολιτε!ας μφισβητεν -ρ.ν \τ ρως *χοντα
τ πρKγματα…(Or. 2.430).
If someone should be of such a nature so that he does not easily appear
before the people with his oratory and engage in political disputes, since
he sees that the government is now differently constituted…
The Defense is an immense treatise, in which Aristides presents a de-

tailed defense of rhetoric in response to the accusations that Plato
brought against it in the Gorgias. The argument is conducted in the
terms that Plato had established, and it is by drawing on Platonic
concepts and examples that Aristides tries to make his point of view
triumph in a refutation conducted across the centuries. At the end of
his work, Aristides turns to the figure of the ideal orator, who embodies
all of the qualities of rhetoric. He comes to refer to his own case as an
example of a life consecrated to eloquence in all of its purity, untouched
by concern about popular favor, wealth or any other form of material
success: this example of a disinterested way of life may serve as an
argument to refute the reproach of flattery that was often addressed
to the followers of rhetoric. Yet although Aristides speaks of himself
in the third person, he does not hesitate to take his audience into his
confidence, sketching the portrait of a person who is at the same time
an orator and a good man and writing the words printed above.
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The whole passage, which is complex, deserves a detailed reading.27

The words that count, in view of the issue of ‘figured speech’, are the
last ones: -ρ.ν \τ ρως *χοντα τ πρKγματα (‘seeing that the situation
is other’, or, in the translation of C.A. Behr: ‘since he sees that the
government is now differently constituted’). The reader has had to wait
until section 430 of the discourse to come across this remark, which is
thrown in as though it were an afterthought, but is in reality of great
importance.28 The words signify that the situation has changed between
the time of Plato and that of Aristides, since the Greeks are now under
Roman rule.29 Leaving aside for the moment the problem raised by
Plato, Aristides finally refers to current events. He acknowledges the
political situation and recognizes that this change has had an impact on
rhetoric, insomuch as the Greeks orators of the Roman Era, contrary
to their predecessors of the Classical Era, are no longer in a position to
treat the important issues that concern their lives and the functioning
of their cities.
Let us understand what Aristides wants to suggest here. With this
remark, he does not at all intend to undermine his own argument.
Everything that he has said previously remains valid because the debate
about rhetoric, according to Aristides, keeps presenting itself through
the ages. The aspects of rhetoric that Aristides deals with earlier in the
speech by means of the Platonic schemas (the political, philosophical
and mystical worth of rhetoric) have lost none of their topicality in the
second century AD. The present remark does not, therefore, nullify
the debate; rather, it gives it another dimension. It invites the reader
to examine the changes that have occurred during the Imperial Era
and to make an inventory of those in the sphere of rhetoric, as Tacitus
does, for example, in the Dialogue on Orators, or as ‘Longinus’ does in
the treaty On the Sublime, or Plutarch in the Political Precepts. Such an
inventory would be the subject of a long speech, which Aristides did
not want to write for reasons of his own and about which we can
only speculate. These reasons have something to do with discretion and
prudence, love of subtlety, and probably a period of political abstention
and withdrawal related to the author’s illness and his exclusive devotion
27 See Flinterman 2002; Pernot 2006, 91–92, 136 n. 31, 255–256.

28 Perhaps there already was an allusion to the Pax Romana in section 411. The
concept of a ‘remark made in passing’ is important in Aristides: see Or. 28.
29 So, rightly, the scholia on this passage: Dindorf 1829, II.146; III.430.
to Asclepius. Aristides was fully aware of the pertinence of his subject,

namely the changes that had occurred in Greek rhetoric as a result of
Roman rule. He was keen to address it, but in his own way: he suggests
its importance through a remark made implicitly in one sentence. The
strategy was clear for those who knew how to listen for it.
‘The Divine Quality of Empire’

Our last example is taken from the Sicilian Orations, which are a pair
of antithetical declamations concerning an episode from the Pelopon-
nesian War. The historical context of the declamations is the Sicil-
ian expedition as it is depicted in books six and seven of the history
of Thucydides. Since the Athenian expeditionary corps sent to con-
quer Sicily had encountered difficulties after its arrival on the island, a
debate took place in the winter 414–413 BC in Athens before the pub-
lic assembly to decide if it would be expedient to send a second army
to help the first. Aristides imagines the speeches that could have been
delivered on that occasion, his first orator opining in favor of sending
reinforcements, the second in favor of recalling the expedition.30 In the
first Sicilian Oration, however, as the argument begins to come to an end,
we suddenly read the following assertion: ‘Now here one would see best
the divine quality of empire. For it preserves itself ’ (νν δ’ ντα&α δ"
κα0 κKλλιστα $δοι τις #ν )ς &εον τ8 χρ7μα τ7ς ρχ7ς· α%τ" γ ρ \αυτ"ν
σ,ζει, Or. 5.39). In this context, the sentence applies to the Athenian
Empire. The orator, who is speaking in favor of sending reinforcements,
means to say that the annexation of Sicily would be valuable to the sta-
bility of the Athenian Empire as a whole, since it would consolidate its
power.
The hypothesis that comes to mind, however, is that this sentence
could also have been aimed at the Roman Empire. Indeed, Aristides
conducted parallel analyses of the Roman and Athenian Empires in
the speeches To Rome and The Panathenaic Oration respectively, and he
carefully compared these two empires in To Rome.31 Such a comparison
was made all the easier by the fact that the word meaning ‘empire’,
ρχ, is the same in Greek in both cases. In addition, the passage from
the Sicilian declamation contains themes that are found in To Rome—
30 On these texts see Pernot 1992.

31 Or. 26.40–71.
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the divine nature of the Empire, the wishes formed for its health32—and
a precise verbal echo connects the two texts.33
If the declamation has a contemporary resonance, it would seem to
be, at first glance, praise for Rome, discrete homage paid to the reign-
ing power. But perhaps the reality is more complex. Upon examination,
the passage from the Sicilian declamation is revealed as encomium
engineered to self-destruct. In fact, immediately after stating that the
Empire is divine, the orator presents it in a less favorable light:
Sσπερ γ ρ ν τος Oδ!οις ο$κοις \ν0 μ4ν κα0 δυον οOκ ταιν χαλεπ8ν χρσα-
σ&αι, οJ δ4 πολλο0 κατ λλλων XπKρχουσιν, ο[τω κν τας δυναστε!αις
τ8 πλ7&ος τ.ν δεδουλωμ νων βεβαιο τ"ν Oσχ?ν τος προσειληφσι· πKντες
γ ρ ν κκλFω δεδ!ασιν λλλους … χειρω& ντες γ ρ ν&ρωποι πολλο0 κα0
παντοδαπο0 γ νος ο%χ 5ξουσιν ποστροφν, λλ πAν τ8 μ" περαιτ ρω το
παρντος κακ8ν Sσπερ 5ρμαιον Tγσονται τος @λοις πειπντες (Or. 5.39).
For just as in private homes it is difficult to employ one or two servants,
but many servants are a foil against one another, so in empire the
number of the enslaved strengthens the power of those who have added
them to it. For everyone fears each other in turn… For when many men
of various races have been defeated, they will have no refuge, but in
complete despair they will regard as their good fortune every evil which
does not exceed the present one.
The subjects are unfortunate and oppressed; rule rests upon force.
These details radically modify the encomium.
And there is more: not only is the Empire cruel, it is also perishable,
as history has proven. The Sicilian expedition failed. Athens lost the
Peloponnesian War, and the Empire collapsed.
The allusion to the Roman Empire, if there is one, thus proves
to be ambiguous. We may read it as a compliment to Rome, if we
consider only the first line of the excerpt. We may also imagine that
the text suggests an opposition between the situation of Athens in the
fifth century BC and that of Rome in the second century AD (Rome
being superior to Athens in the art of governing). But we can also see
here, and this will seem more plausible, a parallel between the Athenian
and Roman Empires. In this case we are dealing with praise that turns
to blame in a way that conforms exactly to the process analyzed by
Aristides himself in the passage from Oration 33 mentioned above.34
32 Notably Or. 26.103–109.

33 Compare Or. 5.39 (οJ δ4 πολλο0 κατ λλλων XπKρχουσιν) with Or. 26.56 (μ νοντες
μ4ν π’ λλλους XπKρξουσιν α%τος).
34 Above, p. 181.
The word ‘divine’ (&εον), used in section 39 of the first Sicilian Decla-
mation, deserves consideration. The pious Aristides does not use a term
like this lightly. The beginning of the sentence celebrates the Empire as
divine, but the rest of the passage and the following events show that
it is, in reality, the complete opposite of divine, since it is lacking the
two qualities essential to divinity in the minds of Aristides and his con-
temporaries: concern for mankind and eternity. The orator indicates
that the Empire inspires fear and despair in its subjects (therefore there
is no solicitude towards mankind), and the course of events will show
that the Athenian Empire is destined to disappear (therefore it is not
eternal). The Empire (the Athenian Empire, but perhaps the Roman
Empire as well) lacks both philanthropy and immortality.
It is impossible not to be suspicious towards an argument that ap-
pears so self-contradictory in light of its precise correspondence to the
device of the ναντ!ον (‘opposite’ or ‘contrary’), which appears in the
classificatory schemas of the theorists of figured speech. Hermogenes:
ναντ!α μ4ν ο`ν στιν, @ταν τ8 ναντ!ον κατασκευKζωμεν, οi λ γομεν
(‘Problems are “opposed” whenever we are arguing for the opposite
of what we actually say’).35 Pseudo-Dionysius of Halicarnassus: τρ!τον
σχ7μK στι τ8 οLς λ γει τ ναντ!α πραχ&7ναι πραγματευμενον (‘A third
figure consists of making sure that the opposite of what one says is
effected’).36
Is the point of this speech only to denounce the deceptions and the
dishonesty of the imperialists of the fifth century BC, as Thucydides
had already done? Or are we not dealing with an argument with
broader implications, one that suggests that the value of the Roman
Empire could be a matter of dispute? Regardless of what one says, the
passage suggests, the Empire’s aim is not the wellbeing of its subjects.
No matter what one says, empires can fall apart. No matter what they
say, the panegyrists can be mistaken. Aristides, the man who, in his
dreams, stood up to Marcus Aurelius, might have revealed with a sort of
bitter irony and in a text where such sentiments would be least expected
that he had no illusions about the generosity or the immortality of
Roman supremacy, no more than about the speeches in honor of the
Roman Empire. For those who knew how to read it, he delivered a
philosophy on empire.37
35 Hermog. Inv. 4.13 (Rabe 205), trans. Kennedy.

36 Ps.-Dion. Hal. Rhet. 8.2 (Usener-Radermacher 296).
37 Aristides also writes that every empire rests on inequality and the law of the
198 laurent pernot
Conclusions
To conclude, let us quote a passage from Tacitus’ Dialogue on Orators.

This passage is not related to rhetoric but to tragedy, and thus has the
advantage of reminding us that the problem of the unsaid in rhetoric
is part of the larger problem of the unsaid in literature. Maternus, the
famous advocate and poet, has presented a tragedy titled Cato, which
has displeased the emperor and the court because of the contemporary
allusions that they believe they have recognized in it. A friend asks
Maternus if he intends to suppress what could have given rise to such a
negative interpretation:
An ideo librum istum adprehendisti ut diligentius retractares et, sublatis si quae pravae
interpretationi materiam dederunt, emitteres Catonem non quidem meliorem, sed tamen
securiorem? (Tac. Dial. 3).
Or is it with the idea of going carefully over it that you have taken
your drama in hand, intending to cut out any passages that may have
given a handle for misrepresentation, and then to publish a new edition
of ‘Cato’, if not better than the first at least not so dangerous? (trans.
W. Peterson).
But Maternus refused to change his text.

The concept of interpretatio put forth here is important, because it
shows that the unsaid is, to some extent, a matter of appreciation. The
study of the unsaid must be conducted with prudence, since it necessar-
ily requires a certain amount of speculation about the interpretation.
The advantage of ‘figured speech’ consists precisely in the fact that,
pushed to a certain degree of refinement, it disconcerts the censors by
making a simple and univocal interpretation impossible. Certain peo-
ple understand the overtones, others do not, and even those who do
understand them may be incapable of proving that they exist.38 Multi-
ple layers of comprehension and an absence of certitude are inherent
features of ‘figured speech’. That is why we, the modern scholars, must
learn to read between the lines.
strongest, and that the differences between the various empires are differences of
degree, not of nature. See Or. 1.306: :πασα γ ρ δπου&εν ρχ" τ.ν κρειττνων στ0 κα0
παρ’ α%τ8ν τ8ν τ7ς Oστητος νμον (‘For every empire obviously belongs to the stronger
and is contrary to the very law of equality’); Or. 28.125: … τ8ν τ7ς φσεως νμον, ]ς
κελεει τ"ν τ.ν κρειττνων Xπερβολ"ν ν χεσ&αι κα0 ζ7ν πρ8ς τ8 Tγομενον (‘…the law
of nature, which commands us to endure the excesses of the stronger and to live in
accordance with our leaders’).
38 As happened to Quintilian’s delatores: see above, n. 23.
In the case of Aristides, if we consider the passages presented above,

an attitude of reserve towards Rome becomes apparent. The rhetorical
notion of ‘figured speech’ offers us an objective standard with which to
read texts that may admit of multiple layers of meaning. Aristides has a
number of resources—such as dream narratives, autobiographical con-
fessions with the character of aretalogy, eloquent silences, and hidden
keys—that permitted him to slip discrete messages into his works. He
could therefore distance himself from the rules of encomium.
One may wonder how Aristides’ reservations interacted with the
approval and the loyalty that he felt towards the Roman Empire in
other respects. Certainly there was a kind of contradiction. The reser-
vations did not form any conscious system or program. The moments
of dissonance were of limited scope; they did not command the whole
of Aristides’ mind, but revealed its inner tensions.
Indeed, the reservations expressed by this important figure were con-
sistent with the high opinion that he had of his art and himself, as well
as with his conviction that he had a message to deliver. Fundamentally,
Aristides’ reservations towards Rome were due to two reasons: he was
Greek and he was a disciple of Asclepius. These two identities, which
are not on the same level, made him pull back.
As a Greek, Aristides seems to have felt a sort of tension as a result
of the discrepancy between his situation and the opinion that he had of
himself. Even though he cooperated with Rome, he remained Greek.
He belonged to a ruled people, but one that regarded itself as superior
on account of its language, culture, religion, and history. From this
identification come the jolts of pride, the cunning phrases, and the
embittered remarks that we see here and there and that cannot be
ignored (as one might be tempted to do if one accepts Aristides’ protests
of loyalty at face value); on the contrary, it is important to probe these
remarks in his works. The occasional betrayal of Aristides’ unease
about subjects that touched on the contemporary political situation
deserves our consideration.
But Aristides was not a Greek like the others. He was the protégé
and the servant of Asclepius, and his relationship with his god was close
and constant throughout his entire life. Behind the official image of a
Greek-speaking public figure, one discerns an intense religious experi-
ence.39 This was a solitary experience, even if Aristides was surrounded
39 Sfameni Gasparro 2002, 203–253; Pernot Forthcoming.

200 laurent pernot
by friends, fellow worshippers and his companions at the Asclepieion.

Aristides did not define himself by membership in a community, but by
his individual course of action.
If one has a strong personal identity, one risks not knowing one’s
place in the laws of society. This is what happened to Aristides. We
observe, in a very interesting way, that for Aristides, devotion to Ascle-
pius ended up in conflict with his civic duties to Smyrna and the
province of Asia Minor, as well as to the Empire and his relationship
with the emperor. The testimony of Aristides is particularly enlighten-
ing as concerns the strength and the specific details of the religion of
Asclepius in the second century AD in the Roman Empire.
Finally, there is another question, which is impossible to answer
fully in the space allotted, but which is nevertheless worth asking. The
question is just how original Aristides was compared to other men of his
era. When we read the Sacred Tales, we get the impression that we are
dealing with a very unusual personality. And yet, if we go back to the
different points addressed in this paper, it is possible to draw parallels
between Aristides and his contemporaries every time.
As we said at the beginning, among those Greek orators who were
likely to voice criticism about Rome, one finds, for example, Dio of
Prusa and Lucian. Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists contains several anec-
dotes about sophists standing up to the emperors.40 Figured speech was
widely used. In one case, concerning Herodes Atticus, Philostratus con-
siders the possibility of figured speech in an address to Marcus Aure-
lius.41 The devotion to Asclepius was widespread among intellectuals
(e.g. Apuleius, Polemo of Laodicea, Antiochos of Aegae, Hermocrates
of Phocaea), and it is very possible that among them were those who,
like Aristides, lived a life of deep personal commitment and selflessness,
even if they did not write a work comparable to the Sacred Tales to pub-
licize it.
Aristides’ case also displays parallels with the contemporary personas
of the holy man and the thaumaturgist, who are gifted with supernat-
ural powers thanks to their proximity to the divine and who played
a charismatic role in society. Some of them could have clashed with
Rome, as Apollonius of Tyana and Peregrinus of Parion did. Peregrinus
leads us to the Christians, whom we can consider in terms of sepa-
40 See also a similar anecdote, in which the authority of Asclepius is invoked, in
Galen, De propriis libris 3.4–5.

41 Philostr. Vit. soph. 2.1.11 (561).
ration from society and resistance in the face of imperial power. One
could compare the periods during which Aristides lived as a recluse—
chaste, emaciated, unbathed, and willing to renounce everything for
his god—with a certain type of asceticism and the life of a hermit.
Through his suffering, his willingness to bear witness, and his vague
desire to rebel against the emperor, Aristides is at times reminiscent of
the martyrs. Like some Christians of his time, Aristides was ready both
to accept and to rebel against the Empire. This does not mean that
there was a Christian influence on Aristides, but that there are points of
encounter and similarities between Christians and the orator that can
be explained by a common spirituality (on a general level) and by the
spirit of the times. Therefore, the expressions of malaise that can be
observed in Aristides are interesting not only because they reveal his
own inner tensions, but also because they build bridges between him
and contemporary trends.42
42 I warmly thank Professor Brooke Holmes for her editing of this text.
chapter ten
THE ENCOMIUM ON ROME

AS A RESPONSE TO POLYBIUS’ DOUBTS
ABOUT THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Francesca Fontanella
In the so-called second introduction of his Histories, Polybius explains

the reasons that led him to end his work not in 167 BC (the date when
Rome completed its conquest of ‘the whole inhabited world’, 1.1.5),
as he originally intended, but in 146 (the year of the destruction of
Carthage and Corinth).1 He maintains (3.4) that it is impossible to
form a definitive judgement on the victors or the defeated if one only
considers ‘simply the results of the military conflict’,
because it has often happened that what seemed to be the greatest
successes have as a result of misuse brought the greatest disasters in their
train…. Therefore I must add… an account of the subsequent policy of
the victors and how they ruled the world, and consider the reactions of
the defeated and their behaviour towards their rulers… For it is clear
that this will show our contemporaries whether the domination of Rome
is to be avoided or rather to be desired, and will show posterity whether
Roman power is to be judged worthy of praise and imitation or of blame
… Neither historical actors nor those who write about them should think
that the aim of every undertaking is to win and to subjugate everyone
else… in fact all men act with the aim of obtaining the pleasure, honour
or profit that will result from their action.
Among the ‘posterity’ who took on the task of delivering this judgement
on the Roman Empire we can obviously count the Mysian rhetor
Aelius Aristides. Some 300 years after Polybius, probably in 144 AD un-
der Antoninus Pius,2 he pronounced in Rome his encomium To Rome,
most definitely determining that the city and its empire were worthy of
‘praise’ not ‘blame’. But the link between Aristides’ speech and Poly-
1 This paper draws on the conclusions reached in my commentary on To Rome:
A Roma, trans. and comm. by F. Fontanella (Pisa, 2007). It has been translated by
W.V. Harris and I would like to thank him also for giving me the opportunity to publish
this paper.
2 Cf. my comm., p. 79.
204 francesca fontanella
bius’ Histories is not merely an interesting a posteriori indication of how

the Greek élite had shifted, by the time of the Antonines, from prob-
lematical support for the Roman Empire to enthusiastic acceptance. To
Rome lets us see, behind its detailed references to passages of Polybius,
a new interpretation of Roman power that seems to constitute a con-
scious response to the historian’s doubts. A response that takes account
of centuries of Greek political theory—in so far as it was relevant—,
and also of Roman thinking on the problem of what made the exten-
sion of Roman power to the whole world not only ‘just’ but also ‘advan-
tageous’.
Aristides, like Polybius, intends to judge the Empire by reference in
part to the relations between rulers and ruled and by the benefit it
may provide to both; he says so explicitly (To Rome sect. 15). After an
opening passage describing the size, magnificence and prosperity of the
capital (sects. 4–13), he shifts attention from the city to its empire (ρχ)
with a transition that emphasizes the superiority of the Roman Empire
over the empires of the past: ‘it is not easy to decide whether Rome’s
superiority to other cities of its time, or the Roman Empire’s superior-
ity to past empires, is the greater’ (sect. 13). The comparison with past
empires starts with the Persians (sects. 15–23), continues with Alexander
(sects. 24–26) and the Macedonians (sect. 27), and ends with the various
hegemonies of Greek cities (sects. 40–57). Polybius (1.2.1) had differenti-
ated Rome’s dominion from that of the Persians, Spartans and Mace-
donians, simply by reference to their size and duration. Aristides on the
other hand introduces at the very beginning of these comparisons (sect.
15) the criteria that were formulated in Polybius’ second proem:
let us consider everything in order, both its [the Persian Empire’s] size
and what happened during its existence. That means that we must
examine both how they enjoyed their conquests and how they treated
their subjects.
On the basis of these criteria, the characteristics of the Persian Empire

are examined and then condemned without the possibility of appeal:
These then were the ways they enjoyed their famous power. And they
suffered the consequences dictated by a law of nature (φσεως νμος):
hatreds and plots on the part of people who were treated like this, and
defections and civil wars and constant strife and ceaseless rivalries. These
were their rewards, as if they ruled in consequence of a curse rather than
in answer to their prayers, while the subjects underwent all that which
the subjects of such men must of necessity undergo… A boy’s good looks
caused his parents to be afraid, a wife’s good looks had the same effect
polybius’ doubts about the roman empire 205
on her husband. It was not the biggest criminals but the wealthiest who
were condemned to destruction (sects. 20–21).
The mention of a ‘law of nature’, understood almost as a necessary
unfolding of effects following from causes, may certainly make one sus-
pect Stoic influence on this passage of Aristides,3 given in particular the
Stoic identification of the λγος not only with φσις but also with the
εJμαρμ νη.4 We recall, however, that Polybius too, when he spoke about
the birth of the various forms of government and of their degenera-
tion (at the beginning of Book VI), several times used expressions such
as φυσικ.ς (6.4.7), κατ φσιν (6.4.9 and 11 and 13; 6.5.1; 6.6.2; 6.9.13)
and φσεως οOκονομ!α 6.9.10) to indicate a natural and therefore nec-
essary unrolling of political-constitutional changes in the various states
(cf. 6.10.2: ναγκα!ως κα0 φυσικ.ς). In fact he combined with his theory
of the anacyclosis of constitutions a ‘biological theory’5 already detectable
in Anaximander6 and widely favoured by Greek thinkers. (It was widely
diffused in Greek thought: in its more general formulation it amounted
to no more than the statement of a natural law that determines the
birth, growth and degeneration of everything,7 though ‘by the Hellenis-
tic period it was identified with the Stoic εJμαρμ νη’).8 Aristides there-
fore seems to have followed Polybius in attributing the manner of a
state’s evolution to a law of nature that is reminiscient in both works of
the Stoic concept of the εJμαρμ νη.
Aristides’ conclusions about the Persians were also inspired by
classical Greek thinking that distinguished between the δεσπτης and
the βασιλες,9 thinking that in this case was echoed not only by
3 Cf. Klein 1983, 74 n. 27.

4 See, for example, Zeno, SVF 1, 160, Chrysippus, SVF 2, 912–1007, and Pohlenz
1948–1949, I 101–102.
5 Walbank 1957–1979, I, 645.
6 12 B 1 D–K.
7 Walbank 1972, 142.
8 Walbank 1957–1979, I, 645, with the sources.
9 As is well known, the Persian king is already called δεσπτης in the sense of
absolute ruler in Herodotus (e.g. 1.90.2; 115.2), and Plato (Laws 697c) asserts, also with
respect to the Persians, that τ8 λε&ερον λ!αν φελμενοι το δμου, τ8 δεσποτικ8ν
δ’ παγαγντες μAλλον το προσκοντος, τ8 φ!λον π,λεσαν κα0 τ8 κοιν8ν ν τM7 πλει.
Plato also distinguishes two kinds of monarchy, tyranny and kingship, depending on
whether it is based on violent constraint or free acceptance, on poverty or wealth,
and on law or illegality (Plt. 291e, but cf. also Rep. 576e; for the assimilation of the
terms τραννος and δεσπτης see further Laws 859a). According to Xenophon (Mem.
4.6.12), such a distinction had already been formulated by Socrates. Aristotle (Pol.
1285a) emphasizes the difference between a βασιλε!α … κατ νμον, like that of Sparta,
Polybius10 but also in Roman political thought:11

The reason was that the Persians did not know how to rule and their
subjects did not cooperate, since it is impossible to be good subjects if
the rulers are bad rulers. Government and slave-management were not
yet differentiated: king and master were equivalent terms. They did not
proceed in a reasonable manner towards great objectives. For the term
‘master’ applies properly within the circle of a private household, and
when it is extended to cities and nations, the role is hard to keep up (sect.
23).
While it is more plausible to suppose that Aristides draws here on

Greek political thinking of the classical period, without having to rely
on Polybius as an intermediary, that seems not to apply to the sections
concerning the comparison between Rome and the hegemonies of the
Greek cities. Here the traces of Polybius are easily detectable in certain
judgements about Greek history: Aristides, like Polybius (6.43), connects
the victory of Thebes at Leuctra in 371 BC with the mistakes made
by the Spartans and the hatred that all the Greeks felt for them (To
Rome 50). Aristides’ assertion (in the same passage) that it would have
been better if the Cadmeia had stayed in Spartan hands and if Sparta
had not been defeated by Thebes is more comprehensible if one takes
account of the fact that public opinion, which Polybius gives voice to
in 4.27, had firmly condemned the surprise occupation of the citadel
of Thebes carried out in 382 by the Spartan general Phoibidas. Finally,
the general judgement of the Greeks given in To Rome, extending to all
of them ‘what has been said about the Athenians’ (sect. 51), seems to
and an λλο μοναρχ!ας εBδος, οLαι παρ’ ν!οις εOσ0 βασιλεαι τ.ν βαρβKρων. *χουσι δ’
αiται τ"ν δναμιν πAσαι παραπλησ!αν τυρανν!σιν …; and, according to Plutarch in De
Alexandri Magni Fortuna aut Virtute (Mor. 329b), Aristotle advised Alexander to behave τος
μ4ν bΕλλησιν Tγεμονικ.ς, τος δ4 βαρβKροις δεσποτικ.ς (the source of this story must
have been Eratosthenes, as is indicated by Strabo 1.4.9).
10 Polybius claims (6.4.2) that ‘one cannot call every monarchy a kingdom, but only
one that is recognized by the common will of its subjects and rules more by persuasion
than by terror or violence’.
11 The distinction between βασιλες and δεσπτης or τραννος was made use of by
the first emperors, who according to the sources (Suet. Aug. 53, Tib. 27; Tac. Ann. 2.87,
12.11; Cassius Dio 57.8.2) refused the Latin title of dominus and the Greek δεσπτης.
It is theorized, in a Stoic fashion, by Seneca (Clem. 1.11–13, with a description of the
distinguishing characteristics of the rex and the tyrannus), by the younger Pliny (Paneg. 45,
with the distinction between principatus and dominatio), and by Dio Chrysostom, who in
his Orations on Kingship (on which see Desideri 1978, 283–318) constructed a theory of the
monarchical form of government as distinct from the tyrannical form of government
(1.22, 2.77, 3.43–44): cf. also André 1982, 29–43, Hidalgo de la Vega 1998, 1023–1051.
echo12 the observations formulated by Polybius in Book VI, when he

emphasizes the inability of the Athenians to rule in peace-time:
And what has been said about the Athenians is perhaps also true for
all the Greeks: they were better than anyone at resisting foreign rulers,
at defeating the Persians and the Lydians, and at knowing how to deal
properly with both prosperity and adversity; but they were not trained to
rule, and when they tried they failed (To Rome 51).
The Athenian people behave like a crew without a captain: as long as

fear of the enemy or the threat of a storm prevails on the sailors to
cooperate with each other and obey the captain, everything on the ship
goes perfectly. But when their confidence comes back and they begin
to disregard the officers and debate among themselves…, then some
of them let out the sheets while others disagree and furl the sails…
Something similar has happened a number of times to the city of Athens:
having been saved from serious dangers by the valour of the people
and its leaders, it has recklessly got into trouble in times of peace and
tranquility (Polyb. 6.44.3–5).
The sections of To Rome dealing with the comparison with the Greek
world show, however, how Aristides, while recalling Polybius, sanctions
the superiority of Rome over the Greeks and draws on motifs that
belonged to Roman imperial ideology.
I well know that Greek achievements will appear even more insignificant
than the Persian ones I have just examined, both with respect to the
extent of their power and with regard to their political importance.
But to surpass the barbarians in wealth and power, and the Greeks in
political wisdom and moderation (σοφ!>α κα0 σωφροσνMη), seems to me to
constitute an irrefutable argument in favour of your valour as well as the
most glorious subject for my oration (sect. 41).
What this σοφ!α and σωφροσνη consist of is made clear in section 51,
where the Greeks are recognized as being superior to all other peoples
in wisdom, and the Romans in ‘knowing how to rule’:
I wanted to show precisely that before you the art of ruling did not
even exist. If it had existed, it would have been among the Greeks, who
certainly distinguished themselves above all other peoples in every form
of wisdom. In fact this art is a discovery of your own, which has been
extended in the meanwhile to all other peoples (sect. 51).
12 Cf. Oliver 1953, 924, who hypothesizes that Polybius and Aristides used a com-
mon source, perhaps Anaximenes of Lampsacus, in giving their judgements on the

Athenians. But see Fontanella 2007, 114–117.
In this case too Aristides’ judgement recalls Polybius Book VI in

some ways: the latter of course linked the success of Roman expansion
to the superiority of Rome’s form of government over the constitutions
of the Greek cities. But since Polybius’ comparison does not concern
methods of ruling subject peoples, we can fairly confidently say that
Aristides is now making use of the Roman point of view,13 which had
previously been set out by Cicero (Tusc.Disp. 1.1–5)14 and then rendered
canonical by Vergil (Aen. 6. 847–853):
excudent alii spirantia mollius aera
credo equidem, uiuos ducent de marmore uultus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent:
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
hae tibi erunt artes, pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
The same judgement recurs in a passage of To Rome in which Aristides

firmly ties the vastness and power of the Roman Empire to Roman
superiority in the art of governing, in such a way as to make Roman
expansion unproblematic, indeed an essential precondition for the real-
ization of ‘good government’:
What had eluded practically everyone before was reserved for you alone
to discover and perfect. And that is not at all surprising, for just as in
other spheres the skills come to the fore when the material is there,
so when a great empire of surpassing power arose, skill too accumu-
lated and entered into its composition, and each was reinforced by
the other. Because of the empire’s size, experience necessarily accrued,
while, because of your knowledge how to rule, the empire flourished and
increased justly and reasonably (sect. 58).
In this last half-sentence one can, I think, hear an echo of the theories
elaborated by Panaetius in the mid-second century B.C. in his work
Περ0 το κα&κοντος and taken up by Cicero in De Officiis.15 Even one
who denies, like Ferrary, the Panaetian origin of the justification of
Roman imperialism in Book III of Cicero’s De Republica,16 has to admit
that Panaetius apparently taught the Romans in Περ0 το κα&κοντος
13 Cf. Desideri 2003.

14 Where the author, while recognizing Greek primacy in science and literature,
claims superiority for the Romans with respect to social and political institutions and
the art of war.
15 Gabba 1979.
16 Cic. Rep. 3.37–39, on which see Ferrary 1988, 363–374.
that power is only legitimate and durable if exercised with justice,

that is to say in the interest of the subjects, and that greatness and
glory are only genuine if they are founded on justice and subordinated
to reason.17 Aristides clearly thought that Panaetius’ lesson had been
thoroughly absorbed by the Romans (De off. 1.13: ‘nemini parere animus
bene informatus a natura velit nisi … utilitatis causa iuste et legitime
imperanti’), and that their empire had grown ‘justly and reasonably’.
Rome’s ‘imperial vocation’, which distinguishes it from all other
peoples, is explained in sections 68 and 91 of To Rome by means of
the well-known theory of the ‘natural’ rule of the ‘better’:
It is not safe to rule without power. The best alternative [to ruling] is to
be governed by one’s betters, but you have by now shown that this is in
fact the best situation (sect. 68).
For you alone are rulers according to nature, so to speak… Since you
were free right from the start and had immediately become rulers, you
equipped yourselves with all that was helpful for this position, and you
invented a constitution such as no one ever had before, and you pre-
scribed for all men rules and fixed arrangements (sect. 91).
The idea that there exist by nature some men fit to rule over other men
who are destined to obey, and that this unequal relationship is in the
interest of both parties, is certainly traceable to the Politics of Aristotle,18
however one wants to understand the Aristotelian concept of a law
of nature.19 At Rome this theory was taken up by Cicero in Laelius’
speech in Book III of De republica, in reply to the criticisms of those who,
like the philosopher Carneades in 155 B.C., had condemned Roman
expansionism in the name of iustitia. Laelius, in his reply to Furius
Philus (who is made the spokesman of Carneades’ complaint), defends
the legitimacy of the Roman Empire on the basis of the premise that
17 Ferrary 401–424, esp. 424.

18 Arist, Pol. 1252a–1255a, where we find the famous demonstration that slavery is
according to nature.
19 Cf. Fassò 2001 [1966–1970], 72–75. In particular, for a parallel to the whole of
section 91 (Xμες ρχοντες … κατ φσιν. οJ μ4ν γ ρ λλοι οJ πρ8 Xμ.ν δυναστεσαντες
δεσπται κα0 δολοι λλλων ν τF. μ ρει γιγνμενοι … ξ ρχ7ς 'ντες λε&εροι κα0 οLον
π0 τ8 ρχειν ε%&?ς γενμενοι), see, for example, Arist. Pol. 1252a: … ρχον δ4 φσει κα0
ρχμενον δι τ"ν σωτηρ!αν. τ8 μ4ν γ ρ δυνKμενον τM7 διανο!>α προορAν ρχον φσει κα0
δεσπζον φσει, τ8 δ4 δυνKμενον [τατα] τF. σ,ματι πονεν ρχμενον κα0 φσει δολον·
δι8 δεσπτMη κα0 δολFω τα%τ8 συμφ ρει; 1254a: κα0 ε%&?ς κ γενετ7ς *νια δι στηκε τ μ4ν
π0 τ8 ρχεσ&αι τ δ’ π0 τ8 ρχειν; 1255a: @τι μ4ν το!νυν εOσ0 φσει τιν4ς οJ μ4ν λε&εροι
οJ δ4 δολοι.
nature dictates that power should be exercised by the best people, in

this case the Romans, justly and in defence of the interests of the
weaker: ‘An non cernimus optimo cuique dominatum ab ipsa natura
cum summa utilitate infirmorum datum?’ (Cic. De rep. 3.37). Later on,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was to exhort his readers not to grieve over
the fact that they had to submit to the power of Rome, on the grounds
that this had come into being in a just and proper way and was like
a natural law that time cannot destroy. The law is that those who are
superior will always rule over those who are inferior: μτε χ&εσ&αι τM7
XποτKξει κατ τ8 εOκ8ς γενομ νMη (φσεως γ ρ δ" νμος :πασι κοινς,
]ν ο%δε0ς καταλσει χρνος, ρχειν ε0 τ.ν Tττνων το?ς κρε!ττονας)
(Dion. Hal. Ant.Rom. 1.5.2). Modern scholars, while almost unanimously
recognizing the Aristotelian origin of this theory, divide into those
who affirm and those who deny the mediation of Panaetius and/or
Posidonius in adapting it to the Roman Empire.20 Since Augustan times
this formulation had become ‘canonical’,21 so it is difficult to identify
the source from which it reached To Rome. But when Aristides in section
91 writes κατ φσιν, it is possible to recognize a more specific reference
to the theory of a law of nature (a reference that is explicit earlier,
in section 20), that is to say to a theory that found its most complete
ancient expression in Stoicism: we find this theory mentioned in two
fragments of Posidonius22 from which I think that it is reasonable to
deduce that he used exactly this kind of argument to justify Roman
imperialism.23 The possible echo of Panaetius traceable in sect. 58 and
those of Posidonius in sects. 68 and 91 could therefore allow us to
identify a Middle Stoic influence on Aristides which probably came
to him through Dionysius.24 We should remember in any case that the
arguments of Aristides in sects. 58 and 91 and of Dion. Hal. 1.5.2 had
clear-cut precedents in Cicero, who certainly knew and made use of the
works of both Panaetius and Posidonius.25
20 In favour: Capelle 1932, 98–104, Walbank 1965, 13–15, Garbarino 1973, I, 37–43,
Pohlenz 1948–1949, I, 206, Gabba 1990, 211, Gabba 1996, 172. Against: Strasburger
1965, 44–45 and n. 50, Gruen 1984, I, 351–352, Kidd 1988, 297, Ferrary 1988, 363–381.
21 Gabba 1996, 172.
22 Poseidonios F 147 and F 448 Theiler, with the latter’s comm. (vol. II, p. 385).
23 Capelle 1932, 98–101, Walbank 1965, 14–15, Gabba 1996, 172.
24 Cf. Fontanella 2007, 118 and 143–146.
25 This idea of Rome’s vocation to rule other peoples persists in Cicero’s last works.
See Phil. 6.19: ‘Populum Romanum servire fas non est, quem di immortales omnibus
gentibus imperare voluerunt … Aliae nationes servitutem pati possunt, populi Romani
est propria libertas’.
The passage in which Aristides interprets Roman constitutional

arrangements as a ‘mixed constitution’26 shows once again how he re-
worked a tradition that went back to classical Greece but had subse-
quently been elaborated and transformed in both the Hellenistic and
Roman worlds.
However your political system is not like any other but is a mixture of
all of them (κρAσις Yπασ.ν τ.ν πολιτει.ν), without the disadvantages of
any of them; hence it is precisely this system of government that has
turned out to be successful. If you consider the power of the people
and how easily they obtain everything they desire and ask for, you will
think that it is a democracy, apart from the single fact that it avoids the
mistakes that the people make. If you look at the Senate deliberating and
exercising power, you will conclude that it is a perfect aristocracy. But
when you look at the overseer and chairman of all this, thanks to whom
the people are able to obtain what they desire and the few are able to
govern and wield power, you will see the man who possesses the most
perfect monarchy, free from the evils of tyranny and above the prestige
of a mere king (sect. 90).
The model of the ‘mixed constitution’ was present in the Greek politi-
cal debate from the fourth century BC, as we can see from both Plato
and Aristotle.27 It was taken up by Peripatetic and Stoic thought in
the third century out of ‘a desire to define the relationship between
the βασιλες, the ruling class of the cities and the mass of the people
within the new Hellenistic πλις’.28 The first person to have applied this
schema to Rome (and therefore not just to any πλις but to an imperial
power) had been Polybius, who had asked himself the question ‘how
and with what form of government (π.ς κα0 τ!νι γ νει πολιτε!ας) the
Romans had in only fifty-three years conquered and subjugated almost
the whole inhabited world’ (6.2.3; cf. 1.1 and 64). Polybius had identified
26 It is to be observed that in the Panathenaikos too (1.383–388) Aristides applies the

scheme of the mixed constitution, though in a diachronic fashion, to the transition
at Athens from monarchy to aristocracy and finally to democracy, remarking at the
same time how in each of these phases the three elements were to a certain extent
combined. In fact the description of a city’s political system and in particular praise
for its mixed constitution were considered obligatory themes in panegyrics on cities
(Menander Rhetor 1.3, sects. 359–360 Russell and Wilson; Pernot 1993a, I, 211), though
that does not mean that in Aristides’ case the theme lacked ideological content (either
in To Rome or in the Panathenaikos).
27 Plato (Laws 712d) interprets the Spartan political system in this fashion, while
Aristotle (Pol. 1273b) applies it to Solonian Athens.

28 Carsana 1990, 15.
the monarchic element in the Roman system in the consuls, the aristo-
cratic element in the Senate and the democratic element in the popular
assemblies: a system of reciprocal checks between these three elements
was able to maintain them in equilibrium in such a way as to make this
form of government stable and not liable to decay like ‘pure’ systems of
government (cf. Polyb. 6.11–18). Undoubtedly Aristides’ identification of
the aristocratic element with the Senate looks like a rhetorical anachro-
nism that owes much to the classical model of the mixed constitution
and to Polybius,29 and the reference to the text of Polybius is unde-
niable (see especially 6.11.12).30 But let us remember that Cicero too,
in De republica (1.69, 2.57), had made a ‘mixed and moderate constitu-
tion’ the basis of his ideal state—though it was a constitution based on
the interaction of three principles (potestas, auctoritas, libertas) present in
a single united ruling class, and not, as in Polybius, on the equilibrium
of three juxtaposed powers (consuls, Senate and people).31 Aristides, in
speaking of a κρAσις Yπασ.ν τ.ν πολιτει.ν, seems almost closer to a
Ciceronian view (though his reference to Polybius is beyond doubt), not
least because To Rome makes it obvious that the Polybian principle of
reciprocal control and equilibrium ‘has been replaced by a hierarchical
system’,32 which is a unified system because it is headed by the emperor,
the person ‘thanks to whom the people are able to obtain what they
desire and the few are able to govern and wield power’.
The passages of To Rome examined so far show that Aristides, though
he never cites Polybius explicitly, knew and used the Greek historian’s
work; but also that he had made his own the essential arguments that
had been worked up in both the Latin and Greek worlds in defence
of the Roman Empire. The appropriation of these themes in To Rome
can be understood as a response to the doubts raised by Polybius in
29 But at the end of the passage Aristides mentions not the Senate but the ‘few’: the
use of the term Pλ!γοι, though it may rather oddly evoke one of the ‘degenerate’ regime
forms, oligarchy, nonetheless makes it possible to interpret the aristocratic element in
the Aristidean mixed constitution in a wider sense, by identifying it with the governing
class of the whole empire, already defined in sect. 59 of To Rome as the χαρι στερν τε
κα0 γενναιτερον κα0 δυνατ,τερον element.
30 ‘La citazione ‘sintattica’ del testo […] sta forse ad indicare […] una continuità
di rapporti tra Roma e gli esponenti delle classi dirigenti del mondo greco; un filo che
lega Polibio, storico greco vissuto all’epoca degli Scipioni, ad Elio Aristide, originario
della Misia nell’età degli Antonini’: Carsana 1990, 74–75.
31 Cf. Ferrary 1984.
32 Carsana 1990, 78.
the so-called second introduction to his history; but Aristides’ answer

to Polybius seems even more explicit in the sections of To Rome that
immediately follow the comparison with the hegemonies of the Greek
city-states (sects. 58–70). Here, first of all, he identifies in the diffusion of
Roman citizenship the characteristic ‘that more than any other deserves
to be noticed and admired, because there is nothing like it in the world’
(sect. 59).
Being great, you have created a great city, but you have not given yourself
airs about this and you have made it wonderful not by excluding people
from it, but rather you have sought out a population worthy of it. You
have made ‘Roman’ the name not of a single city but of a whole nation,
and not just of a single nation but of a nation that is a match for all
the others together. For you no longer divide the nations into Greeks
and barbarians, and indeed you have demonstrated the absurdity of that
distinction—for your city by itself is more populous than the whole tribe
of the Greeks. You have instead divided humankind into Romans and
non-Romans, so far have you extended the name of the capital city (sect.
63).
Hence
No envy (φ&ονς) enters into your empire: you in fact were the first
people to rise above jealousy, having made all things generally available
and having conceded to all who are capable of it the chance of taking
their turn in command as well as being commanded. Not even those who
are excluded from positions of power nurture resentment (μσος). Given
that there is a single system of government shared by all, as if this were
a single city-state, it is natural that those who hold office treat people
not as foreigners but as fellow-citizens, and under your government even
the mass of the population feels safe from those who hold power among
them… For your rage and vengeance (Pργ τε κα0 τιμωρ!α) immediately
catch up with them if they dare to upset the established order. Thus it is
natural that the present state of affairs pleases and suits (κα0 ρ σκει κα0
συμφ ρει) both the poor and the rich and no other way of life any longer
exists. There has emerged a single harmonious system of government
(μ!α Yρμον!α πολιτε!ας) that includes all … (sects. 65–66).
These sections obviously balance sections 44–46, where Aristides em-
phasizes the hatred that the various hegemonic Greek city-states
aroused against themselves.33 The terms employed by Aristides to
describe disaffection towards the rulers (φ&ονς and μσος) are used by
33 One recalls that not being capable of extending their citizenship to other peoples
is given as the reason for the ruin of the Greeks by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2.17.2)
Polybius (6.7.8) to refer to the disaffection that arises when the ruling
power ceases to pay attention to the interests of its subjects and thinks
only of its own profits, which leads to the degeneration of monarchy
into tyranny, which in turn leads to attempts to overthrow it: ‘thus they
provoked envy (φ&ονς) and hostility, then hatred (μσος) and violent
anger (Pργ), until monarchy gave way to tyranny’.
There is no such disaffection towards the Romans, according to
Aristides. While rage, Pργ, refers in Polybius to the rage of the subjects
towards tendentially tyrannical power, and in Aristides too targets those
who abuse their power, it is not in the latter writer expressed by the
subjects but by the central Roman power itself, which directs it towards
those who ‘dare to overturn the established order’.34
So great is the convenience of the Roman Empire for the subject
peoples that
they all stay close to you, and no more think of parting from you than
ship-passengers think of parting from their helmsman. Just as bats in
caves cling to each other and to the rock, so all of them are attached
to you and fearfully take care that no one falls down from the clinging
mass: they are more likely to fear being abandoned by you than to think
of abandoning you themselves (sect. 68).
Finally, thanks to the Romans, peace reigns throughout the oikoumene:
Peoples no longer struggle for empire and supremacy (ρχ7ς τε κα0
πρωτε!ων), because of which all previous wars have been engaged. Some
people, like quietly running water, live voluntarily in peace, pleased to
have put an end to troubles and misadventures, and aware of the fact
that they had fought to no purpose against shadows. Others do not even
know that once they had an empire—they have forgotten the fact: just as
and also by Claudius (at least in the account that Tacitus provides of his famous speech
on the extension of the ius honorum to the notables of Gallia Comata: Ann. 11.24.4).
34 The end of sect. 66 of To Rome (κα0 γ γονε μ!α Yρμον!α πολιτε!ας :παντας συγκε-
κλεικυα) is verbally reminiscent of Polyb. 6.18.1, where, à propos of the mutual rela-
tionships that exist between the various elements in the Roman political system (con-
suls, Senate, people), the historian speaks of Yρμον!α: τοιατης δ’ οNσης τ7ς \κKστου τ.ν
μερ.ν δυνKμεως εOς τ8 κα0 βλKπτειν κα0 συνεργεν λλλοις, πρ8ς πKσας συμβα!νει τ ς
περιστKσεις δεντως *χειν τ"ν Yρμογ"ν α%τ.ν, Sστε μ" οLν τ’ εBναι τατης εXρεν με!νω
πολιτε!ας σστασιν: cf. Volpe 2001, 308. A final ‘Polybian citation’ is perhaps detectable
in sect. 103 of To Rome: ‘once you arrived… laws appeared, and people began to put
trust in the altars of the gods’ (&ε.ν βωμο0 π!στιν *λαβον)’. Here Aristides may have
had in mind Polyb. 6.56, where δεισιδαιμον!α towards the gods and the π!στις afforded
to oaths are recognized as strong points in Roman society: so Oliver 1953, 948, and
R. Klein in his edition, 118 n. 138.
in Er the Pamphylian’s myth, or at least Plato’s, the city-states that were

already on their own funerary pyre as a result of their mutual rivalries
and struggles came back to life in a moment as soon as they all accepted
your hegemony. They cannot say how they reached this state, and they
can do nothing but marvel at it. They feel like a man who was dreaming
a moment ago and suddenly wakes up to find himself immersed in a new
reality (sect. 69).
Just this eulogy of peace, contrasted with the lives lived by the various
peoples before the advent of Rome, allows us to understand better
another aspect of Aristides’ response to Polybius’ problem about the
Roman Empire.
It is obvious that when he refers to those peoples that had fought
‘for empire and supremacy’ Aristides intends to refer in the first place
to the ones whose histories he has sketched in the opening sections of
his encomium, that is the Persians, Macedonians and Greeks.35 But the
Romans too were well aware (as can be seen in the pages of Cicero)
that they too, from at least the time of the Second Punic War, had
fought wars de imperio.36 How the Romans of that time saw their wars is
a matter of some controversy. Cicero later on took a moralistic stand,
asserting (probably in the footsteps of Panaetius)37 that ‘wars are only to
be undertaken in order to assure peace without injustice’ (De off. 1.35).
Cicero seems not to have been able to make up his own mind about
what constituted iustae causae for war.38 In To Rome, however, all this
problematic is absent: what matters is the present, a world hegemony
in which, theoretically at least, peace reigns (sects. 69–71). How this
situation had been arrived at, one cannot (as Aristides remarks) say,
or one would prefer not to, and hence the wars de imperio only seem
to concern the past of other peoples and not that of the Romans. To
everyone, and above all to the Greeks, the Romans brought peace.39
35 Demosthenes too (On the Crown 18.66) describes Athens as ε0 περ0 πρωτε!ων
κα0 τιμ7ς κα0 δξης γωνιζομ νην, and sees Philip as initiating war Xπ4ρ ρχ7ς κα0
δυναστε!ας.
36 See for instance Cic. De off. 1.38, with Brunt 1978, 159–191.
37 Cf. Gabba 1990, 194.
38 Cf. Harris 1979, 165–175, Brunt 1978, 177, Ferrary 1988, 410–415.
39 The idea that the Romans have brought peace to peoples who have shown
themselves to be incapable of attaining and preserving it by themselves is already to

be found in the letter of Cicero to his brother in which he observes, with regard to the
province Asia, that ‘nullam ab se neque belli externi neque domesticarum discordiarum
calamitatem afuturam fuisse, si hoc imperio non teneretur’ (Ad Q. fr. 1.1.34). Tacitus
likewise makes Petilius Cerialis say in his speech to the Treviri and the Lingones that
Aristides, having sketched in the preceding sections the unsuccessful

history of the Greek hegemonies, thus demonstrates how Rome’s rise
to power was in a sense a fulfillment of the objectives that the Greeks
themselves had pursued but had not succeeded in achieving. ‘It fell to
the political dominion of the Romans to bring about that consortium
of cities united by a shared consensus to master city—the only possible
way of unifying the Greek world’.40 Aristides’ attention is centred on a
present in which Greece enjoys the fruits of Roman rule and on a past
that could be said to have fully justified that rule. There is complete
silence on the other hand about what stood chronologically between
the two periods in question—Rome’s conquest of the Greek world,
during which Rome combined acts such as the proclamation of the
freedom of Greece by Flamininus in 196 with acts of brutal imperialism
such as the destruction of Corinth in 146.
The silence in which Aristides covered the history of the Hellenistic
period is of course to be connected with the archaizing and classicizing
elements in the style, citations and often in the subject matter of the
authors of the Second Sophistic.41 But another consideration will have
played an even bigger role—that it was better not to bring up now a
period that was one of the most problematic, from an ‘ethical’ point
of view, in the history of Rome. Polybius reserved judgement on that
period, at least in public, but extended his history to the last of the
Macedonian Wars and to the Achaean War, that is to say to the
time when ‘the common misfortune of all Greece had its beginning
and its end’ (3.5.6). Aristides prefers not to speak about these events.
The reader may wonder whether this silence about Rome’s methods
of conquests indicates not so much approval of Roman hegemony
however it was achieved but rather, as Pernot argues elsewhere in this
volume, tacit resignation in the face of a power that it seemed no longer
possible to question.
‘terram vestram ceterorumque Gallorum ingressi sunt duces imperatoresque Romani

nulla cupidine, sed maioribus vestris invocantibus quos discordiae usque ad exitium
fatigabant’ (Hist. 4.74.2).
40 Desideri 2002, 149.
41 Cf. Bowie 1970. Though this tendency definitely has the effect of reminding the
hearer of the glorious literary-historical past of Hellas, the interpretation of this allusion
as an intentional challenge to Roman rule should not be generalized. In fact, ‘by re-
creating the situations of the past the contrast between the immense prosperity and the
distressing dependence of the contemporary Greek world was dulled’ (Bowie 1970, 41),
and ‘since Greek identity could not be grounded in the real political world, it had to
assert itself in the cultural domain and so as loudly as possible’ (Swain 1996, 89).
chapter eleven
AELIUS ARISTIDES AND RHODES:

CONCORD AND CONSOLATION
Carlo Franco
Introduction
The prosperous civic life of the Greek East under Roman rule may be
seen as the most complete development of Greek civilization in antiq-
uity. In this context the so-called Second Sophistic played a crucial role,
and its cultural, social and political dimensions continue to attract the
attention of contemporary scholars.1 Beyond its literary interest, the
rich and brilliant virtuoso prose of the Greek sophists, together with
the evidence of coins, inscriptions, and archaeology, provides histori-
ans with invaluable material for the study of civic life. The connections
between higher education and social power, rhetoric and politics, cen-
tral and local power, rulers and subjects, are becoming more and more
evident. On the surface, the subjects approached by the orators were
escapist (although perhaps no more escapist than a conference of clas-
sical scholars today), but on many occasions the sophists’ speeches were
closely connected to the time and place of their delivery, thereby open-
ing the door to historical analysis.
In this context, Aelius Aristides rightly ranks among the most inter-
esting and intriguing personalities: apart from the fascinating Sacred
Tales and the solemn Encomium To Rome, other writings of his appear
worthy of careful study. Having examined the Smyrnean Orations else-
where, I will focus in this paper on two speeches about the ancient city
of Rhodes that are included in the Aristidean corpus.2 They are good
case studies for examining the impact of natural disasters on the Greek
1 Anderson 1989; id. 1993; Whitmarsh 2005.

2 These texts ‘can only be understood when read in conjunction with other speeches
in praise of cities’ (Bowersock 1969, 16).
218 carlo franco
cities in the Roman Empire, as well as the social tensions that these
disasters revealed. The size and beauty of those poleis were sometimes
darkened and challenged by serious crises. But it was precisely in such
emergencies that the educated discourse of the orators played a pivotal
role. Leaving aside the momentous problem of the sophists’ political
efficacy, we may claim that their speeches met above all the emotional
needs of the cities: lamenting the disaster and preaching moral values,
the orators tried to restore mutual confidence and concord, thereby
preserving the deepest values of ancient civic life.3
The Rhodiakos
In modern critical editions of Aristides’ works, the sequence of the two

Rhodian speeches reverses their chronology: Oration 24, To the Rhodi-
ans on Concord, was apparently delivered more or less five years after
Oration 25, the Rhodiakos. In order to examine those texts from a histor-
ical point-of-view, it is expedient to observe their proper chronological
order by considering the Rhodiakos first.4
Oration 25 was delivered in Rhodes some time after a tremendous
earthquake, which razed the city in 142 AD. It is at once a commemo-
ration of the ruined city, a memorial of the catastrophe, and an exhor-
tation to the survivors.5 After an exordium, which laments the total loss
of Rhodes’ former greatness and beauty (Or. 25.1–10), there is a heart-
felt exhortation to endure the disaster (11–16). The earthquake and its
effects are vividly described in the central section of the speech (17–33),
which goes on to reassess the importance of Rhodes and the duty of
endurance (34–49). The oration then turns to a consolation, with an
empathetic narration of the most ancient traditions of Rhodes and a
forecast of the reconstruction (50–56). After a series of historical exam-
ples (57–68), it ends with the appropriate peroration (69).
In his 1898 edition of Aristides’ works, Bruno Keil asserted, primar-
ily on stylistic grounds, that the speech was not written by Aristides.
3 Leopold 1986, 818.

4 The speech has been often disregarded because of its similarity with Oration 23:
according to Reardon, ‘Il n’y a aucunement lieu d’analyser le discours Aux Rhodiens’
(1971, 134). The Rhodiakos is not considered at all, following Boulanger 1923, 126 n. 14.
5 Chronology: Behr 1981, 371; Guidoboni 1994, 235–236. Local context: Papachri-
stodoulou 1994, 143 f.

aelius aristides and rhodes: concord and consolation 219
Keil’s judgment, accepted until recently,6 has heavily conditioned the

critical evaluation of the text: the speech has generally been considered
a spurious and tasteless piece, deprived of literary, not to say histori-
cal, value.7 It may be useful to remember that, before Keil, important
scholars like Dindorf and Schmid judged the Rhodiakos perfectly appro-
priate to the style of Aristides.8 Recent studies have reconsidered the
question and shown that Keil’s condemnation was too hasty and prob-
ably wrong. The bulk of the evidence adduced against an attribution of
the text to Aristides was discussed and rejected by Jones.9 Upon care-
ful scrutiny, no element of content and language was seen to conflict
explicitly with the authorship of Aristides.10 Nor do small factual dis-
crepancies with other Aristidean works support the attribution to a dif-
ferent author.11 Consistency was not the mark of the genre. It was the
special occasion, the kairos, that dictated the choice of material to the
orator, even in historical narratives: ad tempus orator retractat sententiam, as
was wisely observed.12 If we were to adopt consistency as a criterion
6 Anderson 2007, 341–342.

7 Keil 1898, 72, 91. As unauthentic, the Rhodiakos receives only a short mention
in Boulanger (1923, 374 n. 1). General introduction: Behr 1981, 371 (with analysis of
the structure); Cortés Copete 1997, 175–178. For a different hypothesis, namely that
the extant Rhodiakos is spurious and that the original Rhodian speech was delivered in
Egypt and subsequently lost, see Behr 1968, 16 and n. 48.
8 Aristides’ style was perfectly consistent with the Atticist mode. According to the
careful analysis in Schmid 1889, vol. II, the Rhodiakos shows no remarkable difference
from the other texts of the Aristidean corpus (Jones 1990). Norden (1909, 420–421)
found the Smyrnean Monody and the Eleusinian speech divergent from the ‘normal’
Aristidean style.
9 Jones 1990. The highly mannered use of topoi is studied by Pernot 1993a, II, index
s.v.; Cortés 1995; Cortés Copete 1995, 29 ff.

10 Much was made of the allocution to the daimones (Or. 25.33). This seems allowed
by Men. Rhet 2.435.9–11: see Puiggali 1985, quoting in a note not only Or. 25.33, but
also Or. 37.25, Or. 42, and Or. 46.32.
11 According to the author of the Rhodiakos, the members of the democratic group
that recaptured Athens in 403 BC were seventy in number (Or. 25.64, as in Plut. Glor.
Ath. 345D; see Xen. Hell. 2.4.2, Diod. 14.32), whereas Aristides (Or. 1.254) says that they
were ‘little more than fifty’ (sixty, according to Paus. 1.29.3). The contradiction is of
slight import and should not be used as a proof against the Aristidean authorship of the
Rhodiakos. A rhetor was not bound to consistency in the evocation of ancient deeds. On
the treatment of the events of 404/3 BC by the authors of the Second Sophistic: Oudot
2003.
12 In the Smyrnean Orations Aristides gives three different accounts of the origins of
that city, choosing between several traditions according to the circumstances and the
different aims of his speeches: Franco 2005, 425 ff.
220 carlo franco
for judging a speech’s authenticity, the study of these texts would face a
mountain of contradictions.13
The strongest argument against the authenticity of Oration 25 is based
on a debatable argumentum e silentio: in the speech To the Rhodians, On
Concord, Aristides does not refer to any prior declamation given on
the island, despite the fact that he refers to his actions on behalf of
the city, as well as to some prior visit paid to Rhodes (Or. 24.3, 53,
56). Moreover, he says that he is addressing the Rhodians tên prôtên.
The meaning of these words has been much discussed: should we
understand ‘for the first time’, as the more common usage suggests,
or ‘for the present’? Whichever interpretation is chosen, the expression
seems compatible with the attribution of the Rhodiakos to Aristides. But
if this is the case, why did he fail to quote his previous speech about
the earthquake? Here, too, various answers, which have underlined the
difference between oral performance and written texts and between
public and private declamations, have been given. There may be a
more compelling explanation. When he was in Egypt, Aristides met
the Rhodian ambassadors who were seeking help after the disaster (Or.
24.3). Five years later, in the same way, Rhodian delegates again came
to meet him, presumably in Pergamum this time, and requested help
for their city in the name of prior relations: the meeting in Egypt, but
not the form of the aid given, is duly recalled. The oration On Concord is
remarkably reticent about many themes, so the silence about Aristides’
previous involvement with Rhodes may be not so relevant and should
be considered in a wider context. The speech is fully oriented towards
the present situation of Rhodes; the earthquake is briefly alluded to
only at the beginning and at the end of the text, as though it had been
forgotten and completely obliterated by the rapid renaissance of the
city. I will discuss at greater length later what the real motive for these
choices may have been. The same attitude appears in the Aristides’
Panegyricus to Cyzicus, where the very reason for the reconstruction of
the temple, viz. an earthquake, receives no mention at all. This attitude
may explain the omission in the Concord oration: Rhodes faced a new
crisis, that is, stasis, and needed encouragement. So it might have
seemed inappropriate to recall the earlier disaster.
13 In Or. 33.29, for example, Aristides criticizes the ‘cursed’ sophists because they
‘persuade you that even Homer’s greatest quality was that he was the son of the Meles’,
which is precisely one of the greatest sources of civic pride prized by Aristides in the
Smyrnean Orations (Or. 17.14 ff.; Or. 21.8).
In addition to relevant similarities to the oration On Concord, which

might eventually outnumber the alleged discrepancies, the Rhodiakos
shares many themes, like the beauty or sea power of Rhodes, as well
as several stylistic echoes, with other works. All of these similarities led
a specialist like Keil to express the bizarre hypothesis that Aristides him-
self imitated the Rhodiakos (allegedly the work of a different author) in
his Smyrnean orations. It is high time to abandon such a theory, since
neither the analysis of content, nor that of style, provides irrefutable
evidence against the authenticity of the Rhodiakos.14 Indeed, the debate
on its disputed authorship is showing signs of reaching a generally
accepted conclusion. The diction of the Rhodiakos is compatible with
Aristidean authorship, and authorship of the Rhodiakos is also consis-
tent with Aristides’ biography. In the description of the earthquake, the
author of the speech compares the rumble of the collapsing buildings
with the noise produced by the Egyptian cataracts (Or. 25.25): this may
be a fresh memory, for, in fact, when he went to Egypt, Aristides saw
the cataracts, a customary detour for tourists on the Nile.15 Thus, the
Rhodiakos could plausibly have been delivered during the journey back
from Alexandria to Asia.16 To sum up, I will assume that the speech
was written by Aristides. But in order to avoid bias in the analysis of the
text, I will for the time being maintain a neutral designation and speak
of ‘the author of the Rhodiakos’.
The first theme worth consideration in the text is the description of

Rhodes, which obviously refers to the days before its destruction. At the
beginning of the speech, the orator recalls the ‘many great harbours’,
the ‘many handsome docks’, the triremes and the bronze beaks ‘along
with many other glorious spoils of war’, the temples and the statues,
the bronzes and the paintings, the Acropolis ‘full of fields and groves’,
and above all ‘the circuit of the walls and the height and beauty of
the interspersed towers’. Up until the day of the earthquake, he says,
the ancient renown of Rhodes had remained largely intact: although
the glory of past sea battles was irremediably lost, ‘all the rest of the
city was preserved purely pure’.17 All this material follows the familiar
14 Linguistic and philological analysis does not always definitively confirm or reject
the debated authorship of ancient texts: see as a case-study the ‘Tacitean fragment’
created and discussed by Syme 1991b.
15 Arist. Or. 36 passim; Philostr. VAp 6.26.
16 Cortés 1995, 207.
17 Or. 25.1–8. All translations of Aristides are from Behr 1981.
222 carlo franco
pattern of the laudes urbium and reveals a high level of rhetorical artistry:
its function is to prepare us for the subsequent reversal of destiny and
the total destruction of all the city’s treasures, statues and monuments.
Although largely conditioned by rhetoric, the description is not a mere
literary essay. The task of an orator in front of a civic community was
to choose relevant aspects of the local reality and to reshape them,
creating an idealized image of the city, not a false one.18 Thus it is
possible to compare aspects of the speech with the actual city, so far as
it is known from literary and archaeological evidence.
Let us first consider the naval structures. At the beginning of the
Imperial Age, the glory of ancient Rhodian sea power was still consid-
ered among the greatest and best-preserved sources of Rhodian pride.19
The time of its thalassocracy, however, was over. After the great bat-
tles of the Hellenistic age, the Rhodian navy had been marginalized
by the increasing, and eventually prevailing, role of Rome. During the
last century of the Republic, the Rhodians were still fighting against the
pirates and collaborating with Caesar.20 But after heavy depredations
at the time of the siege by Cassius in 43 BC, the size and strength of
the Rhodian navy had been reduced to insignificance. Only commer-
cial exchange and the local patrolling of the islands still under Rhodian
rule continued.21 So the author’s reference to triremes, ‘some ready for
sailing, others in dry dock, as it were in storage, but if one wished to
launch and sail any of them, it was possible’ (Or. 25.4), seems an ele-
gant way to describe the present state of the Rhodian navy: the docks
and the huge triremes are preserved, but not all of them are actually
in use. The author of the Rhodiakos is fully aware of this situation, since
he praises this state of affairs as unique to Rhodes among the Greek
cities: ‘only when one was with you, did he see precisely, not only hear,
what the city was’ (2). Thus, the orator can transform the remains of
the sea power into a justification for eulogy: for Rhodes has ‘sensibly
18 This attitude allows us to undertake a historical analysis of these speeches, as in
the case of Dio’s speeches for Tarsus or Nicomedia, or Aristides’ for Smyrna: Classen
1980; Bouffartigue 1996.
19 Strabo 14.2.5 reports that the ‘roadsteads had been hidden and forbidden to the
people for a long time’, in order to preserve its secrets, as in the Venetian Arsenal:
Gabrielsen 1997, 37 ff.
20 Pirates: Flor. 1.41.8; Caes. BC 3.102.7; Cic. Fam. 12.4.3. Alexandria: BAl 1.1, 11.1–3,
13.5, 14.1, 15, 25.3–6, App. Civ. 2.89.

21 But see Cic. Fam. 12.15.2 (Lentulus): Rhodiosque navis complures instructas et paratas in
aqua. Rhodes and commercial routes in the Imperial Age: Rougé 1966, 132 f.
given up its empire’, without losing any of its structures or its name (8)
and without diminishing the greatness of its ancestors.22 Archaeological
excavations have revealed significant traces of the dockyards beneath
later Roman structures;23 it is tempting to suppose that they were
abandoned after the earthquake. Surely, no one could possibly have
forecast at the time of the speech that the Rhodian navy would recover
something of its former glory when in the third century AD the seas
became less safe. A decree possibly dating to the beginning of the third
century AD honours an Ailios Alexander, who patrolled the area of
the Rhodian Chersonese and ‘provided safety and security for sailors,
seizing and handing over for punishment the piratical band active at
sea’.24
The memories of this great past provided the Rhodians with consid-
erable moral strength. As a witness to the fierce character of the citizens
in the face of extremely serious situations, the author of the Rhodiakos
quotes an old local saying:
Καιρ8ς δ4 νν ε$περ ποτ4, { νδρες =Ρδιοι, σ.σαι μ4ν XμAς α%το?ς κ τ.ν
περιεστηκτων, βοη&7σαι δ4 τF. γ νει τ7ς νσου, στ7ναι δ4 πρ8ς τ"ν τχην
λαμπρ.ς, ν&υμη& ντας Xμ.ν τ8ν το πολ!του κυβερντου λγον, ]ς *φη
χειμαζομ νης α%τF. τ7ς νεcς κα0 καταδσεσ&αι προσδοκ.ν τοτο δ" τ8
&ρυλομενον, λλ’ { Ποτειδ ν, $σ&ι @τι Pρ& ν τ ν ναν καταδσωk (25.13).
Now is the time, O men of Rhodes, to save yourselves from these
circumstances, to aid the race of the island, and to stand gloriously
against fortune, keeping in mind the words of your fellow citizen, the
helmsman, who, when his ship was tempest tossed and he expected that
she would sink, made that famous remark: ‘Know well, Poseidon, that I
will lose my ship on an even keel’.
Recourse to examples of ‘vulgarized philosophy’ was common enough
in sophistic rhetoric, and especially in consolatory texts. The Rhodiakos
also reveals a rich display of traditional wisdom, very apt for a popular
assembly. Needless to say, the sailor’s phrase, which is widely attested in
the classical writers, was particularly fitting for a Rhodian public.25
22 See also Dio Or. 31.103–104.

23 Cante 1986–1987, 181 n. 10: ‘bacini di carenaggio, capannoni dei neoria, piani di
alaggio’.
24 AE 1948, 201 = BullEp 1946–1947, 156; see De Souza 1999, 218–219. The brave
man was also limênarchês.

25 Pernot 1993a, II, 603. Other occurrences of the saying were collected first by
Haupt 1876, 319. A preliminary list ranks: Teles 62.2 Hense [= Stob. 34.991 Wachs-
muth-Hense]; Enn. 508 Skutsch [dum clavum rectum teneam, navemque gubernem = Cic. QF
1.2.13]; Sen. Ep. 85.33 [‘Neptune, numquam hanc navem nisi rectam’]; Ep. 8.4 [aut saltem rectis,
224 carlo franco
As a complement to the memories of past sea power, the author

mentions the monuments which had borne witness, at least until the
day of the earthquake, to Rhodes’ ancient strength: ‘bronze beaks’ and
‘many other glorious spoils of war’, some ‘taken from the Etruscans’
pirate fleet, some from the campaigns of Alexander, others from wher-
ever each had been brought into the city’ (4). As is typical in the culture
of the Second Sophistic, the memory of the past is limited to the Age
of Alexander, and the approach is largely generic and selective. Rhodes
had fought against the pirates already in the fourth century BC, before
the Age of Alexander, and had won power and glory, but the author of
the Rhodiakos does not mention this phase of Rhodian history.26 Actually
the spoils exposed in Rhodes were not all the result of military opera-
tions, nor was the Rhodian attitude towards piracy unambiguous, since
Rhodes had taken part, as has been recently argued, in a system of
raids in the eastern Mediterranean.27
Other events in the local history enjoyed even greater renown. Of
the sieges, for example, the author says, ‘and of old you showed to
visitors the engines of war made from the shorn hair of your women,
and it was a wonderful thing’ (κα0 πKλαι μ4ν τ κ τ.ν γυναικ.ν τ.ν
ποκειραμ νων μηχανματα δε!κνυτε τος πιδημοσι κα0 &αυμαστ8ν
_ν, Or. 25.32). Apparently female hair was commonly used for torsion
catapults in the Hellenistic and Roman epochs: Heron asserts that
such hair is long, strong, and elastic—particularly suitable for military
engines. After the great earthquake of 227 BC, King Seleucus II gave
the Rhodians, among many other gifts, a large amount of hair. And a
few years later, in 220 BC, the favor was returned by the Rhodians, who
allegedly sent several tons of (female?) hair to Sinope as help against the
attack by Mithridates.28 In the tradition of war stratagems, the use of
female hair during sieges was seen as a sign of dramatic emergency and
of a shortage of resources.29 Thus the machine is quoted as a brilliant
aut semel ruere]; Prov. 1.4.5; Cons. Marc. 5.5; 6.3 [At ille vel in naufragio laudandus, quem obruit
mare clavum tenentem et obnixum]; Quint. 2.17.24; Isid. Orig. 19.2. (both quoting Ennius);
Plin. Epist. 9.26.4; Max. Tyr. Decl. 40.5e.
26 Diod. 20. 81.2–3; Strabo 14.2.5. See Gabrielsen 1997, 108 f.; Wiemer 2002, 117 ff.
27 Gabrielsen 1997, 176 n. 134; id. 2001.
28 Heron Belopoiika 30; Plb. 5.89.9; 4.56.3. The chronology is somewhere blurred:
Walbank 1957–1979, I, pp. 511–512; 621 ad loc. In general see Marsden 1969, 87 ff. (and
75 n. 7: no evidence for women’s hair in Plb. 4.56.3).
29 Garlan 1974, 220, n. 3. See in general Vitr. 10.11.2: ad ballistas capillo maxime muliebri,
vel nervo funes, and anecdotes about different cities, e.g. Strabo 17.3.15; Frontin. 1.7.3;
Flor. 1.31.10; 2.15.10 (Carthage); Caes. BC 3.9.3 (Salona); Polyaen. 8.67 (Thasos); SHA
symbol of heroic endurance that encompasses the whole civic body,

from the soldiers to the women, and thus becomes an inspiring image
for the Rhodians resisting the present catastrophe. The war engines
dated presumably to the siege by Demetrius, more or less four centuries
before, but all details are omitted in the speech: the orator uses the
anecdote solely as a source of exhortation for the survivors. Some
have suspected a play on words involving the shorn women in the
past and Rhodes’ present condition, which is like that of a mourning
lady.30 The opposition is between the past and the present: before the
earthquake the Rhodians took pride in showing the war machines
that had preserved their city; now the city itself appears destroyed.
Nevertheless, there was chance in the misfortune, since
ο% γ ρ πολ μFω ληφ&εσα Xμ.ν T πλις ο$χεται ο%δ’ νδρ.ν χε!ρων φα-
νεσα, ο%δ’ *στησεν π’ α%τ7ς τρπαιον ο%δε0ς, ο%δ’ π8 τ.ν Xμετ ρων
να&ημKτων τ παρ’ αXτF. τις Jερ κοσμσει, Sσπερ Xμες τος *ξω&εν
λαφροις τ"ν Xμετ ραν α%τ.ν πλιν κατεκοσμσατε (Or. 25.59).
…your city did not perish captured in war, nor was it seen to be con-
quered by other men, nor did anyone triumph over it, nor will anyone
adorn their temples with your offerings, as you have adorned your city
with foreign spoils.
Thus, paradoxically, the orator may confidently judge the destruction
of the city by earthquakes a reason to praise Rhodes, since the city
‘perished with a record of total invincibility’ (62), a claim that is surely
false, but aptly conceals the defeat inflicted by Cassius.
After praising the spoils and the memories of the past, the orator
turns to Rhodes’ artistic ornamentation:
τεμ νη δ4 &ε.ν κα0 Jερ κα0 γKλματα τοσατα μ4ν τ8 πλ7&ος, τηλικατα
δ4 τ8 μ γε&ος, τοιατα δ4 τ8 κKλλος, Sστ’ ξια εBναι τ.ν λλων *ργων
χαριστρια, κα0 )ς μ" εBναι διακρναι τ! τις α%τ.ν μAλλον &αυμKσειεν (Or.
25.5).31
There could be seen the precincts of the gods, temples and statues, of
such number, size and beauty, that they were worthy thank offerings from
all the rest of the world, and that it was impossible to decide which of
them one would admire more.
Maxim. 33.3 (Aquileia); Lact. Div.Inst. 1.20.27; Serv. ad Aen. 1.720; Veget. 4.9 (Rome,
Gallic siege). The mention of Rhodes and Massilia in Frontin. 1.7.4 was apparently
interpolated.
30 Dindorf 1829, I.809 n. 4, ad loc. Towers as the city’s hair: Eur. Hec. 910 f.; Troad.
784.
31 Apparently no mention of the Deigma: Plb. 5.88.8; Diod. 19.45.4.
226 carlo franco
The praise of Rhodes’ artistic treasures was typical. Some celebrated

paintings by Protogenes were said to have been spared by Demetrius
and were later recorded by Strabo.32 Pliny the Elder, relying on the
authority of Mucianus, stated that there were thousands of signa in
Rhodes,33 although the famous oration by Dio Chrysostom informs
the reader that, in his time, the Rhodians engaged in the dubious
practice of recycling old statues for new honorands.34 The practise,
albeit common elsewhere, was criticized by Dio.35 The author of the
Rhodiakos, to be sure, does not mention this deplorable habit, but states
that any one of the monuments that could be seen on the island ‘was a
sufficient source of pride for another city’ (5).36
The speech then turns to the city walls, ‘a wonder […] which could
not satiate the eye’ (7). This sort of praise also was very common
in ancient descriptions of cities.37 According to Strabo, the Rhodian
enceinte was among the most noteworthy structures of the island, and
Dio Chrystostom assures us that the Rhodians took great care and
spent a large amount of money in order to keep their walls well-
maintained (although they were reluctant to pay for new statues!). Pau-
sanias ranked the Rhodian walls among the best fortifications he had
seen: since his journeys are dated to the middle of the second century
AD, this could mean that he saw them after their reconstruction.38 But
an orator was not supposed to give technical or realistic details; rather,
his task was to select relevant elements and convert them into perfect
32 Demetrius: Gell. 15.31.1; Strabo 14.2.5.

33 NH 34.7.36. See also NH 33.12.55; 34.7.34, 63; 35.10, 69, 71, 93 for more informa-
tion on Rhodian artistic treasures.
34 On the image of Rhodes in Dio Or. 31: Jones 1978, 26 ff. See Plb. 31.4.4 for the
dedication of a Colossus to the Roman people in the precinct of Athena (Lindia?).

Post-Hellenistic Rhodian statuary has not been the subject of intensive research: see
Gualandi 1976, 18. Late Hellenistic casting-houses for large bronzes are studied in
Kanzia and Zimmer 1998. Some monuments appear to have been restored after
earthquakes: Papachristodoulou 1989, 186 n. 29b (dated to the first century AD for
palaeographic reasons).
35 Recycling of statues at Athens: Paus. 1.18.3; Mycenae: Paus. 2.17.3, where criticism
of the practice appears implicit in the text. As a sign of economic shortage: Sartre 1991,
138.
36 The same topos appears in Plin. 34.7.41–42 in reference to the Colossus and other
large statues: sed ubicumque singuli fuissent, nobilitaturi locum. In the Rhodiakos, mention of
the Colossus occurs at Or. 25.53.
37 Franco 2005, 391 ff.
38 Strabo 14.2.5; Dio Or. 31.125,146; Paus. 4.31.5, with Moggi and Osanna 2003, 493
(ad 8.43).
forms of the topos. The Rhodiakos describes the towers, which could be
seen from a distance when sailing to or from Rhodes and served as
a sort of lighthouse.39 Enceintes had no real importance in a world
completely pacified by Rome, but the Rhodian walls had a long history.
They had played a role in a huge flood at the end of the fourth
century BC, and later in the great siege by Demetrius Poliorcetes.40
Following those events, according to historical tradition and to the
archaeological evidence, they had been restored after the earthquake
in 227 BC (this phase is probably the one alluded to by Philo) and again
after the Mithridatic wars.41 But such wars and troubles had no place
in the eirenic discourse of the orators. Praise belongs to a peaceful city,
where walls are no longer used and buildings fill the areas close to the
enceinte (Or. 25.7), a situation exactly contrary to what ancient military
engineers recommended for defence in the case of a siege.42
In comparison with other elements of the speech, the description of
the city itself is rather hasty. The author takes note of the Acropolis,
whose terraces have been identified in modern excavations,43 and the
general appearance of the city, marked by the regularity of its build-
ings: ‘Nothing higher than anything else, but the construction ample
and equal, so that it would seem to belong not to a city, but to a
single house’ (ο%δ4ν 5τερον \τ ρου Xπερ χον, λλ διαρκ7 κα0 $σην τ"ν
κατασκευ"ν ο`σαν, )ς γ νοιτ’ #ν ο% πλεως, λλ μιAς οOκ!ας, 6). The
shape of the city was especially praised in antiquity, not only because
of its regular grid but also because of its theatre-like structure, which
Rhodes, among other cities, shared with Halikarnassos, although the
resemblance between the city’s shape and a theatre belonged more to
the city’s ideal image than to its real layout.44 In his description of the
39 On the topos see by contrast Arist. Or. 27.17 (after the building of the great temple,
only Cyzicus does not need a lighthouse).

40 Flood in 316 BC: Diod. 19.45. On Demetrius’ siege see now Pimouget Pédarros
2003.
41 Diod. 20.100; Philo Byz. Bel. 84 f., 85; App. Mithr. 94; Kontis 1963; Konstantino-
poulos 1967; Winter 1992, Philemonos-Tsopotou 1999. See the historical analysis in
Pimouget Pédarros 2004.
42 See the prescriptions of Philo Byz. Bel. 80. This was actually attested by the
archaeological excavations.
43 Kontis 1952, esp. 551 f.; Konstantinopoulos 1973, esp. 129–134.
44 Theatroeidês: Diod. 19.45.3, 20.83.2; Vitr. 2.8.11; Arist. Or. 25.6. Modern research
in Kontis 1952; id. 1953; id. 1954; id. 1958; Wycherley 1976; Papachristodoulou 1994, id.
1996; Caliò and Interdonato 2005, esp. 91 ff. about Rhodes.
228 carlo franco
city, the author considers only the elements pertaining to Hellenic cul-
ture (like the Rhodian fondness for paideia),45 but he does not record
any ‘Roman’ element: this is hardly surprising, when we consider the
attitude of intellectuals in the Second Sophistic. Thus, no mention is
made of the many statues decreed (or reused) to honour Roman cit-
izens, nor is there any mention of the imperial cult.46 The author is
silent, too, about the gladiators, although this may reflect the actual sit-
uation: Louis Robert years ago remarked upon the peculiar absence of
gladiatorial documents in Rhodes.47 In the Rhodiakos by Dio Chrysos-
tom, the consistent preference for Hellenic practices is strongly con-
trasted with the excessive acceptance of Roman customs in Athens. Dio
quotes a law from Rhodes that ‘forbade the executioner to enter the
city’ (31.122).48 The author of the Rhodiakos may refer to the same law
when he writes, ‘it was not even in keeping with your religion to pass
a death sentence within the walls’. The allusion to the Rhodian law is
debatable, however, since the orator is making a rather different point
about the perverse impact of the earthquake, which transformed ‘the
city which could not be entered by murderers’ into a ‘common grave
for the inhabitants’ (Or. 25.28).
It is easy to see that any orator appointed to praise Rhodes could
walk a well-trodden path, a path amply supplied with literary and
historical models; it would be even better if the author, as is the case
here, was familiar with the place and the local traditions. The outlines
for a eulogy of Rhodes were already established in Hellenistic times,
as Polybius’ digression on the great earthquake of Rhodes in 228/7 BC
makes clear.49 Relying on local sources, the historian lists in great detail
the gifts received by the city from several kings, dynasts and cities after
the disaster. He sings the praises of Rhodian freedom, opportunity,
and conduct, following the classical scheme described by the rhetorical
treatises (thesis, physis, epitêdeumata).50
In Polybius’ epoch, Rhodes was at the peak of its international
power: the historian’s statements, or those of his sources, were the basis
45 Oratory and culture: Arist. Or. 25.67 (and Or. 24.6). Rhodian citizens praised for
paideia: Blinkenberg 1941, 2.449 and 2.465 D (second century AD). Decay of Rhodian
rhetoric in the Imperial Age: Puech 2002, 367–369.
46 Statues of emperors and Romans: Dio Or. 31.107–108, 115.
47 Robert 1940, 248.
48 Dio Or. 31.122, with Swain 2000, 44.
49 Plb. 5.89–90, with Walbank 1957–1979, I, 16–22; Holleaux 1968 [1923].
50 On Polybius’ sources see now Lenfant 2005.
for all subsequent praise.51 The tone of Strabo’s Rhodian section is

similar to that of Polybius. Here again, contemporary elements and
second-hand information are mixed together:
=Η δ4 τ.ν =Ροδ!ων πλις κεται μ4ν π0 το \ω&ινο κρωτηρ!ου, λιμ σι δ4
κα0 -δος κα0 τε!χεσι κα0 τM7 λλMη κατασκευM7 τοσοτον διαφ ρει τ.ν λλων
Sστ’ ο%κ *χομεν εOπεν \τ ραν λλ’ ο%δ4 πKρισον, μ τ! γε κρε!ττω τατης
τ7ς πλεως (14.2.5).52
The city of the Rhodians lies on the eastern promontory of Rhodes and
it is so far superior to all others in harbours and roads and walls and
improvements in general, that I am unable to speak of any other city as
equal to it, or even as almost equal to it, much less superior to it (trans.
H.L. Jones).
Strabo praises above all the eunomia, the politeia, the care for naval
affairs, and the city’s faithful conduct towards Rome, all of which
resulted in Rhodes being granted the status of autonomy and receiving
the large number of votive offerings that adorned the city. Especially
celebrated are the provisions granted by the local government to the
poor: the redistribution of wealth is considered an ‘ancestral custom’
(patrion ethos). The description of the city, stylized rather than based
on autopsy, is nevertheless not remote from reality: some elements,
such as the ‘Hippodamian’ plan or the harbours, have been confirmed
by modern archaeological research.53 A brief historical outline also
provides some useful hints. The Dorian origins of Rhodes are discussed
in reference to Homer: here Strabo’s fondness for the poet joins with
local tradition.54
The image of Rhodes put forth by later authors followed the same
pattern. The loyal attitude displayed by the city during Mithridates’
siege won it wide celebrity and esteem.55 In the second century AD,
Aulus Gellius quotes at length from Cato’s speech Pro Rhodiensibus, writ-
ing that ‘the city of the Rhodians is renowned because of the location
51 The local historians are likely to have played an important role in the formation
of this literary image of Rhodes, but their works are irremediably lost to us: Wiemer
2001.
52 See Pédech 1971.
53 Harbours: Kontis 1953, esp. 279 n. 2.
54 The other poetic authority incorporated into the praise of Rhodes was Pindar. As
we know from a scholion to the seventh Olympian, the text of the Ode was carved in
golden letters in the temple of Athena Lindia: Gorgon, FGrH 515 F18.
55 App. Mithr. 24 ff.; Liv. perioch. 78; Vell. 2.18.3; Flor. 1.40.8. See Campanile 1996,
150 f.
230 carlo franco
of the island, the beauty of its monuments, their skill in sailing the sea,
and their naval victories’ (6.3.1), and repeats this praise in the context
of an anecdote about Demetrius’ siege of the island (15.31.1). Apollonius
of Tyana’s short visit to the island is also of interest: according to
Philostratus, the holy man debated with Damis in the vicinity of the
Colossus, engaged a talented flautist in conversation about his art, and
rebuked both a rich and ignorant young man and an overweight boy
fond of food. The island appears here in all its wellbeing and prosperity,
although apparently Apollonius did not pay homage, not even from a
critical perspective, to the beauty of Rhodes, as he did, for example, in
Smyrna.56 The brilliant ekphrasis of Rhodes from the beginning of the
Amores ascribed to Lucian is also worth attention. After his departure
from Tarsus and his visit to the decayed cities of Lycia, on the way
to Cnidus, the narrator arrives in Rhodes (6–10), where he admires
the Temple of Dionysus, the porch, and the paintings; he does not see
any sign of decline or crisis, nor does he mention the earthquake.57
The Amores are commonly believed to be a later composition.58 The
authorship of Lucian has been denied because the text does not allude
to the earthquake of 142 AD, among other reasons. But this silence does
not imply a terminus ante quem. In Xenophon’s Ephesian Histories, which
are dated toward the middle of the second century AD, there is a
nice description of Rhodes that includes the crowded festivals of the
Sun, the votive offerings, and the altar of the gods, without making any
reference to the earthquake:59 the peculiar ‘atemporality’ of these texts,
which show no interest in historical change, conditions the selection of
local details.
The earthquake of 142 AD suddenly destroyed this magical world:
‘The beauty of the harbours has gone, the fairest of crowns has fallen,
the temples are barren of statues, and the altars, the streets and theatres
are empty of men’ (Or. 25.9). The orator turns the description into the
lamentation, exploiting the same classical topoi of the laus urbis, such as
the origins of the city, but from a different point of view: if, according
56 VAp 5.21–23 and 4.7 for Smyrna. For the flautist’s name Kanos see SEG XXI 854b;
Suet. Galba 12; Plut. Mor. 785B. See also the rebukes by the cithara-player Stratonicus
in Plut. Mor. 525B.
57 The omission of the earthquake has been considered, perhaps erroneously, a
relevant proof against Lucianic authorship. Aristides, too, in the speech On Concord,
evokes the incomparable beauty of Rhodes without a hint of the recent disaster.
58 Jones 1984; Degani 1991, esp. 19.
59 Xen. Eph. 5.10–13.
to the myth, Rhodes had emerged from the sea, now ‘the city has sunk
beneath the earth and has gone from mankind’ (29). And if Zeus had
‘poured wealth’ and ‘rained down gold’ on the island, as Homer and
Pindar had once sung, now ‘the god of fortune’ has poured on Rhodes
very different gifts (30).
The orator’s efforts are directly primarily to restraining the grief of
the survivors and delivering a persuasive exhortation to them: their
sufferings do not admit of any consolation, nonetheless, ‘they must be
endured’ (34). He must prove that so terrible a catastrophe is bearable
and that the Rhodians, because of their glorious past, must be confident
that the city will flourish again. The skill in arguing in many different
ways about a single subject was a sophistic heritage: the author of the
Rhodiakos had only to follow the scheme of reversal. For as far as sophis-
tic rhetoric is concerned, just as destiny transforms happiness into des-
peration, so misfortune will assuredly be transformed into a renewal of
prosperity. Take Rhodes’ past, for example. When the Rhodians cre-
ated the new city of Rhodes by unifying Lindos, Cameiros and Ialysos
at the end of the fifth century BC, they did not choose an existing
schema, but created a totally new one.60 Thus the reconstruction of the
city after the earthquake ‘is much easier […] than the original foun-
dation was’, because what is needed is ‘only to make a Rhodes from
Rhodes, a new city from the old one’ (52–53). The argument about the
monuments in the city, like the walls, is different. The earthquake has
destroyed them, but their loss is bearable because, according to the old
saying, ‘Not houses fairly roofed, nor the well-worked stones of walls,
nor avenues and docks are the city, but men who are able to handle
whatever circumstances confront them’ (ο%κ οOκ!αι καλ.ς στεγασμ ναι
ο%δ4 λ!&οι τειχ.ν ε` δεδομημ νοι ο%δ4 στενωπο! τε κα0 νε,ρια T πλις,
λλ’ νδρες χρ7σ&αι τος ε0 παροσι δυνKμενοι, 64). Thus, ‘even if your
walls fell ten times, the dignity of the city will not fall, so long as one
Rhodian is left’.61
All of the local traditions could be used by the orator to promote
endurance and confidence—except, it would appear, the tradition of a
negative omen that had oppressed the city from its very foundation.62
60 All the ancient sources are collected in Moggi 1976, 213–243.

61 See also Or. 25.42. On the topos, which comes from Alcaeus fr. 112L–P and Thuc.
7.77.7, see Pernot 1993a, I, 195 ff.
62 Not considered in Blinkenberg 1913, who focuses above all on Homer and ancient
legends.
232 carlo franco
The author asserts that the earthquake has already fulfilled the oracle,
so that one can hope that the reconstruction of the city may rest upon
‘more fortunate and better omens’ (69). The reference would have been
perfectly plain to the audience, but it is less evident for us. One must
turn to Pausanias. Speaking about Sikyon, he attributes the final decline
of the city to an earthquake that ‘damaged also the Carian and Lycian
towns, and shook above all the island of Rhodes, so that it was believed
that the ancient prediction of the Sybil to Rhodes was accomplished’
(2.7.1). It is difficult to define the period alluded to by Pausanias, since
the passage seems to be vague in its chronology. Elsewhere, Pausanias
records the same earthquake, adding that it occurred under Antoni-
nus.63 Thus, even if the identity of the events is not assured, one may
assume that the oracle alluded to by Pausanias is the same as that men-
tioned in the Rhodiakos. The content of the prophecy is preserved, as it
seems, in the so-called Oracula Sibyllina, among several others concern-
ing earthquakes. The tone is obscure and allusive, and thus does not
allow irrefutable identification, but the passage provides good elements
for the analysis of the Rhodiakos.
}Ω =Ρδε δειλα!η σ· σ4 γ ρ πρ,την, σ4 δακρσω·/ *σσMη δ4 πρ,τη πλεων,
πρ,τη δ’ πολ σσMη,/ νδρ.ν μ4ν χρη, βιτου δ τε πKμπαν *δευκς*
(Orac. Syb. 7.1–3).
O poor Rhodes! I will mourn you as first. Thou shall be first among the
cities, but also first in ruin, deprived of your men, totally *deprived* of
life.
And again:
κα0 σ, =Ρδος, πουλ?ν μ4ν δολωτος χρνον *σσMη,/ Tμερ!η &υγKτηρ,
πουλ?ς δ τοι 'λβος 'πισ&εν/ *σσεται, ν πντFω δ’ 5ξεις κρKτος *ξοχον
λλων (Orac. Syb. 3.444–448).64
And you, Rhodes, for a long time shall be free from slavery, O noble
daughter, and great prosperity shall be upon you, and on the sea you
shall reign over other peoples.
Similar oracles could refer to any big earthquake from 227 BC onwards,
including the serious one of 142 AD. The Sibylline prophecies are a
reminder of the symbolic and religious dimension of earthquakes in
antiquity. Apart from the gods, however, there was also the political
63Paus. 2.7.1; 8.43.4.

64Orac. Syb. 4.101 = 8.160 may refer to the earthquake recorded in Paus. 2.7.1: see
Geffcken 1902, ad loc.
dimension of the event, such as the request for help and the problems
of reconstruction. This was the task for the ambassadors, and required
careful study: it is hardly surprising that natural catastrophes became
a common subject in imperial and late antique literature. This subject
was studied in the schools of rhetoric and appeared in the works of men
of letters and historians.65 More than a century ago, Rudolf Herzog
proposed the label of genos seismikon for this specific genre of speeches
about earthquakes and suggested locating its origin in Rhodes.66 This
kind of rhetoric was particularly linked to the life of the ancient city,
and orators focused their attention especially on the cities. The collapse
of buildings, the destruction of urban beauty, and the death of men and
women struck the general imagination much more than the destiny of
the rural areas did.67 This explains why in the Rhodiakos, after a sym-
pathetic description of the earthquake, small islands around Rhodes
receive only a short and dismissive mention: to the dismay of the culti-
vated, a great and beautiful city was in ruins, while unimportant places
like Carpathus and Casus remained intact (Or. 25.31).68
But let us come to the earthquake itself. The author of the Rhodiakos
was not in Rhodes when the disaster occurred. Thus the speech does
not reflect any personal experience of the events, and the high dramatic
style, the impressive list of ruins and casualties, and the heavy rhetorical
expression are the substitutes for autopsy; this is the normal case in
antiquity, with the possible exception of the letter of Pliny the Younger
about the eruption of the Mount Vesuvius. At ‘that wretched noon
hour’ says the orator,
- δ4 qλιος τελευταα δ" ττε π λαμπε τ"ν \αυτο πλιν, κα0 παρ7ν ξα!-
φνης πKντα -μο τ δεινK. Xπανεχ,ρει μ4ν T &Kλαττα κα0 πAν ψιλοτο
τ.ν λιμ νων τ8 ντ8ς, νερριπτοντο δ4 οOκ!αι κα0 μνματα νερργνυντο,
πργοι δ4 πργοις ν πιπτον κα0 νε,σοικοι τριρεσι κα0 νεFc βωμος κα0
να&ματα γKλμασι κα0 νδρες νδρKσι, κα0 πργοι λιμ σι, κα0 πKντα
λλλοις (Or. 25.20).
65 In the Progymnasmata by Aelius Theon, the seismos is listed among the themes for
ekphraseis (118.18 Patillon-Bolognesi).

66 Herzog 1899, 141 ff.
67 Guidoboni 1994; Traina 1985, and now Williams 2006. Contempt for outlying
areas: Arist. Or. 19.7–8.

68 This may explain also some inaccuracies about the administrative status of the
islands in relationship to Rhodes: Fraser and Bean 1954, esp. 138 n. 1; Papachristodou-
lou 1989, 43 ff., Carusi 2003, esp. 219 ff.
234 carlo franco
The sun for the last time shone upon his city. And suddenly every terror
was at hand at once. The sea drew back, and all the interior of the
harbours was laid bare, and the houses were thrown upwards, and the
tombs broken open, and the towers collapsed upon the harbours, and
the storage sheds upon the triremes, and the temples upon the altars,
and the offerings upon the statues, and men upon men, and everything
upon one another.
The destiny of the population is a plurima mortis imago:
κα0 οJ μ4ν τ ς \αυτ.ν φεγοντες οOκ!ας ν τας \τ ρων π,λλυντο, οJ δ’ ν
τας \αυτ.ν Xπ’ κπλξεως μ νοντες, οJ δ4 κ& οντες γκαταλαμβανμενοι,
οJ δ4 πολειφ& ντες Tμι&ν7τες, ο%κ *χοντες ξαναδναι ο%δ4 αXτο?ς <σα-
σ&αι, κακ.ν πι&κην τ8ν λιμ8ν προσελKμβανον, κα0 τοσοτον κερδα!νον-
τες, @σον γν.ναι τ"ν πατρ!δα ο%κ ο`σαν, παπ,λλυντο. τ.ν δ4 δι κρινε τ
σ,ματα T τχη, κα0 τ μ4ν Tμ!σεα ε$σω &υρ.ν πε!ληπτο, τ δ’ Tμ!τομα
*ξω προNκειτο. κα0 τοτοις 5τερα α` προσεν πιπτε σ,ματα, σκεη, λ!&οι, @
τι \κKστFω φ ρων - σεισμ8ς ν μιξεν (Or. 25.22).
Some in fleeing from their houses perished in those of others, others
transfixed by fear perished in their own, some overtaken while running
out; others left behind half alive, unable to emerge or save themselves,
starved in addition to their other miseries, and profiting only to the
extent of knowing that their country did not exist, they perished. Others’
bodies were sundered by chance, half left within doors, half lay exposed
without. And in addition other bodies fell upon them, and household
implements, and stones, and whatever the earthquake carried off and
tossed upon each.
Nor is the description of the aftermath much better:
Tμ ραι δ4 κα0 νκτες πιλαμβKνουσαι το?ς μ4ν @σον μπνεν ζ.ντας ν -
φαινον τραυματ!ας τ.ν λοιπ.ν τος πλε!στοις, το?ς δ4 τελευτσαντας σεση-
πτας, ο%δ’ -τιον *χοντας κριβ4ς τ.ν μελ.ν, λλ’ )ς \κKστου τι φελεν
D προσ &ηκε τ8 πτ.μα (Or. 25.27).
The ensuing days and nights revealed those who were alive, at least who
were breathing, to be wounded and those who had already died to be
rotting, and without any limbs intact, but however the ruin had worked
its amputations and its graftings on each.
This description is very different from the euphemistic and pathetic
but reticent approach that a reader observes in other Aristidean writ-
ings, say, in the Smyrnean Monody. Some scholars have considered the
entire description tasteless and abhorrent to the writer’s style.69 Their
69 Swain 1996, 294 n. 146, still rejects Aristides’ authorship, underlining the ‘gory
details’.
disappointment originates, perhaps, from a misunderstanding about the

genre. The style of the Rhodiakos has been judged in comparison to
the restrained grief of the Smyrnean Orations. In fact, it shares with the
monodies some stylistic features such as parataxis, dramatic questions,
repetitions, pathos, asyndeta, antitheseis, figures of speech ‘especially rapid
and vigorous’ (gorgotera kai akmaiotera),70 but it goes beyond the measure
and the restraint typical of the monodies.71 Thus there are abundant
details about the catastrophe, which is described prolixe vehementerque.72
In fact, the Rhodiakos is not a pathetic lamentation, but a consolation.73
At Smyrna, Aristides pours tears onto the ruins of the city, then goes
on to seek support from the emperor; he selects his topics according
to his different aims, describing in great detail the damage suffered by
the buildings, but speaking more cautiously about the dead citizens.74
In Rhodes, the commemoration of the catastrophe is focused rather
on the survivors. Thus, much as in a funeral speech, the details are
pertinent and would have been requested; the style could develop at
length what Apsines called ‘graphic descriptions’ (hypographai).75 There
was no obligation to temper dramatic elements in the narration or to
conceal the worst aspects of the catastrophe; indeed, ‘these descriptions
satisfied the victims’ need to feel that they were not neglected in their
suffering and their fear’.76
A striking difference between the Rhodiakos and other Aristidean
writings does exist: notwithstanding some echoes in the Monody for
Smyrna, carefully noted by Keil,77 the search for parallels goes beyond
the age of Aristides. Apart from some Latin examples,78 one may refer
in particular to the impressive tsunami that occurred in 365 AD, which
was described by Ammianus.79 More striking similarities are to be found
70 Apsines 10.48 Patillon. See Demoen 2001.

71 Men. Rhet. 2.437.
72 As Dindorf noted (1829, III, xlv).
73 On the paramythêtikos logos see Men. Rhet. 2.413–414 (syngraphikos style).
74 Arist. Or. 18: see Franco 2005, 477.
75 Apsines 3.23 and 27 Patillon. To be sure, Apsines does not suggest noting every
detail, in order to avoid excess: 10.31 Patillon.

76 Leopold 1986, 830.
77 Keil 1898, ad loc.
78 Sen. Ep. 91.13 (Lugdunum destroyed in one hour); NQ 6.1.8 (the earthquake
annihilates great cities).

79 Amm. 26.10.15–19: Mare dispulsum retro fluctibus evolutis abscessit, ut retecta voragine
profundorum species natantium multiformes limo cernerentur haerentes…, with Kelly 2004; on
Amm. 17.7.9–14 (Nicomedia) see de Jonge 1977, ad loc. See also Smid 1970.
236 carlo franco
in the oration composed by Libanius for the earthquake of Nicomedia

in 358 AD. Intertextual analysis leads to the attractive hypothesis that
the Rhodiakos itself was a model for Libanius: in both writers one finds
the polyptoton evoking walls collapsing over other walls and an allocution
to the Sun, who sees everything but did not prevent the disaster.80
Together with minor narrative details,81 these similarities might be an
argument for the attribution of authorship of the Rhodiakos to Aristides,
since the speech in Libanius’ epoch was probably included in the
Aristidean corpus.
The horrific evocation of the earthquake constitutes the negative side
of the speech, which in the end tends towards consolation and exhorta-
tion. The past and the present of Rhodes become the basis for a rapid
reconstruction: upon the sudden catastrophe a prosperous rebirth will
follow. The Rhodians are happier than their ancestors, who ‘founded
the city in times of war and unrest’ (Or. 25.54), since the present is ‘a
time of much peace and deep calm, which has benefited and prospered
the affairs of all mankind’ (55). Thus, they ‘should confidently expect
that there will be many Greeks to assist the restoration’. Such was the
glory of Rhodes and the gratitude towards its inhabitants, who ‘were
the common hosts and friends of all and also the saviour of many’ (40),
that everybody, when asked to give help, will ‘think that he gratifies
himself rather than that it is a favour to them’ (43). Here is another
line of argument: after the earthquake of 227 BC, according to Poly-
bius (or rather, we may confidently assert, according to his source), the
Rhodian ambassadors who were requesting aid for the city’s recon-
struction behaved in such a wise and dignified manner that they were
able to transform the disaster into an opportunity for the city.82 Such
was the strength of the delegates’ request that those to whom it was
addressed felt obliged to honour it, and it was not Rhodes that was
indebted to the donors, but quite the opposite, since the recipient was
so great. Similar arguments recur in other texts of the genos seismologikon,
such as Aristides’ own Smyrnean Orations: beyond the rhetorical motiva-
80 Lib. Or. 61.14.9 ff. = Arist. Or. 25.20 (collapsing buildings); Or. 61.16 = Arist. Or.
25.31–32 (allocution to Helios).

81 Such as the time at which the catastrophe occurred, an element clearly derived
from funeral orations and the equation between city and man. The Rhodiakos does not
mention the fire.
82 Plb. 5.88. Dignity: nounechôs, pragmatikôs, semnôs, prostatikôs. Opportunity: mê blabês,
diorthôseôs de mallon […] aition. Reversal: hôste mê monon lambanein epidoseis hyperballousas, alla
kai charin prosopheilein autous tous didontas.
tions, this attitude reveals a consistent and shared faith in the system of
reciprocity, which regulated the relations between cities and the ruling
power. On a higher level, the assistance of the gods, Sun and Neptune,
is invoked. The invocation participates in a religious system of divine
justice,83 but in the text there is no explicit theodicy: only the god of
Fortune is held responsible for present sufferings, and all will revert to
happiness in the future.
Besides willing Hellenes and compassionate gods, there was another
leading figure to invoke as a source of assistance: the emperor. Above all
the Rhodians must have hope in a ruler ‘who should certainly decide
apace to restore the city as much as he can, so that the fairest of his
possessions may not lie upon the earth in dishonour’ (Fp μKλιστα χρ"
δοκεν εBναι δι σπουδ7ς )ς #ν οLν τε M_ τ"ν πλιν ναλαβεν, )ς μ"
τ8 κKλλιστον α%τF. τ.ν κτημKτων τ!μως π0 γ7ς κ οιτο, Or. 25.56). The
dynamics of imperial subventions in the face of natural catastrophes
have been repeatedly studied: the Rhodiakos fits by and large the typical
patterns.84 Our information about the provisions granted to the island
for its reconstruction comes first from Pausanias. In his detailed eulogy
of the emperor Antoninus, he says that ‘when the Lycian and Carian
cities, and Cos and Rhodes where shaken by a formidable earthquake,
the emperor restored them too, with large gifts of money and great zeal’
(8.43.4).85 Actually, epigraphic evidence demonstrates that Antoninus
was honoured in Rhodes as ktistês.86 His generosity towards the island
was referred to as a model by Fronto when he pleaded in the Senate for
the reconstruction of the Carthaginian forum.87 In Rhodes, imposing
Roman architecture began to transform the shape of the city.88 Thus,
the author of the Rhodiakos correctly forecast imperial aid. Like most
of his Greek contemporaries, however, he did not take an interest in
the broader dimension of the Empire. In this respect, at least, this
intriguing speech is reassuringly similar to other texts of the time.
83 Theodicy in this text is ‘complexe et paradoxale’ (Pernot 1994, 363). On reci-
procity: Lendon 1997, 82.

84 Waldherr 1997.
85 On the relationship between this passage and 4.31.5, see above. Some information
about the provisions granted by Antoninus is given also in SHA Ant. 3.9.1: omnia mirifice
instauravit.
86 Pugliese Carratelli 1940 = AE 1948, 199; BullEp 1946–1947 n. 156.
87 Fronto, Pro Carthaginiensibus, pp. 256–259 van den Hout2: Rhodum condidisti (257).
88 Tetrapylon: Cante 1986–1987 (late second – early third century AD).
238 carlo franco
To the Rhodians, On Concord
Oration 24, To the Rhodians, on Concord, was written in Smyrna between

147 and 149 AD.89 Because of his physical condition, Aristides did not
deliver the speech personally, but rather sent the text to be read in
Rhodes. His intervention had been requested: some Rhodian delegates
had come to visit him to ask for his help in settling some internal
troubles, and he had declared himself ready to intervene, being deeply
involved in the city’s conditions as if it were ‘his own country’ (Or.
24.2–3). After an exordium that defines the author’s attitude towards
Rhodes (1–3), the speech begins with a discussion about the good effects
of concord and the evil consequences of faction (4–22). Then follows
a section devoted to historical examples from the Greek past (23–27)
and a moving eulogy of concord (41–44): this attitude is repeatedly
declared to be best suited to the Rhodian temper and the city’s political
traditions (45–57). An affecting peroration closes the speech (58–59).90
The object of the quarrels itself is alluded to in the text in a manner
that is dramatic, but also quite general. This approach may be due
to the situation of the author, who would have been less informed
about local matters, as well as to his decision to euphemein, that is, to
allude only cautiously and indirectly to the problem. Civic dissent was
considered a serious and unpleasant subject, and therefore in need of a
very prudent approach.
γγελλομ νων δ μοι πολλF. δεινοτ ρων, εO οLν τε εOπεν, τ.ν νν, @τι
πιστετε Xμν α%τος κα0 διMρησ&ε κα0 ταραχ ς ο% προσηκοσας Xμν
ταρKττεσ&ε, οN&’ @πως χρ" πιστεειν οN&’ @πως πιστεν εBχον (Or. 24.3).
But when the present situation, which is much more terrible, if it is
possible to say so, was reported to me, that you distrust one another,
have taken sides, and are involved in disturbances unsuited to you, I did
not know whether I should credit it, or disbelieve it.
The city was apparently split into factions, each of whom Aristides tries
to placate in the speech.91 He speaks of ‘the envy felt by the poor for the
rich’, of ‘the greed of the rich against the poor’ (32), and later of ‘those
89 The chronological span depends on the notorious problem of the proconsulate of
Albus in Asia: see Behr 1968, 73–74; id. 1981, 368 n. 1 for the later date; for the earlier
(July–October 147), Behr 1994, 1204.
90 Structure: Behr 1981, 369.
91 The honorific decree from Lesbos (IG XII 2,135; SEG 29, 1979, 741) might refer to
the same crisis: Buraselis 2001, esp. 67 ff.

who think that they should be superior’ and ‘those who are deficient
either in property or in some other fortune’ (34). The quarrel probably
had social and economic roots, which is why Aristides has recourse to
the authoritative example of two ancient poets: Terpander, who settled
civic unrest in Sparta (3), and Solon.92 The Athenian legislator ‘was
most of all proud of the fact that he brought the people together with
the rich, so that they might dwell in harmony in their city, neither side
being stronger than was expedient for all’ (14). Beyond the cultivated
reference to an ancient figure of Greek history, the example of Solon
reveals the role that Aristides himself hoped (or pretended) to play in
the matter.
The argumentation follows a regular pattern. The undesirability of
faction is a self-evident truth, needing no demonstration: within the
city, the house, and the individual, discord makes clear its negative
impact, involving evil, peril, and dishonour. In the same way, everybody
must recognise the good of concord: thus the present attitude of the
Rhodians, so unworthy of local traditions, is patently dangerous and
absurd. The social unrest involved in the stasis threatened to subvert
the traditional structures of power. This may explain why, in the midst
of numerous exhortations and pathetic appeals, there is in the speech a
particularly frank passage:
νμος γKρ στιν οiτος φσει κε!μενος λη&.ς Xπ8 τ.ν κρειττνων κατα-
δειχ&ε0ς, κοειν τ8ν qττω το κρε!ττονος. κν τις λευ&ερ!ας σμβολον
ποι7ται τ8 διαφ&ε!ρειν τ8ν νμον, αXτ8ν ξαπατ>A (Or. 24.35).
There is a natural law, which has truly been promulgated by the gods,
our superiors, that the inferior obey the superior. And if some one
regards the corruption of law as a sign of liberty, he deceives himself.
Here, the topical reference to a ‘natural law’, while mitigating the
strong and conservative political advice, does little to conceal the rhe-
tor’s effort to protect the privileges of the higher ranks by means of
a message of reconciliation and amnesty: ‘those who have suffered’
should not await the punishment of ‘those who have committed these
wrongs’, since evil is not ‘the remedy for evil’, and ‘good things should
be underlined by memory, and bad things crossed out by forgetful-
ness’.93
92 Terpander, testt. 14–15 (Gostoli). Aristides had recourse elsewhere to this poet: Or.
2.336; Or. 3.231, 242. On Solon see also Or. 25.29, 32, 40.
93 Arist. Or. 24.36, 40. See Behr 1981, 369–370 n. 21.
240 carlo franco
Our information on Rhodian society in this period does not permit

us to be more specific about the context and the nature of the crisis,
although the decline of the coinage—there is no minting later than
Commodus—might be considered evidence of the island’s economic
decline.94 We may also link the troubles and the stasis, which challenged
traditional forms of social appeasement, to the aftermath of the earth-
quake that had occurred some years before. Whatever relationship we
may suppose between the Rhodiakos and On Concord, the cautious way in
which the latter speech alludes to the earthquakes may be revealing.95
The memory of the earthquake is minimized: Aristides does not men-
tion his prior intervention for Rhodes, nor does he develop a classical
consolation argument, but keeps silent about the internal and external
solidarity expressed on the occasion of the catastrophe.96 We are led to
the conclusion that the rebirth after the earthquake had been very dif-
ferent from the happiness prophesied by the author of the Rhodiakos: if
it is Aristides, it is evident that he decided to omit any mention of his
previous actions towards the city, since the predictions of prosperity and
recovery had been disproved by subsequent events, notwithstanding the
efforts displayed by the emperor.
As many critics have noted, the speech On Concord comprises a num-
ber of general thoughts, which recur in similar works by Dio Chrysos-
tom and by Aristides himself and could fit any troubled situation.97 In
fact, the text contains scant reference to the local situation and lacks
an adequate context.98 Aristides was aware of these limits. At the very
beginning of the text he anticipates all possible objections:
qδιστα δ’ ν μοι δοκ. τοτ’ πιτιμη&7ναι, )ς ρχαα λ γων κα0 ο%δ’ -τιον
καιν8ν εXρηκ,ς. π.ς γ ρ ο%κ τοπον τF. μ4ν λ γοντι μ μφεσ&αι )ς λ!αν
γν,ριμα κα0 παλαι κα0 πAσι δοκοντα συμβουλεει, α%το?ς δ4 μ" τολμAν
χρ7σ&αι τος ο[τω φανερος, λλ μ" μνον πρ8ς αXτο?ς στασιαστικ.ς
*χειν, λλ κα0 παντ0 τF. μ χρι τοτου χρνFω διαφ ρεσ&αι; γc δ’ οNτε τ8ν
σμβουλον οNτε το?ς χρωμ νους Tγομαι τοτο δεν σκοπεν, τ8ν μ4ν @πως
94 Kromann 1988; Ashton 1996. See in general Head 1897, esp. CXVI–VII, and
RPC I (19982), 454–457; II (1999), 179–181; Suppl. I (1999), 33–34.

95 The present situation of Rhodes is considered ‘much more terrible, if it is possible
to say so’ than ‘the misfortune of the earthquake’ (Or. 24.2), and in the peroration the
citizens are requested to ‘desist from this earthquake’ (59).
96 Contrast Arist. Or. 19.12 and Or. 20.15–18: Franco 2005, 488 ff.
97 See now Heller 2006.
98 Leaving aside some minor discussions, the bulk of the analysis is to be found in
Dindorf 1829, I, 824–844; Boulanger 1923, 374 ff.; Behr 1981, 371 f.; Pernot 1993a, I,
289 ff.
ρε τατα e μηδε0ς, το?ς δ’ @πως κοσονται τα&’ e μ" πρτερον, λλ’
@ τι μ λλει κοιν7 συνο!σειν, τοτο κα0 λ γειν προαιρεσ&αι. ο%δ4 γ ρ ν
τας το σ,ματος χρε!αις το&’ Tμ.ν 5καστος σποδακεν, @πως τι καιν8ν
κοσεται, λλ’ οiτος ριστος Oατρ8ς @στις #ν Xγιες ποιεν π!στηται· ο%δ’
*σ&’ @στις Xμ.ν γανακτσει, ν δι τ.ν α%τ.ν σω&7 δι’ pν τις Zδη κα0
πρτερον (Or. 24.5).99
I would most willingly, I think, be criticized because my arguments were
old and I had found no new ideas. For is it not strange for you to blame
the speaker because his advice is well-known, stale, and accepted by all,
yet for you yourselves not to dare to make use of such obvious arguments,
but not only to be facetiously disposed toward one another, but also to be
at odds with your history up to now? I believe that neither an adviser nor
those who employ him should give any consideration to the following,
the one to how his remarks will be original, the others to how they will
hear new material, but that they should prefer a speech on what will
be expedient for all in common. In our bodily needs each of us has not
sought to learn of some new treatment, but the best doctor is the one
who knows how to make men well. No one of you will be annoyed if he
is saved by the same means as someone has been before.
But the orator knew well how to turn this kind of ‘generic composi-
tion’ into a useful exhortation, carving the epideictic ‘langue’ into the
‘parole’ of an oration directed toward a specific audience. The choice
of local themes was crucial. From the very beginning of the oration, the
troubled status of Rhodes is contrasted with the tradition of long-lasting
concord, so that present disturbances can be defined as ‘unsuited’ (3) to
the city’s attitude.
Ample use is made of examples from the Hellenic and Rhodian
past. The vicissitudes of the Athenian and Spartan empires were an
overused point of reference for On Concord speeches during the imperial
period: many centuries before, the two cities had lost their hegemony
because of endemic discord.100 In order to make these models more
effective for his audience, the orator had only to underline a connection
between them and Rhodes. The Athenians shared the Rhodians’ love
for democracy and sea power,101 the Spartans were ‘fellow tribesmen’
99 See also Or. 24.41. The rhetor like a medical doctor: cf. Jones 1978, 74.
100 See Arist. Or. 23.42 and in general Bowie 1974 [1970]; Schmitz 1999; Oudot 2003.
101 In the Rhodiakos, a brilliant connection is developed between the deeds of those
major powers and the local traditions of Rhodes through the mention of Conon (65–
66). It was a troubled phase in local history when the Athenian admiral promoted an
anti-Spartan rebellion in Rhodes in 395 BC: Diod. 14.79.5–7; HellOxy 15, with Barbieri
1955, 116 ff. Note especially Paus. 8.52, where Conon is included in a list of benefactors
of Greece, obliterating his collaboration with the Persians.
242 carlo franco
of the Rhodians, and the citizens of Argos their ‘ancestors’ (24 ff.).102
Each of the three cities had experienced the evils of faction: ‘Now it is
fitting, O men of Rhodes, to believe that a common embassy has come
from all these cities, urging you to reconciliation’ (28). The Dorian past
conveys the more explicit caveat: the city, suffering from self-inflicted
divisions, is compared to the Laconian Cleomenes ‘who chopped up
his body, beginning with his feet’ (38): the remote source for the whole
story is obviously Herodotus (6.75), but the reference to it in Pausanias
(3.4.5) bears witness to its popularity in the second century AD. And
the example of the Doric past is particularly fitting for an audience that
is said to have preserved perfectly the qualities of its ancestors: the pure
Doric temper was a symbol of manliness.103 That symbol is exploited by
Dio Chrysostom in the Rhodiakos, as well as by Aristides, and not only
in the Rhodian orations.104
The prevailing attitude to faction in Rhodes is presented as com-
pletely unsuited to the Dorian tradition, which the Rhodians have
carefully preserved: ‘You are originally Dorians from the Peloponnese,
and alone to this day have remained purely Greek’ (45), so that in the
recent past it was impossible ‘to find any word among you which was
not Dorian’ (57). How far do these aspects correspond to the actual
situation in Rhodes? Pride in being ‘purely Hellenes’, as well as the
preservation of the Doric temper, were topics of praise attributed to
several cities.105 The concern for purely Greek names, too, was typi-
cal of the Greek East. Apollonius of Tyana was said to have rebuked
the Smyrneans because of the diffusion of Roman names in the city,
whereas Aristides could praise Smyrna for its care in the preservation of
its Ionian character.106 On the other hand, the Dorian language was not
universally appreciated. If Marcus from Byzantium was famous for the
Doric flavour of his oratory, the Atticists considered this dialect rather
rough.107 This opinion was shared by Tiberius: the emperor did not
102 On the links between Rhodes and Argos, which share the common ancestor
Tlepolemos: ISE I 40; Thuc. 7.57.6; Pind. Ol. 7.36 ff.

103 Men. Rh. 1.354.19 f. (andrikôtatê); cf. 1.357.20 ff. on Dorian origins.
104 Dio Or. 31.18; Arist. Or. 38.13. where the author quotes ‘the rule of the sons of
Asclepius’ as a source of Rhodian pride.

105 See Dio Or. 48.3 on the citizens of Prusa; Paus. 4.27.11 on the Messenians.
106 Philostr. VAp. 4.5 (Smyrna); Franco 2005, 402.
107 Marcus: Philostr. VS 1.24.529 (dorizontos); Swain 1996, 198 f.; Schmitz 1997, 69 ff.,
176 ff.
appreciate men who spoke Greek with a Dorian accent, since it was an
unpleasant reminder of his long sojourn in Rhodes.108
For a Rhodian audience, needless to say, things were different. The
renaissance of Greek literary dialects has been sometimes considered
an artificial and literary phenomenon, largely surpassed by the diffu-
sion of the koinê. Some Dorian elements in the language of Rhodian
inscriptions in the Imperial Age may be a superficial phenomenon,
but, in fact, Roman names became widespread on the island only at
a late date. Along with other elements, this has been judged as a sign
of resistance to Romanization. The loss of civic freedom in the early
Imperial Age probably involved a softening of this proud attitude.109
But the author of the Rhodiakos goes so far as to proclaim that even
‘foreign residents’ in Rhodes spoke a pure Dorian dialect (Or. 24.57).
As for the archaeological evidence, the ‘absence of permanent Roman
settlement’ was interpreted years ago as proof that Rhodes was ‘largely
uninfluenced’ by Rome because of a ‘lack of penetration of Roman
civilization in depth’.110 If that is true, it is not the whole truth, for
we have learned of some Rhodian citizens who were deeply interested
in Roman politics; we know, too, of important Roman elements that
penetrated the religious sphere of Rhodian life. The cult of Rome, for
example, included a priest and a festival from the second century BC
onward; the imperial cult, then, is already documented in the reign of
Augustus.111 Thus the pure Doric temper was only one part of Rho-
dian identity, although the diminished visibility of the Roman element
allowed the ancients (and sometimes the moderns) to minimize the
influence of the ‘barbarians’.
References to local culture were more beneficial and more suitable
for the audience than remote events from Greek history, although
the speech treats events from local history only in a selective and
somewhat random way.112 The leading principle is not historical truth,
108 Perhaps his own pronunciation of Greek had been conditioned by his time on
Rhodes: Suet. Tib. 56.1.

109 Linguistic analysis: Bubenik 1989, 94 ff.; historical analysis: Bresson 1996; id. 2002;
Rhodian civic exclusiveness and conservatism: Jones 2003, 158. On bilingualism in

general, see Adams 2003; Adams, Janse, and Swain 2002.
110 Fraser 1977, esp. 11, 74 f.
111 See Erskine 1991; ISE III 162 for the inscription in honour of Eupolemos.
112 In the Rhodiakos, the dominion of the sea was rightly abandoned as the new
Roman power grew, but as far as the praise of the city is concerned, no clear distinction
is made between the ancient glory and the contemporary inactivity. On different
grounds, this is even clearer in Dio Or. 31.18–20, 161–162.
244 carlo franco
but rather the kairos, that is, the search for what is expedient in a
given situation. The theme of origins, for example, was particularly
well-suited to preaching the good of concord.113 Since the Sun was the
founder of their race, the propatôr and archegos tou genos, the Rhodians
should ‘feel a sense of shame’ (Or. 24.50) on account of their improper
attitude.114 All of the arguments that might support the traditional
inclination of the Rhodians towards concord are carefully exploited:115
the solidarity of the ancestors when they unified the three communities
of Lindos, Camiros and Ialysos and Homer’s references to Rhodes are
quoted as the perfect counterbalance to the present state of division.
How could the Rhodians ruin the renown they had won on the basis
of their ancient spirit of concord? It was only on account of such
concord that they had successfully fought against the Etruscans and the
pirates, ruled the seas, adorned their city, and left ‘their descendants
the right to be proud over these deeds’ (53). No detailed account is
given, only a sequence of uninterrupted examples of military virtue.
Difficult moments in local history are silenced, particularly those such
as the siege by Cassius, which caused faction in the civic body, and
times when an improper attitude was adopted towards Rome.116
The most explicit political point in the speech concerns the problem
of democracy and freedom. As in many other orations delivered in
the cities of the Greek East, exhortations to peace and concord in
civic conduct aimed at deterring people from actions that would lead
to the undesirable intervention of the Roman authorities.117 Rhodes
was at the time a free city in the Roman Empire. Thus, the broader
political context of the strife did not fall within the sphere of the
Roman governor and his legions.118 The danger that the citizens of
Rhodes faced was that they might provoke a tightening of ‘indirect’
Roman rule and, as a result, lose their precarious privilege, which had
113 In the Rhodiakos the rebirth of Rhodes is also linked with the myth of its origins:
if the gods blessed the emergence of the island from the sea, they will in the same way
care for its reconstruction.
114 Sun: Diod. 5.56. On the local cults see Morelli 1959; Papachristodoulou 1992, with
reference to recent discoveries and ongoing research.

115 See Or. 25.31–32, with the mention of the nymph Rhode, symbol of the united
city: Robert 1967, 7–14.

116 Schmitt 1957, 173 ff.; Kontorini 1983, 1–59.
117 Classic reference to Plut. Praec.ger. 814Eff., and some speeches by Dio Chrysostom:
Lewin 1995, 50 ff., Sartre 1991, 127 ff.; Salmeri 2000.

118 On the status of free cities in the empire: Millar 1999. On political problems:
Kokkinia 2004.
already been revoked several times. In the first century of the Empire,
the island had many a close relationship with the Julio-Claudians, from
the visits of Augustus to the long stay of Tiberius to the quarrels that
led to its loss of freedom under Claudius.119 Rhodes experienced the
same change of status as Cyzicus, perhaps on the same grounds: the
mistreatment or killing of Roman citizens.120 Some years later, Nero
granted the Rhodians the recovery of their freedom and reportedly
did not plunder their statues. Imperial favor ceased under Vespasian,
perhaps unexpectedly.121 Once again freedom was lost, but after further
quarrels under Domitian, the island probably recovered it in the early
eighties.122 Incapable of stability, the Rhodians alternated between good
faith (and flattery) towards Rome and unrest and internal sedition.
Aristides’ reflections are supported by an acute awareness of the
Rhodian situation: ‘You are proud of the fact that you are free and
you praise your democracy so much, that you would not even accept
immortality unless someone would allow you to keep this form of
government’ (Or. 24.22), says the orator, adding that since the Rhodians
are not ‘able to calculate that if things continue in this fashion, it is
quite possible that you will be in danger of being deprived of this
apparent liberty. And if you do not voluntarily heed this advice, another
will come who will forcibly save you, since, as a rule, rulers are neither
ignorant of such behaviour nor disregard it’ (22).123 This remark follows
a long section about the dynamics of tyranny that contains, it would
seem, historical analysis that draws on remote epochs of Greek history.
It is true that the reference to Lesbos (54–55) does not hint at the
contemporary situation of the island,124 but alludes to the troubled times
of Alcaeus. The orator could address a concealed admonition to his
audience: at the present, faction was the best ally of Roman power.
Of course, Rome and Roman magistrates are not explicitly named
in the speech. More explicit caveats in Plutarch and Dio, however,
119 Augustus: Jos BJ 1.20.287. Tiberius: see recently Jacob-Sonnabend 1995, with
sources and literature.

120 Suet. Claud. 25; Tac. Ann. 12.58; Cass. Dio 60.24.4. Thornton 1999, esp. 512 ff.
121 Nero: AP 9.178. See the prudent treatment of the matter in Dio Or. 31.110, with
Jones 1978, 148–150; Swain 1996, 428–429; Salmeri 1999, 236 ff., 241. Vespasian: Jos.
BJ, 7.2.1; Suet. Vesp. 8.6; Dio 66.12.
122 Quarrels: Plut. Praec.ger. 815C. The chronology is much debated: see Momigliano
1951, and now Bresson 1996.

123 ‘Apparent liberty’ (tên dokousan eleutherian): supposedly a negative judgement, but its
meaning seems debatable. See Dio Or. 44.12: tên legomenên eleutherian.
124 Labarre 1996, 91 ff.
246 carlo franco
are illuminating. If a stasis allowed the Roman rulers to assume a sort

of tyrannical power over the Greek cities (Dio Or. 38.36), the risk of
losing the existing freedom was serious and became a strong argument
for preaching self-restraint.125 And if the precarious status of freedom
granted by the emperor did not automatically imply exemption from
tribute, at least it allowed the cities to control their own laws and
institutions and partially freed them from the obligations connected
with their status within the province.126 Beyond the arguments created
out of conventional topoi, care for civic concord was indeed the last
resort of the local authorities, as Plutarch knew:
Λε!πεται δ" τF. πολιτικF. μνον κ τ.ν Xποκειμ νων *ργων, ] μηδεν8ς *λατ-
τν στι τ.ν γα&.ν, -μνοιαν μποιεν κα0 φιλ!αν ε0 τος συνοικοσιν,
*ριδας δ4 κα0 διχοφροσνας κα0 δυσμ νειαν ξαιρεν :πασαν (Praec. ger.
824D).127
The present situation leaves the politicians a benefit, which is not of
slight importance: to develop concord and mutual friendship among the
populace, to eradicate quarrels, discords, enmities.
To be sure, the oration On Concord is far from the polemical attitude

of Dio Chrysostom, and does not express an anti-Roman attitude. As
Aristides argues now, the present state of things is the best foundation
for concord, for the empire brings unity and freedom for everybody (Or.
24.31). Thus the Rhodians must preserve their wisdom and reason, as
well as their (limited) freedom: ‘Believe […] that is more profitable to
be a slave than to use freedom as a means for evil, and that nonetheless
there is some fear that you may even be deprived of this means’ (58).
Whatever its actual content, the democratic pride of the Rhodians
deserves closer consideration. Modern information on local institutions
is unsatisfactory. The Rhodian politeia was analyzed by Aristotle, who
studied the troubled political situation of the island.128 After changes
were introduced in the early Hellenistic age,129 the politeia was praised
by Polybius for its concern with isêgoria and parrhêsia. Diodorus called it
125 Contra: Stertz 1984, 1258. The care for concord and autonomy was also part of
the ‘system of honour’ which was very important in the civic life of the Empire: Lendon
1997, 154 ff.
126 But not from the correctores or from the inspections by the governor, if needed:
Sartre 1995, 205 f.

127 See now Bost-Pouderon 2006, II, 119 ff.
128 Aristot. Pol. 5.3, 1302b; 5.4, 1304b. On the Constitution of Rhodes see Aristotle
fr. 569R3 = 586 Gigon, but also Heraclides, Excerpta 65 Dilts.

129 Pugliese Carratelli 1949.
the ‘best’ of all politeiai, and Strabo, who wrote at length about social
welfare in late Hellenistic Rhodes, specified that ‘their rule was not
democratic’.130 Strabo’s statement on the Rhodian welfare has been
repeatedly discussed: from a social point of view, we may note that if
the government cared for the have-nots, this implies that they actually
existed and needed help.131 Like Cyzicus, Rhodes could benefit from
a real eunomia (Strabo 12.8.11). This was perhaps due in both cities to
the permanent efficacy of the civic courts: during the Hellenistic age,
Rhodes apparently hosted no foreign judges, but was able to send its
own arbitrators to other Greek cities, as Aristides aptly remarks (Or.
24.55).132
Perhaps influenced by the authority of Panaetius and Posidonius, the
Roman tradition followed the same path: Cicero in the De re publica had
special praise for Rhodes, which he considered together with Athens
as a city with a sort of mixed constitution and as a place where the
defaults of democracy were limited.133 A later allusion in Tacitus’ Dia-
logus again couples Rhodes and Athens, where oratory flourished, but
under an ochlocracy where omnes omnia poterant, and his words appear
more as an allusion to the situation of Rhodes in the first century
BC than to the Hellenistic age.134 The troubles of the Roman civil
wars apparently destroyed that admired democratic balance and trans-
formed Rhodes, as they did many other Greek cities, into a battlefield
of local factions. When Cassius approached Rhodes in the late spring
of 43 BC in order to collect ships and soldiers against Dolabella, he
met with resistance:135 a faction faithful to Caesar held power on the
island and refused to help him. Cassius’ delegate Lentulus branded the
Rhodians as foolish and arrogant (amentia, superbia).136 The subsequent
siege worsened the situation, with devastating effects on Rhodian poli-
130 Plb. 27.4.5. See also 33.15.3; Diod. 20.81; Strabo 14.2.5.
131 O’Neil 1981; Migeotte 1989; Gabrielsen 1997, 24 ff. and 31 ff. on economic in-
equalities.
132 [Sall.] Ep. Caes. 1.7.12: Neque Rhodios neque aliae civitates umquam iudiciorum suorum
paenituit, ubi promiscue dives et pauper, ut cuique fors tulit, de maximis rebus iuxta ac de minimis
disceptat; Gauthier 1984, 103.
133 Cic. Rep. 1.31.47; 3.35.48, etc.
134 Tac. Dial. 40.3: the sarcastic remark by Maternus is currently thought to refer only
to Athens. The text does not guarantee it.

135 Cic. Fam. 12.13.3; 14.3; 15.2–4.
136 Not entirely new: Cato’s speech quoted by Gellius 6.3 refers often to the famosis-
sima superbia of the Rhodians: Gell. 6.3.48–51, 52 [= frr. 124 and 126 Sblendorio Cugusi].
See also the speech referred to by Liv. 45.23.18.
248 carlo franco
tics. Before launching the final attack on the island, Cassius met some
Rhodian delegates, among them his former teacher during his stay on
the island. Archelaos begged him to spare the city, using typical ‘Rho-
dian’ arguments like the city’s love for freedom, its Dorian origins, and
its warlike attitude against Demetrius and Mithridates.137 This concrete
exhibition of Rhodes’ goodwill towards Rome proved useless: the Rho-
dians were defeated by sea, they lost many ships, and after a short siege
they surrendered to Cassius. According to Plutarch, some Rhodians
tried to flatter the conqueror by proclaiming him ‘king and lord’. Cas-
sius refused the honours: instead, 8500 talents were collected by the
seizure of all private treasure, and the city paid an indemnity of 500 tal-
ents. Later, in 42 BC, thirty more Rhodian ships were seized by Cassius
Parmensis, and the remains of the navy were burnt.138 It was the end
for the Rhodian navy. But tradition might prove stronger than reality.
Stereotyped and out-of-date as it might be, praise for Rhodian eutaxia,
eunomia, and sea power endured until the imperial period, as the Rho-
dian Oration by Dio Chrysostom repeatedly shows.139 In the same way,
the myth of Rhodian freedom survived in the literary tradition until the
days of Aristides.140
The orators of the Second Sophistic repeatedly urged the cities in
the Greek East to preserve even the palest form of freedom.141 This
behaviour has been considered both by the ancients and the moderns
to be a kind of wishful thinking that concealed the real situation of
total submission. The Rhodians called ‘democracy’ what was in fact
a timocratic and elitist form of rule, where most of the local power
was in the hands of a restricted elite of families.142 The winged words
of Aristides were part of unceasing efforts to preserve local autonomy
137 App. Civ. 4.67.283 ff.: see also Gowing 1991.

138 Tribute: Plut. Brut. 30.3; 32.4. Burning: App. Civ. 5.2.4. Further data in Dio Or.
31.66, 103–104.
139 Or. 31.6, 146, 157, and also Or. 32.52, where the behaviour of Rhodes is positively
contrasted to that of the Alexandrians (these lines however were bracketed by von
Arnim).
140 Also, the collection of possibly fictional epistles attributed to Brutus preserves a
couple of letters to and from Rhodes: Ep. Brut. 11–12 Hercher. In Ep. 13–14 (Letters to
and from Cos), Rhodes appears as having been won over by Cassius. Links between
Brutus and the islanders are unattested, but the material is close to the Plutarchean
narration, and might be of some historical relevance. Asked to choose between enmity
or friendship, the Rhodians give a proud answer, which exhibits a deep fondness for
freedom.
141 Guerber 2002, esp. 128 ff.
142 Schmitz 1997, 39 ff.; Bresson 2004.
vis-à-vis Roman power and internal social balance in favor of the

wealthy.143 The orator had the cultural and political skill necessary to
shore up the pride of the imperial oligarchies, since his celebration of
concord opened the path to the preservation of a total subordination of
the masses to the few.144 It was for the wealthy that the Roman Empire
formed a comfortable structure. Freedom, octroyée as it might be, was
still preferable to a complete dependence within the formula provinciae:
νν δ4 τ!ς D στKσεως φορμ", D <>αστ,νης ο%κ ξουσ!α; ο% κοιν" μ4ν
:πασα γ7, βασιλε?ς δ4 εLς, νμοι δ4 κοινο0 πAσι, πολιτεεσ&αι δ4 κα0
σιωπAν κα0 πα!ρειν κα0 μ νειν δεια -πσην τις βολεται; (Or. 24.31).
But now what cause is there for faction, or what lack of opportunity for
a pleasant life? Is not all the earth united, is there not one emperor and
common laws for all, and is there not as much freedom as one wishes,
to engage in politics and to keep silent, and to travel and to remain at
home?
I cannot say whether this attitude was realistic or pessimistic, ingenu-
ous or marked by illusion: I only understand very well that these texts
express above all the fear of losing a privileged status and reveal sad
resignation to the limits of political participation.145 Both attitudes make
the study of the Second Sophistic particularly fitting for our disillu-
sioned times.
143 Ferrary 1999.

144 Schmitz 1997, 43 ff., with reference to Arist. Or. 24.35; Or. 26.66, 68 and bibliogra-
phy; Connolly 2001. On the role of the mob see also Thornton 2001; id. 2005, 276 ff.
145 Veyne 2005, esp. 215, about Dio Or. 31.
part four
RECEPTION
chapter twelve
ARISTIDES’ FIRST ADMIRER
Christopher Jones
Since the 1930’s it has been known from an Arabic translation that
Galen had observed Aristides, classing him among those ‘whose souls
are strong by nature and whose bodies are weak… This man was one
of the most outstanding orators. So it happened that lifelong activity
in talking and declaiming caused his whole body to fade away’.1 Galen
survived at least into the late 190’s, and clearly recorded his observa-
tion only after Aristides’ death, which must have occurred about 180.2
Another testimony to the orator has received less attention, though it is
almost certainly earlier than Galen’s. This witness is Phrynichos, whom
modern scholarship usually calls an Atticist or a lexicographer, when
it calls him anything at all. Unlike Galen, Phrynichos does not speak
from autopsy, but is a more valuable witness in that he shows how Aris-
tides was regarded by sophists, critics, and others in or near his own
profession.
Phrynichos’ discussion of Aristides is preserved in the summary of
the Sophistic Preparation made by Photios in the ninth century, not in his
only extant work, the Ecloge. In the present paper I will first (1) examine
what he has to say about Aristides, at least in the form mediated by
Photios, and then take up three subjects: (2) the date at which he wrote;
(3) the local and social setting in which he wrote; and (4) the literary
context, that is, what in his views of language and literature might have
helped to make him the first known author to praise Aristides.
1 Trans. Bowersock 1969, 62.

2 See ibid. 63–65 for Galen’s date of death.
254 christopher jones
Phrynichos on Aristides
Photios summarizes the eleventh book of the Sophistic Preparation as

follows:3
=Ο δ4 φεξ7ς Μηνοδ,ρFω προσπεφ,νηται πKλιν, ν Fp κα0 Αριστε!δου τος
λγοις (Sς φησιν) ντυχcν ρτι, ττε κμKζοντος, πολ?ν το νδρ8ς *παι-
νον ποιεται, κα0 Μαρκιανν φησι, τ8ν κριτικ8ν συγγραφ α, XπερορAν μ4ν
ΠλKτωνος κα0 Δημοσ& νους, τ ς δ4 Βροτου το Ιταλο πιστολ ς προ-
κρ!νειν κα0 καννα τ7ς ν λγFω ρετ7ς ποφα!νειν. Τατα δ4 οiτς φησιν
ο%χ0 τ"ν τοιατην κρ!σιν ποδεχμενος, λλ’ εOς τ8 μ" &αυμKζειν ε$ τινες
κα0 τ7ς Αριστε!δου δξης λKττονα τ8ν νδρα νομ!ζουσιν, ο[τω κλ ους το
ν λγοις εOς κρον λKσαντα· qψατο γ ρ - φ&νος Xπ’ ν!ων πεμπμενος
κα0 Αριστε!δου, Sσπερ κα0 λλων πολλ.ν παιδε!>α διενεγκντων.
The next (book) is addressed to Menodoros again, and here, having
recently read the works of Aristides, so he says, who was then at the
height of his success, he lavishes high praise on the man, and says that
Marcianus the critic despises Plato and Demosthenes, and prefers the let-
ters of the Italian Brutus, and considers them the standard of excellence
in style. This he says not because he approves of this judgment, but so
that it should not be cause for wonder that some people considered Aris-
tides less than his reputation, when he had progressed so far in literary
fame; for envy emitted by certain people had touched even Aristides, as
also many others conspicuous for their culture.
For the sake of the following argument, two items of this translation
need to be justified. Where I have translated ‘having recently read
(ντυχcν ρτι) the works of Aristides’, Henry in the standard edition
translates ‘après avoir découvert depuis peu les écrits d’Aristide’ (‘hav-
ing recently discovered the writings of Aristides’). Though ντυχεν can
mean ‘to come across’, ‘to meet with’, in a literary context it should
mean ‘to read’, a sense in which Photius uses it again in this same
passage, though he usually prefers ναγιγν,σκειν.4 Where I have trans-
lated ‘so that it should not be cause for wonder that some people con-
sidered Aristides less than his reputation, when he had progressed so
far in literary fame’, Henry understands, ‘pour qu’on ne s’étonne pas
si certains placent au-dessous du renom d’Aristide un écrivain qui a
3 Bibl. 101a, 15–27. References are to the edition of Henry 1960. Translations are my
own unless otherwise noted.

4 Bibl.101a, 13, ντυχcν τος γεγραμμ νοις, where Henry again translates ‘après avoir
découverts ses écrits’. On the various verbs signifying ‘to read’ in Greek, see Chantraine
1950, especially 122–126 for ντυγχKνειν.
aristides’ first admirer 255
atteint un tel degré d’illustration dans les lettres’ (‘in order that one
should not be surprised if certain people place below the fame of
Aristides [that is, ‘judge Aristides superior to’] a writer [Brutus, i.e.]
who has attained such a degree of celebrity in literature’). But no-
one could have thought Brutus a notable figure of Greek literature,
whereas Photios has just said that Aristides was ‘at his peak’, κμKζων.
In addition, Henry’s translation turns the definite τ8ν νδρα into the
indefinite ‘a writer’, whereas it surely stands for the pronoun α%τν,
as it does twice in this same passage (Zκμασε δ4 - νρ, ‘the man
flourished’, πολ?ν το νδρ8ς *παινον ποιεται, ‘he gives high praise to
the man’). Photios means that some people consider Aristides less than
his reputation, in other words to be overrated, but that such a judgment
is no surprise: he was at the height of his reputation, and so likely to
attract jealousy, and moreover, an eminent critic had made the similar
mistake of rating the letters of Brutus more highly than those of Plato
and Demosthenes. When Phrynichos was writing, therefore, Aristides
was already at the height of his fame, but had certain detractors.
On the subject of such detractors Aristides himself is far from ret-
icent. One of the best documents of the dislike he could inspire is
the work, a written and not a spoken one, On the Passing Remark or
On the Digression (περ0 το παραφ& γματος). The work is usually dated
to the year 152/53 or shortly thereafter, since the speech in which the
digression occurred was almost certainly the extant To Athena (Or. 37
K.), which must belong to that year.5 The unnamed critic to whom the
speech On the Passing Remark was addressed had carped at Aristides for
inserting praise of himself into a speech in praise of the goddess. To
make matters worse, the wretch had pretended to make his observation
out of pure goodwill; there was no need, he said, for Aristides to praise
himself, since everyone knew how good he was. From various allusions,
it appears that the critic heard the speech as a member of an audience
gathered in the Asclepieion of Pergamum, and one could well imagine
that the scene was the small theatre in the northeast corner.
5 Behr (1968, 53; 1981, 382) dates it between 145 and 147.
The Time of Writing
The only source for Phrynichos’ life and career, apart from hints in his
own works, is the brief and corrupted entry in the Suda (Φ 764, IV 766
Adler):6
Suda. Φρνιχος, Βι&υνς, σοφιστς. Αττικιστ"ν D Περ0 Αττικ.ν PνομKτων
βιβλ!α β, Τι&εμ νων συναγωγν, Σοφιστικ7ς παρασκευ7ς βιβλ!α μζ, οJ δ4
οδ.
‘Phrynichos, Bithynian, sophist. (He wrote) Atticist, or On Attic Words, two
books; a collection of tithemena [perhaps, ‘approved locutions’]; Sophistic
Preparation in 47 books, though some say in 74’.
Since Photios makes Phrynichos an ‘Arabian’, not a ‘Bithynian’, either
he or the Suda is in error, or else Phrynichos came from somewhere in
the Near East populated by ‘Arabs’ in the ancient sense (not necessarily
the province of Arabia) and later settled in Bithynia, not at all an
unlikely progression.
The question when Phrynichos wrote both the extant Ecloge and
the lost Preparation is complex and controversial. In brief, the Ecloge is
dedicated to a certain Cornelianus, a man of high culture who has
been appointed secretary (epistoleus) by plural emperors.7 Provided that
the plural implies two joint emperors, as is usually understood, other
references in the work narrow the choice to either Marcus and Lucius
or Marcus and Commodus. While there is no clear means of deciding
between the two pairs, it might be inferred from a reference to ‘a letter
of Alexander the Sophist’ that Phrynichos had read a letter penned by
the sophist Alexander of Seleuceia, the so-called Clay-Plato, who was
ab epistulis Graecis to Marcus during the German Wars.8 If that is right,
then the joint emperors under whom Cornelianus held the same post
will be Marcus and Commodus, and there is a gap in the fasti of this
office just about the years 177–180. As we shall see, such a date is also
close to the likely date of the Sophistic Preparation.9
6 I read Αττικιστ"ν D Περ0 Αττικ.ν with Bernhardy: Αττικιστ"ν (or -τ"ς) Xπ’ Α.
mss., followed by Adler.

7 κ προκρ!των ποφαν& ντα Xπ8 βασιλ ων πιστολ α α%τ.ν, s. 394 (Fischer 1974).
Subsequent references to Phrynichos will be to the sections of this edition.

8 s. 234. On Alexander: Philostr. Vit. Soph. 2.5, pp. 76–82 Kayser, cf. PIR2 A 503.
9 Cornelianus: PIR1 S 716; PIR2 C 1303; Eck 1991, expanding the suggestion in
PIR1 (ignored in PIR2) that he is the Sulpicius Cornelianus recommended by Fronto (ad
Amicos I 2, p. 171 van den Hout [Teubner]). For a listing of Greeks who held the office
For the date of this, Photios provides several clues in his summary.
The crucial part is as follows:
GΗκμασε δ4 - ν"ρ ν τος χρνοις ΜKρκου βασιλ ως =Ρωμα!ων κα0 το
παιδ8ς α%το Κομμδου, πρ8ς ]ν κα0 τ"ν παρχ"ν το συντKγματος ποι-
εται πιγρKφων· ‘ΚομμδFω Κα!σαρι Φρνιχος χα!ρειν’. Αλλ ΚομμδFω τ8
βιβλ!ον προσφων.ν, κκε!νFω προοιμιαζμενος, κα0 παρα!νεσιν φιλομα&!ας
κατατι& μενος, κα0 ξα!ρων τF. λγFω τ8 βιβλ!ον, ν οLς λ γει λζ α%τF. μ χρι
το ττε καιρο συντετKχ&αι λγους, οfς κα0 να& σ&αι λ γει τF. βασιλε,
παγγ λλεται κα0 λλους τοσοτους φιλοπονσασ&αι τ7ς ζω7ς α%τ8ν ο%κ
πολιμπανοσης.
He lived in the time of Marcus, the emperor of the Romans, and his son
Commodus. He addresses the dedication of the work to the latter, begin-
ning ‘To Caesar Commodus from Phrynichos, greetings’. But though
he addresses the book to Commodus, and dedicates the preface to him,
gives him advice about the love of learning, and magnifies the book by
his language, saying that he has composed thirty-six books up to the
present time, which he says he dedicates to the emperor, he promises to
complete as many again if life does not desert him.
Several conclusions emerge from this preface, despite Photios’ some-
times cloudy form of expression. It is not clear whether Marcus is still
alive, though that is suggested by Phrynichos’ addressing Commodus
as ‘Caesar’ and not ‘Augustus’, which Commodus begins to be called
in documents from 177; a date in Marcus’ lifetime is compatible with
Phrynichos’ also referring to Commodus as ‘emperor’ (basileus).10 The
phrase ‘advice about the love of learning’ (parainesin philomathias katatithe-
menos) would also fit better if addressed to a young prince rather than to
a mature emperor. Commodus was born in 161, became Caesar in 166,
and joint Augustus with his father in 177. Thus the indications seem
to converge on a date in the middle 170’s for this prefatory book, even
though by that time Phrynichos had already reached a total of thirty-
six books. If the Suda is right in saying that there were versions of the
work going up to 47 or even 74 books, then Photios must have come
across some kind of first edition, when the author had not yet fulfilled
his promise of adding further books.
of ab epistulis, see Bowie 1982, 57–59; for the date of his probable predecessor, Vibianus
Tertullus (ca. 175–177): Mitchell 2003, 146–148.
10 Cf. the opening of Athenagoras’ Legatio, in which the two rulers are addressed
both as autokratores and as megaloi basileôn (ed. Pouderon, Sources chrétiennes 379, 70); it is
also possible that basileus is Photius’ own contribution. A date after 180 is preferred by
Swain 1996, 54.
If a date in the 170’s provides a likely terminus ante, at least for this first
version, what are the termini ante and post of the reference to Aristides
in the eleventh book? Here the crucial clue lies in the dedication to the
first book. According to Photios, Phrynichos dedicated this to ‘a certain
Aristocles, [being] eager for the work to be an amusement suitable
for his birthday, and for him to be his (Phrynichos’) fellow-celebrant
(sympaistês)’. He also dedicated the next two books to Aristocles, but
addressed the fourth to a compatriot and friend called Julianus, since
Aristocles had become ‘a participant in the great council at Rome by
royal decree’.11
This ‘certain Aristocles’, whose name meant nothing to Photios, is
nowadays agreed to be Claudius Aristocles, the Pergamene sophist,
who is known from a notice in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists and from
an inscription found at Olympia. He had been converted to rhetoric by
hearing Herodes Atticus lecture at Rome and, what particularly matters
for us, he later became the teacher of Aristides. Both Philostratus and
the inscription call him consular, so that he was perhaps plucked out of
his academic career and raised from equestrian status into the senate,
not at all an unusual progression in this period. Assuming that he
was younger than Herodes and older than Aristides, he should have
been born approximately about 110; but since Philostratus also says
that he died ‘with his hair half-gray, approaching old age’ (mesaipolios,
prosbainôn tô gêraskein), he presumably did not live much past the year
170. It follows that Phrynichos had reached at least the thirteenth book,
the last to be dedicated to Aristocles, by this date; his move to Rome
mentioned in the fourth book might have occurred as early as the
150’s.12 It also follows that Phrynichos’ reference to Aristides in the
eleventh book must fall in Aristides’ own lifetime.
The Social and Geographical Setting
Phrynichos’ easy friendship with Aristocles before the latter’s move to

Rome implies that the two men were social intimates in Pergamum,
11 100b, 18–29.
12 Aristocles: Philostr. VS 2.3 p. 74 Kayser; PIR2 C 789; Avotins 1978; cf. Puech
2002, 145–148, putting Aristocles’ consulate not before 160 and his death at the end
of the 160’s. The notion of a rivalry between Pollux and Phrynichos in the reign of
Commodus has no ancient basis: Swain 1996, 54 n. 48.
and this perhaps suggests one way in which Phrynichos came to form
so early and so high an opinion of Aristides; they might have been
fellow-pupils of Aristocles, who according to Philostratus attracted ‘all
the Hellenes in that region’ to his lectures.13
There is another link between Phrynichos and Pergamum, the sole
passage in the Ecloge in which he refers to an inscription rather than
to a literary work. Under the rubric κατ’ 'ναρ, ‘in accordance with a
dream’, he observes (396), ‘Polemo the Ionian sophist set up a bronze
statue of the rhetor Demosthenes in the shrine of Asclepios at Perg-
amon in Mysia, and put the following inscription on it: “Polemo to
Demosthenes of Paiania in accordance with a dream (κατ’ 'ναρ)” ’.
Phrynichos objects that the correct expression is not κατ’ 'ναρ but 'ναρ
or 'ναρ Oδ,ν, and comments, ‘so important it is to understand vocabu-
lary, when one sees even the leading figures of the Greeks tripping up’.
As it happens, the excavators of the Asclepieion found this very inscrip-
tion, with the unimportant variant that it reads κατ 'ναρ, and similar
expressions are very common in inscriptions: it may be said in pass-
ing that an epigraphical and papyrological commentary on the Ecloge
would be of great interest.14
Like other authors of the period, Phrynichos was very eloquent on
the subject of his illnesses. In the fifth book he mentioned a whole series
of them: stranguria (an affliction of the bladder), phrenitis (inflamma-
tion of the brain), gastric bleeding, and many other ailments; in the
eighth book, he complained of nosos, and again in the fourteenth he
mentioned a recent recovery.15 He was therefore perhaps a patient in
the Asclepieion, another link with Aristides.
If it is accepted that Phrynichos, whatever his origin, had connec-
tions with Pergamum and its Asclepieion, two names among his ded-
icatees draw attention, as well as that of Aristocles. The first of these
is Julianus, whom he calls his ‘friend and compatriot’ (sympolitês kai phi-
los). Dedicating his fourth book to Julianus in place of the now-absent
Aristocles, Phrynichos asks him to be a ‘judge and assessor’ (kritês kai
syngnômôn) of his work, and similarly asks him to correct any deficien-
cies in the eighth book.16 ‘Julianus’ is a very frequent name, but in this
13 Philostr. VS 2.5, p. 76, 21 Kayser. I am assuming that, as argued above, Photios’
words ντυχcν ρτι do not imply that Phrynichos had ‘recently discovered’ Aristides.
14 Inscription: Habicht 1969, no. 33. For this and similar phrases in inscriptions: van
Straten 1976.
15 Bibl. 100b, 35–40; 101a, 9; 101a, 32–35.
16 Bibl. 100b, 28–29; 101a8–10.
case is not perhaps beyond recognition. Aristides mentions an occasion

of about 145, when he met the celebrated benefactor of Pergamum,
Rufinus, together with ‘Julianus the governor’ (hêgemôn) in ‘the temple’.
This ‘governor’ must be the Julianus who is attested by an inscription
as proconsul of Asia in 145, and in that position helped Aristides in one
of his immunity suits. He must also be the Tiberius Julius Julianus who
has recently emerged as a consul suffect in the year 129.17 It is tempt-
ing to suppose that he is also Phrynichos’ Julianus, who would thus be
of the right social standing to succeed Aristocles as the recipient of the
next book of the Preparation. If that is right, then both men must origi-
nate either from ‘Arabia’ or Bithynia. Bithynians are to be expected in
the Asclepieion of Pergamum. One is the praetorian Sedatus of Nicaea
whom Aristides knew as one of the ‘more conspicuous worshippers’
and ‘an excellent man’; like Julianus, he was a friend of Rufinus.18
As we saw, Aristides connects Julianus the governor and Rufinus the
benefactor, who by his full name is L. Cuspius Pactumeius Rufinus,
consul ordinarius in the year 142.19 A Rufinus appears in Phrynichos’ list
as the dedicatee of the ninth book. According to Photios, the author
said that Aristocles was responsible for his beginning the work, and
Rufinus would be responsible for his finishing it, since having read what
he had written, he was able to see its usefulness and praised the author’s
labor.20 Like Julianus, he would be a worthy counterpart to Aristocles,
who now sat in the Roman senate, and the ‘early’ chronology presumed
here would fit, since Aristides speaks of Rufinus as present in Pergamum
in the mid-150’s. He was one of Aristides’ most influential admirers, and
a strong supporter in his efforts to avoid public service.21 None of the
17 For the proconsul: Syll.3 850, 19 = Oliver 1989, no. 138 = Inschr. Ephesos no. 1491;
PIR2 I 76; Syme 1988 [1983], 329–330; for his consulate, AE 2000, 1138. To be dis-
tinguished from Tib. Julius Julianus Alexander, governor of Arabia attested in 123/24,
consul suffect presumably in 126, on whom see Eck 1983, 158.
18 Aristid. Or. 48.48 (beltistos andrôn); Or. 50.16 (praetorian), 43 (Rufinus). See further
Habicht 1969 discussing no. 47; Bowersock 1969, 86–87, though the identification with
Sedatius Severianus, cos. suff. 153, is now excluded: see Syme 1991a [1986], 227 n. 128,
citing AE 1981, 640.
19 PIR2 C 1637; Habicht 1969, no. 2; Halfmann 1979, 154 no. 66; Halfmann 2001,
56–57. If the dating followed here is correct, Phrynichos’ friend cannot be Claudius
Rufinus, the sophist of Smyrna first attested under Commodus, as suggested in PIR2
C 998.
20 101a, 11–14, φKσκων α$τιον μ4ν το πKρξασ&αι τ7ς συγγραφ7ς Αριστοκλ α γεν -
σ&αι, το δ4 π0 π ρας λ&εν α%τ8ν ξιον *σεσ&αι, @τι ντυχcν τος γεγραμμ νοις τ τε
χρσιμον συνιδεν *σχε κα0 παιν σειε τ8ν πνον.
21 Or. 50, sections 28, 83, 107.
other dedicatees is known, though the names are certainly compatible

with a west Anatolian context. ‘Basileides the Milesian sophist’, who
received the fifteenth book, may one day be revealed by epigraphy,
if indeed he is not already one of the several men named Basileides
already known at Miletus.22
Phrynichos on Language and Literature
Phrynichos’ tastes reveal him not merely as an Atticist, as he is often

labeled, but an Atticist of an especially conservative stripe, and in this
respect too he and Aristides would have had much in common. In
general, his ideal is the Attic usage of the fifth century, as represented
above all by Thucydides and the writers of Old Comedy. When he
cites Xenophon, it is to complain that he offends against the rules of his
native dialect in using odmê rather than osmê (62), or to say that his single
use of acmên in place of eti does not justify others in using it (93). The
form acmên also appears in Polybius as well as in papyri and inscriptions,
and it survives as the modern akomê, an instance of Phrynichos’ value
as an observer of the transformation of classical Greek into medieval
and modern.23 He is particularly incensed by what in his eyes is a
depraved taste for Menander, from whom he cites a whole series of
supposed vulgarisms (394). We are reminded of his disapproval of the
critic Marcianus, who similarly put the letters of Brutus above those of
Demosthenes.
There is no study of Aristides’ citations similar to that of Helmbold
and O’Neil for Plutarch or of Householder for Lucian, so that it is not
easy to measure precisely the degree of similarity in their preferences.
Among the poets of Old Comedy Aristides cites Aristophanes often,
almost always from plays still extant, and he has a few references to
Eupolis and Cratinus. He mentions Menander only twice, once for his
portrait of an immoral Phrygian girl and once for a dream where his
name serves as an omen (menein and andra).24 Among historians, Aris-
tides shows roughly equal favor towards Herodotus, Thucydides and
22 Note especially the Vergilius Basileides of Rehm 1958, no. 155, prophêtês of Apollo
Didymeus in the later second century.

23 Klaffenbach 1939, 213. Phrynichos also censures the use of the word νηρν to
mean ‘water’ (27), long before it appears in literature.

24 Or. 3.665; Or. 47.51.
Xenophon, no doubt because their subject matter was indispensable

to his arguments about Greek history. He also differs from Phrynichos
in his frequent citation of the lyric poets such as Pindar, but then the
lexicographer was not likely to cite these poets when recommending
Attic usage. Among the orators, Aristides cites only Lysias, Isocrates
and Demosthenes, omitting even Aeschines. Phrynichos cites Lysias,
not always with approval, and otherwise only Demosthenes, omitting
Aeschines as well as Isocrates. Like Aristides, he cites none of the Hel-
lenistic poets or prose writers, except in passing to disapprove of a word
in the historian Phylarchus (399). He does, it is true, refer to the bad
linguistic habits of ‘Alexandrians’, for example the form τε&εληκ ναι in
place of the correct o&εληκ ναι (305), and here he perhaps refers to Hel-
lenistic writers rather than contemporaries, since the forms he indicts
had been in use for centuries.25
In conclusion, Phrynichos is certainly an ‘Atticist’, but in the first
place he is, as the Suda correctly says, a sophist, one of those many
sophists whom, for reasons now difficult to discern, Philostratus passed
over in the Lives. Perhaps of Arabian origin, he resided in Bithynia, but
appears to have frequented Pergamum and its famous Asclepieion. His
acquaintance with the notable sophist of the city, Aristocles, helps to
explain his knowledge of Aristides, Aristocles’ most distinguished pupil.
Phrynichos evidently moved in high society. Apart from Aristocles,
Rufinus and Julianus, he was also on friendly terms with the ab epistulis
Cornelianus, to whom he dedicates the Ecloge, perhaps at a date close
to that of the first edition of the Sophistic Preparation. Phrynichos’ way of
addressing Commodus might even suggest that he was one of the royal
tutors, or at least was close to the court. Above all, he was sufficiently
in touch with advanced opinion of the day to recognize the genius of
Aristides, a judgment that succeeding centuries were to reaffirm into
early modern times.26
25 For τε&εληκ ναι see Gignac 1981, 247 (but Phrynichos does not say that τε&εληκ -
ναι is the ‘proper Alexandrian and Egyptian form’). The other example (367) is χειμKζω
with the meaning ‘to distress’, ‘to annoy’, which is found as early as Sophocles’ Ichneutae:
LSJ s.v. III 2.
26 On Aristides’ later reputation, see now Jones 2008.
chapter thirteen
VYING WITH ARISTIDES IN THE FOURTH

CENTURY: LIBANIUS AND HIS FRIENDS
Raffaella Cribiore
Modesty was not an attribute of Aristides. When he attempted to mor-

tify his vanity, his dreams (like the reassuring mirror of an evil queen
in a fairy tale) confirmed that he was the most marvelous rhetor in the
empire. He dedicated a tripod to Asclepius, and immediately a dream
corrected his self-effacing dedicatory inscription, offering another in
which the god assured him of his future fame by calling his speeches
‘everlasting’.1 In another dream Aristides expressed his wish to live for
many years but was fearful that his life might be cut short and there-
fore dutifully revised his speeches in order to secure the favorable judg-
ment of posterity.2 Over and over in the Sacred Tales he described his
triumphs and the frenzy of his audience, even though in passing he
lamented that, because he was not interested in humoring the masses,
his contemporaries sometimes preferred more flamboyant orators who
catered to their tastes.3 Posterity (hoi hysteron anthropoi), in any case, richly
rewarded him, and in the fourth century in particular he was revered,
and his works were used as models of perfect oratory.4
The sophist Libanius in Antioch was one of Aristides’ most fervent
admirers, and paid tribute to him in letters and orations.5 The letters
reveal a circle of cultivated friends who exchanged painted portraits
and works of Aristides and the declamations and speeches that they
wrote in response to his works. Several extant orations of Libanius
were written to vie with his second-century predecessor, and Libanius
1 Or. 50.45–47.
2 Or. 51.52.
3 E.g., Or. 34 passim and 28.116–118.
4 As in the case of Libanius, so many of his works were preserved because of his
favor in late antiquity and in the Byzantine age.

5 See the edition of Foerster 1903–1927. For translations of the letters, see Norman
1992, henceforth, N; Cabouret 2000; Bradbury 2004; Cribiore 2007a, Appendix 1.

264 raffaella cribiore
evoked his eloquence in other, less well-known, passages. One of the

questions I ask in this paper is why Aristides was so irresistible to
orators in the fourth century: what were the reasons (besides his perfect
Attic style) that made him a cardinal point of reference? In addition,
since the direct references to Aristides in Libanius date to the first
phase of his activity in Antioch, it is meaningful to inquire whether
Aristides’ influence on the fourth-century sophist can be perceived in
later periods.
In the year 361 Libanius sent a letter from Antioch to his friend
Demetrius who lived in Cilicia. Demetrius was a proficient orator, who
had been governor of Phoenicia years before, and was the uncle of
two of Libanius’ students.6 Libanius wrote that he was sending two
speeches as a gift for Demetrius; but he was to lend them to Palladius,
who was then governor of Cilicia.7 In one of these speeches, Libanius
vied with Herodotus and in the other with Aristides. Foerster inferred
that the latter was the extant Or. 64, On the Dancers, but the testimony
is far from conclusive.8 Libanius admired Demetrius’ eloquence and
had corresponded before with him. In a previous letter, Ep. 283, he
had discussed the delivery of some orations and told his friend that
he was sending him a declamation on some points of Demosthenes
and a couple of introductions.9 In another letter, the gift consisted of
a dream in which Libanius saw Demetrius as a triumphant orator
delivering to applauding students a hamilla in rebuttal of an oration
of Demosthenes.10
Sending speeches to friends to elicit their admiration and perhaps
some criticism was not unusual among the pepaideumenoi. In a letter
Libanius remarked that Palladius dispatched new material to him
‘every day’—supposedly only a fraction of what he composed.11 Imme-
diately after receiving the speech in which Libanius vied with Aristides,
Palladius reciprocated and from Cilicia sent him a work in which he
contended with Aristides’ Thersites. The sophist in Antioch had to com-
pare both works and ‘judge the bout’ (palaismata) between the two ora-
6 See Demetrius 2 in PLRE I, with whom Libanius corresponded often; Ep. 615.
7 Palladius 7 in PLRE I. In Ep. 616, Libanius told Palladius that he had sent the
works.
8 Foerster in the introduction to Or. 64. Both Molloy 1996, 86, and Swain 2004,
368, accept his dating of the speech.

9 See N 64, year 359/60.
10 Ep. 243, probably from the year 360.
11 Ep. 631, year 361, N 76.
vying with aristides in the fourth century 265
tors but encountered some difficulties because his own copy of Aris-
tides was damaged by age. He thought he had found Thersites in his
book but was not absolutely certain and had to read the work slowly,
syllable by syllable, according to the technique taught in school.12 We
are in almost the same predicament because Thersites is not among the
extant works of Aristides, but we may perhaps try to recover traces
of it in Libanius’ own Encomium of Thersites.13 Yet there are difficulties.
There are several references to Thersites in the corpus of Aristides.
Since he is always presented as an ugly, ludicrous, and garrulous anti-
hero (the very opposite of the enlightened orator), it is conceivable that
Aristides preserved the traditional view of this Homeric figure in his
encomium.14 Libanius, however, scrutinizes the Homeric text for any con-
ceivable positive traits. His encomium starts by ‘begging Homer’s par-
don’ and presents Thersites as a very dignified figure, endowed with
courage and longing for glory, a kind of ‘democratic’ hero, concerned
with the common good, fearless before kings, incapable of flattery, and
even comparable to Demosthenes—this being the highest acknowledg-
ment. Libanius’ Thersites may have been a work written in rebuttal of
Aristides’.
A few years later, in 364, another close friend, Quirinus, urged
Libanius to vie with Aristides.15 Libanius esteemed this sophist highly,
to the point of declaring that he regarded him as his teacher,16 and
he missed his presence in Antioch as a supporter of his speeches.
Quirinus apparently insisted that Libanius would compose a speech on
the Olympic games in Antioch even though he approved of a previous
oration of the sophist on the same subject.17 Libanius suspected that
behind this request there was Quirinus’ desire that he would vie with
two orators: Aristides, who had often written on the Olympic festival,
12 On reading by syllables as typical of beginners, see Cribiore 2001, 172–175. For the
ancients the syllable (and not the word) was the unit of measure, as Libanius shows, e.g.
in Or. 64.6.12; Ep. 1029.4.3 and 1286.1.8. Behr 1968 does not mention Thersites among
the lost works of Aristides.
13 Foerster 1903–1927, vol. 8 Laud. 4, 243–251.
14 See Or. 28.16 Keil, and Dindorf 46.133.22 and 310.20; 52.434.8 and 53.6.28.
Lucian also preserved the traditional presentation of Thersites in Ind. 7 and so did
Themistius in the fourth century, Or. 21.261–262.
15 Ep. 1243. Quirinus, PLRE I pp. 760–761, was the father of his student Honoratus 3.
16 Ep. 310.3, he makes this admission in a letter to Honoratus, surmising that he will
be amused.
17 It is possible that Quirinus meant Or. 11.268–269. In later years, Libanius wrote
Or. 10 and 53, trying to reform certain aspects of the games.

and a rhetor unknown to us who was Quirinus’ teacher and had

celebrated the Pythian games. He wrote back to his friend saying that
what Quirinus wished was impossible because the latter did not take
into account how ‘Teucer was inferior to Idas and Heracles’, a slightly
obscure reference, perhaps a proverb, in which Aristides was compared
with Idas, whom Homer described as ‘the mightiest of men upon the
earth’, but Apollonius on the other hand presented as a rather insolent
hero.18
In the same year Libanius wrote a very interesting letter to his
schoolmate Fortunatianus. Fortunatianus was a rhetor, a poet, and a
philosopher who had apparently just discovered the works of Aristides.19
It was fated that Aristides also enjoyed your attention. Albeit slowly, you
are coming closer to a writer who has and offers power, if one wishes
to use it. You must not discriminate among his works but must seek
after everything, take advantage of everything, and leave out nothing.
I marvel—as in the case of owls to Athens—that books and speeches are
dispatched to Laodiceia, which has so many. But I sent you an envelope
with his arguments in opposition, some definitely authentic, and others
perhaps.20
It appears that Fortunatianus was slower than Libanius’ other friends
to recognize the relevance of Aristides to the development of his elo-
quence and poetry but had of lately acknowledged his mistake.
One last, well-known letter that Libanius sent in 365 to Theodorus,
the father of two of his students, powerfully evokes the attraction Aris-
tides exercised on fourth-century rhetors.21 Libanius depicted himself as
sitting beside a portrait of the orator while reading his works, as if he
were trying to capture the true essence of the writer and the man by
taking in both his features and his words. The search for Aristides the
man bordered on the obsessive: Libanius compared two portraits sent
by Theodorus with the one another friend had promptly dispatched
to him upon request, and reveled in the expectation of a fourth, full-
length, portrait. Aristides was handsome, but Libanius was perplexed
18 Iliad 9.556–564; Apollonius, e.g., 1.151–153 and 462–494; 3.556–566. Idas perished
in a quarrel with the Dioscuri, Pindar, Nem. 10.60–72; Theocritus 22.210–211. Salzmann
1910, 16, considers the phrase an unidentified proverb but wrongly connects Quirinus
(instead of his teacher) with Heracles.
19 Ep. 1262, never translated before; Fortunatianus 1 in PLRE I. On this friend, see
Ep. 1425 (Bradbury 2004, no. 154).

20 The expression ‘to send owls to Athens’ was a proverb, see Salzmann 1910, 33.
21 Ep. 1534. 2; Norman 1992, no. 143; Theodorus 11 in PLRE I. Cf. Cribiore 2007a,
22.
by the abundance of hair in one portrait and the scarcity of it in

another. Was lack of hair associated with the orator’s illness? Did his
hair grow back when he was better? Theodorus, who, as the governor
of Bithynia was close to where Aristides had resided, was in charge of
finding some answers there.22
Vying with another writer meant acknowledging one’s forebears and
disclosing one’s literary pedigree but might also involve a degree of
antagonism and the attempt, often botched, to improve on a forerun-
ner. Aristides, in his oration In Defense of Oratory, had emphasized the
superiority of nature over art and maintained that great artists and
writers were such because they were aware of the primacy of their
inborn qualities, tried to surpass their predecessors, and ‘made them
appear as children’.23 At the beginning of his oration For the Dancers,
Libanius emphasized his great debt to Aristides and declared the love
and attraction (*ρως, φ!λτρον) he felt for him.24 He had to justify his
attempt to vie with him by proclaiming his lack of animosity and utter
deference. The effect of his words—that he would choose the ability
to imitate, even to a small degree, Aristides’ art over surpassing Midas
in wealth—is somewhat weakened by the fact that in 363 he used a
similar expression in a letter to the controversial governor Alexander,
referring to the favors the latter bestowed on him.25 Yet we should
not doubt that he felt indebted to his second-century predecessor. To
follow the rules of perfect oratory that Aristides had set out was to
honor him. Libanius declared that in composing his orations he always
‘trod the tracks’ of Aristides, an expression that he usually employed
to refer to the relations of compliant students with their teachers and
to the close imitation of models.26 A passage in Libanius’ Autobiography
discloses the immediate consequence of ‘treading the tracks’ of others
22 Norman 1992, 294, follows those who after Ramsay 1890, 161, identified the place
as Hadrianutherae.
23 To Plato: in Defense of Oratory 120, Behr 1986, 96.
24 Or. 64.4–5. Lucian in his De saltatione did not respond to Aristides’ work.
25 Ep. 838, year 363, to Alexander 5 in PLRE I, who was consularis Syriae. Midas
appears as a symbol of extreme wealth in Libanius, Or. 25.25.2; 33.16.1; and 52.29.8.
26 Cf., e.g., Libanius, Ep. 316.6.4, in which his student Titianus was supposed to
‘tread in the tracks’ of his own father as a teacher and then, when he was in school,
those of Libanius; see also Or. 35.21.11, where he says that all his students followed
on the ‘same tracks’. On following exactly the ‘footprints’ of great predecessors, see
Lucian, Rh.Pr. 8.3 and 9.7, on which see last Cribiore 2007b. See also Herm. 29.7,
concerning students’ imitation of philosophers. Aristides too used this expression to
indicate the emulation of someone superior, e.g. Or. 46.15 Dindorf.
(Or. 1.23). When in his youth he studied rhetoric in Athens, he was

happy to maintain some independence and not be tied to a specific
teacher since in that case his eloquence would have been too close to
that of an individual he did not esteem. The classic writers were the
only ones who deserved to be imitated, and no doubt Libanius consid-
ered Aristides one of them.
I am not going to linger on Oration 64, which has been the object
of recent attention. It suffices to say that here Libanius evokes in detail
Aristides’ lines of argument so that scholars have tried to reconstruct
the main points of the latter’s speech Against the Dancers. In fact, far from
opposing the views of hypothetical opponents as he does in most of his
speeches, Libanius responds directly to his predecessor in a relentless
debate, saying that as a Syrian he could not stay silent. While he had
declared that ‘speaking in opposition (ντιλ γειν) to what Aristides had
said’ had to be considered a way of paying homage to him, the reader
cannot help but feel that in the encounter Libanius is victorious and
caused his opponent ‘to retire silenced’ as it happened many times
when he confronted others.
Even though the precise date of Or. 64 is not necessarily 361, its
style, the sanguine disposition of Libanius, and the lack of those themes
that will become prevalent in his maturity make it likely that he did
not compose it many years later. Other orations, all relatively early, in
which some imitation of Aristides is evident are Or. 11, the Antiochicus,
Or. 61, the Monody for Nicomedia, and Or. 5, the Hymn to Artemis. After the
360s, direct references to Aristides disappear from Libanius’ letters, and
this reinforces the impression that the rhetor’s influence on him had
waned. The argument from Libanius’ correspondence is quite weak,
since his letters survive from only two distinct periods: the vast majority
is from the first ten years of his activity in Antioch, 355–365, and the
rest from 388 to 393. That there is no mention of Aristides in the letters
of the second period is hardly significant.27 But besides that, Norman
argued that in later years ‘the style and outlook of Libanius were not
consciously influenced’ by his previous emulation of Aristides.28 In say-
ing that, this scholar was specifically rejecting a suggestion of Roger
27 The question is similar to that of the continuous friendship or breach of relations
between Libanius and Themistius, see Dagron 1968, 38.

28 Norman 1953, 22, who admitted only his unconscious emulation of Aristides’
neurotic aspects. See, however, in Norman 2000, 183–184 the introduction to Or. 3,
which was written after the edition of Martin 1988.
Pack (Libanius has a similar chronological framework, similar refer-

ences to medical matters, and his tutelary divinity Tyche might stand
for Asclepius’ pronoia).29 In addition, Pack noted the similarity between
the greeting of the emperor Julian to Libanius in the Autobiography and
the greeting of Marcus Aurelius to Aristides, as related by Philostratus.
Pack therefore suggested that Libanius, in the first part of the narrative
of his life written in 374, deliberately imitated Aristides’ Sacred Tales, a
contention that Norman rejected.30
Although it seems doubtful that the two works correspond so pre-
cisely, I think that Aristides was still very much in Libanius’ mind when
he wrote in 374. A passage in the Autobiography is a good example of
deliberate imitation. When Libanius was granted a leave from Con-
stantinople in 353 to spend some time in Antioch after many years
of absence, he returned to his native city in triumph, at least as he
says.31 The passionate and frenzied account of it, which he wrote down
twenty years later (Or. 1.86–89), has the texture of a literary dream and
is strongly reminiscent of Sacred Tales 5.30–34, where Aristides narrated
his triumphant arrival in Smyrna to declaim in 167.32 After Aristides
entered the city and was well received, he heard of a little Egyptian
orator, an ν&ρωπ!σκος, who had corrupted some of the councilors
and had burst uninvited into the theater. At that point Aristides had
a dream, so vivid that he doubted whether it was a vision or reality, in
which he saw himself proclaiming that he was going to declaim in the
early morning. He went to the city hall and did so:
Despite my unexpected appearance and the fact that many people failed
to know about it, the council was so packed that one could not see
anything except men’s heads, and it would have been impossible to get
back one’s hand if it were inserted anywhere between the people. And
the shouting and good will—or rather, if we must tell the truth—the
frenzy on all sides was such that no one was seen to sit either during the
introduction or when I arose to contend, but from my first word they
29 Pack 1947, 19–20.

30 See Pack 1947. Norman 1953 argued that Libanius was imitating Philostratus
himself. Swain 2004, 368–373, rejected the idea of the closeness of the autobiography
and the hieroi logoi but saw a similarity in Libanius’ and Aristides’ views that rhetoric
and Greek religion were connected.
31 On the dokimasia, the test that usually awaited students as they left school, see
Cribiore 2007a, 84–88.

32 Cf. Behr 1968, 105 and note 34 (where he tentatively identifies the ‘little Egyptian’
rhetor with Ptolemy of Naucratis as in Philostratus, VS 596) and 307, where he connects
it with the dream in Sacred Tales 1.22.
stood up, suffered, felt joy and awe, assented to what I said, cried out
things which were never heard before, and everyone counted it his gain
if he paid me some great compliment.
After this triumphant performance, which of course Aristides disclosed
only to render honor to Asclepius, he went to the baths and was told
that the Egyptian orator had declaimed a few days before but only a
few people had attended, even though he had publicized his lecture
well.
Like Aristides’, Libanius’ declamation did not need promotion or
individual invitations since people ran to the oratorical display as soon
as they heard his name.
Before daylight, they packed the city hall, which for the first time
appeared inadequate so that when I inquired if anyone had turned up,
my slave told me that some had even slept there (Or. 1.87).
Introduced by his uncle, Libanius then entered, smiling and full of
confidence, and won over his audience immediately. He rejoiced seeing
the audience as Achilles was glad at the sight of his armor.
How could I adequately describe the tears they shed at my introduction,
which many learned by heart before leaving, and their frenzy at the rest
of my oration? Everyone, even the elderly, the naturally lethargic, and
the sick, jumped up in enthusiasm and did all kinds of things. Those who
found it hard to stand up because of gout also stood up, and when I tried
to get them seated, proclaimed that my speech did not allow them to and
kept on interrupting it with clamorous demands that the emperor restore
me to my city. They did this until they stopped from mere exhaustion
and then turned to my speech and declared blessed both themselves and
me (Or. 1.88–89).
After his fellow citizens quieted down, Libanius, reveling in his suc-
cess, proceeded to the baths whither many escorted him, wanting to
touch him. In this section, Libanius twice invoked his tutelary deity,
Tyche, who allowed him to disprove the adage that ‘a prophet is not
honored in his own country’. Then, immediately after this ecstatic
account of his success, Libanius introduces his own ‘little Egyptian’,
the Phoenician rhetor Acacius, who was one of his rivals.33
The two passages in which Aristides and Libanius narrated their
respective triumphs are not identical, since a proficient emulation did
33 Acacius 6 in PLRE I.
not engender a perfectly similar product, but they show many parallels:
the lack of advertisement for the lecture, the packed hall, the audience
standing up from the beginning, the shouts and clamor, the compli-
mentary words to the speaker, who was even followed to the baths,
and the existence of a rival rhetor. More particularly, the two narra-
tives share the tone of Bacchic frenzy, which Libanius called βακχε!α
and Aristides ν&ουσιασμς. This is not the usual mood of Libanius’
prose, which tends to have a more matter-of-fact character. Libanius
also appropriated Aristides’ passage by filling it out with lifelike details
that end up sounding slightly humorous, such as those old, slow, sick,
and gouty people jumping up in acclamation. One could object that
sophistic displays generally aroused similar reactions, but analogous
narrations in Philostratus and Eunapius are not so exactly compara-
ble. Norman found a parallel to the Libanius episode in Philostratus’
sketch of Polemon, yet the two narratives have little in common besides
the confidence of the speakers.34 Libanius must have found Aristides’
words truly rousing and adapted them to his own needs, producing a
slightly surreal narration that stands out in his Autobiography. Was he
reading Aristides closely as he had done in previous years? It is difficult
to know since he must have assimilated passages he found particularly
inspiring.
In his late years, when he had so many axes to grind against the
Latin language, Roman law, the crisis of Greek rhetoric, and the apathy
of his students, Libanius turned again to his predecessor for some
comfort. When, after 387, he composed Oration 3, To his Students about his
Speech, he tacitly appealed to Aristides, who in 166 had written Oration
33, To Those who Criticize him Because he does not Declaim. While Libanius’
imitation of Aristides is more attenuated than before, this late attempt
to vie with him was evident enough that the scribe of one manuscript
of Oration 3 gave it the same title as Aristides’ speech.35
Silence is at the center of both speeches. Orations are often born out
of silence. At the beginning, a speaker bursts out, saying that silence
is unacceptable and he must break it on some issue.36 Silence then is
followed by λγος, which naturally derives from it. In this case silence
becomes the λγος itself, as Aristides and Libanius compose a speech to
34 Norman 1965, 171 and 1992, 152, Philostratus, VS 537.

35 Martin 1988, 85, manuscript D.
36 Most orations of Libanius use this initial theme. On the topos of the ‘tranquil
speaker’ in the classical period, see Montiglio 2000, 118.

explain the reasons for their refusal to declaim, and silence turns into
censure (πιτ!μησις) of their audience’s disinterest.37 Aristides declines to
humor his distant audience, who reproach him for his inactivity and
ask for a speech: his argument is that they do not deserve one and
that he does not need anything else to enhance his reputation. Yet this
oration, which he sends to his distant admirers through the agency of a
friend leaving for Smyrna, and which he calls ‘not a pleasant speech’, is
his answer to their remonstrations. Libanius is equally exasperated by
the complaints of his students who desire the speech at the end of the
school year that he refuses to give it on account of their bad behavior.
Aristides uses Oration 33 as a propemptikon, a speech for the departure
of a friend. His audience is remote, although he feigns to address it as if
it were at hand, and he remarks on the absence of a real public, includ-
ing foreigners, before whom his addressees might feel some shame. This
lack injects some artificiality into his indictment. As he defends himself
and attacks the apathy and reprobate habits of his accusers, he con-
siders his position unassailable and shows condescension, detachment,
and supreme confidence. Like other professionals (doctors, carpenters,
craftsmen), he does not feel the obligation to advertise his products and
to make them acceptable. It is his audience that is supposed to woo
him; orators would waste their resources by trying to assemble a group
of listeners. He is not in the least responsible for their disinterest, since
he is the λγος itself. His literary production is abundant and impecca-
ble and is the fruit of his accomplished education and of his unfailing
devotion to the art. No doubt Libanius could identify with this portrait
of the orator. At this point of the speech, Aristides directs his atten-
tion to his public, those ‘false lovers’ (δυσ ρωτες) who proclaim that ‘he
is the best of the Greeks’, and yet neglect him and spend their time
at the swimming pools. Everyone hastens there, pursuing pleasure and
unable to recognize what is truly valuable. They neglect ‘the first of the
Greeks’, and their education is compromised.
The reasons why Aristides’ speech attracted Libanius can be found
not only throughout Oration 3, in which he vied with him to a degree,
but also in everything that made Libanius a man and a rhetor. Notwith-
standing their different circumstances, both speeches focused on educa-
tion and on the audience’s refusal to be educated despite much protes-
tation of love and commitment. An old sophist in the fourth century,
37 See Aristides, Or. 33.34.

who was disappointed by the tepid response to a profession which he

felt had gone awry, found some comfort in commiserating with ‘the best
of the Greeks’. Yet Libanius was in a worse predicament than Aristides,
and this is what gives his words the authentic grief that seems to be
absent from the work of his predecessor. Aristides’ honor (δξα) was not
compromised by his refusal to write one more speech. He declared that
he had survived his difficulties (health and everything else) ‘by cling-
ing to our raft like a kind of Odysseus’ (18) and felt above criticism. At
the beginning of Oration 3, Libanius says that his determination to be
silent jeopardizes the δξα of his students, since their punishment will
be evident to everybody, as will their poor performance.38 At the end,
he reiterates more forcefully that they will incur utter shame when they
will be expelled ‘from the holy rites of oratory for defiling the haunt of
the Muses’.39 Yet one cannot but feel that it is the teacher’s honor that
is irremediably compromised for failing to attract the attention of his
pupils and for his inability to adapt to the changed times.
Aristides’ remoteness and isolation from his audience is not confined
to this speech. While in Oration 34, Against those who Burlesque the Mysteries,
he declared that the beauty of oratory had ‘the power to enchant the
audience’ (26), he continued by saying that he had never pronounced
a syllable to gratify one. The underlining message of Or. 2, In Defense
of Oratory, was that the pleasure of engaging in the art was an end in
itself.40 Attention to the audience made a speech plunge downwards so
that words lost their feverish intensity.41 Libanius, who while still totally
enamored of rhetoric, seems to have lost some of his competitive edge
in the second part of his life, must have found some support in these
words. The sole aim of an orator was writing the best possible speech,
but—said Aristides—oratory in its most perfect form was very hard to
find. ‘Just as lions and all the nobler animals are naturally rarer than
the others’, orators worthy of the name were uncommon (Or. 2.425).
The force of Aristides was the conviction that he was a lion.
An audience, however, was crucial to Libanius the teacher. His Auto-
biography is often a chronicle of his triumphs as a declaimer, but in his
late years especially he delivered some of his orations to a restricted
38 I interpret the term δξα in this way, while Martin 1988, 275, followed by Norman
2000, 185 n. 2, view it as the honor students gain in supporting their teacher.
39 Or. 3.1 and 35.
40 See Or. 2.429–437, Dindorf 1829, 145–148; cf. Behr 1994, 1165–1168.
41 Cf. Or. 28.115.
circle of friends.42 All his work, however, is evidence of his profound

commitment to teaching and reaching his students, of his attachment
to these foster children, and commensurate pride in seeing them fly
away.43 Their nonchalant attitude and disinterest stung him deeply. Or.
3 is an indictment of their shortcomings, but the message to his stu-
dents that underlies the whole is: ‘you neglect me, desert me, are not
loyal to me, do not memorize my words, hate me, and even delight in
my distress’—some exaggeration perhaps, and yet a refrain that per-
vades all his late production. Aristides felt detached because his audi-
ence was more impersonal and remote and he could pretend it did not
exist. Undoubtedly Libanius had more power over his listeners since he
could expel delinquent students, as he contemplates doing at the end of
the speech (Or. 3.33–37). Immediately after, though, his power crumbles
as he realizes that he couldn’t possibly diminish his ‘flock’ because his
‘command’ (ρχ) would be compromised, and the bad students would
pass to the ‘enemy’, that is, to rival teachers.44 He also has to retain
them on account of their fathers, a realistic reason which nevertheless
seems to refer to the remark of Aristides that his listeners behaved like
the sons of famous men who, aware of their good birth, could afford to
misbehave.45
I am not convinced that Oration 3, which is pervaded with biting
acrimony, represents (as it is generally assumed) the formal speech
that Libanius gave at the end of the course, an oration that might be
attended by governors and other officials, by citizens of Antioch, and
particularly by the students’ parents.46 Oration 3, which discloses the stu-
dents’ shortcomings together with their teacher’s dwindling authority,
is a bitter speech even though it is occasionally sprinkled with the dry
humor that pervades some of Libanius’ work. It probably appealed to
an audience of students.47 Libanius declared in another oration that his
students experienced his humor and that he was accustomed to mix fun
42 Petit 1956b is right in this, but in my view wrongly argues that Libanius kept his
most controversial speeches in his drawers.

43 See Cribiore 2007a.
44 On his constant preoccupation with the size of his school, see Cribiore 2007a, 96.
45 See Aristides, Or. 33.24.
46 See Martin 1988, 83–86, and Norman 2000, 183–184.
47 Even though the speech is quite rhetorical, Libanius needed to show his students
all rhetorical embellishments for didactic reasons. Eunapius, VS 16.2.2, 496, regarded
humor as one of the features of his prose, cf. Cribiore 2007a, 19–22. Molloy 1996, 105,
disagrees with Eunapius and does not recognize Libanius’ wit.
and work in the class.48 When he laments that his boys’ escapades waste
the money for their tuition, he deliberately uses the masculine Home-
ric word αOδο!οις (respectable people) in the neuter form to mean ‘sex’,
possibly a school joke.49 Likewise, his depiction of the young men gin-
gerly appearing in class with the slow gait of ‘brides or tight-rope walk-
ers’, ‘picking their noses with either hand’, spoiling the applause, delib-
erately walking around during the oration, and openly inviting class-
mates to the baths is a tour de force on students’ misbehavior, which
parents might fail to really appreciate (Or. 54.11–14). The remark on the
pleasure of going to the baths even before dinner—a true indulgence—
takes the reader back to Aristides, who faulted people’s passion for the
baths as the principal cause that made them miss his lectures.50 In his
view, the baths are ‘what darkens the beauty of education’. Yet in Aris-
tides the mention of people anointed with oil, the Homeric references
such as the Sirens’ song ‘come and stop your ship’,51 the man with his
palm fan who lures the spectators away, are not as vivid as the corre-
sponding vignettes in Libanius. When Aristides says that everyone runs
to bathe in the river Meles because the sophists considered as the great-
est quality of Homer that he was the river’s son, the attempt at humor
is weak (Or. 33.29).
While one of the themes of Or. 33 is education, Aristides’ audience
was not made up specifically of students. In Or. 29, Concerning the Pro-
hibition of Comedy, he reclaimed for the orator the role of educator that
traditionally appertained to the poet and manifested some concern for
the environment in which young people matured. I would like to con-
sider once more his role as teacher to clarify only a few points. That
he was not engaged in this profession on a regular basis and did not
have a school is evident from the question of his immunity from civil
service as it appears in the Sacred Tales.52 In this work Aristides occa-
sionally mentions students, but these are either those he is advised to
have if he looks for an exemption, or young men who offered them-
selves as students when he went to Smyrna in 167, an offer he may
not have accepted.53 When he refers to students, he generally uses the
48 See Or. 2.20. Heath 2004, 186–187, remarked on ancient teachers’ jocularity.
49 Od. 15.373, Libanius, Or. 3.6; cf. Martin 1988, 277.
50 Or. 33.25–32. Of course the baths are a constant presence in the Sacred Tales but
are used for medical reasons.

51 Od. 12.184–185.
52 See Behr 1968, 77–84.
53 See Sacred Tales 4.87; 4.95; 5.29; and 5.57, a dream.
term ‘young men’ (ν οι) and once employs the word μα&ητα!.54 He also
once uses the adjective γν,ριμος in combination with ν οι to say that
‘the most competent young men’ wished to study with him (Sacred Tales
5.29). Philostratus relates that Aristides asked Marcus Aurelius for per-
mission to have his γν,ριμοι present so that they could cheer for him
at the declamation, and the word is usually translated as ‘students’ (VS
583). I am not convinced that gnōrimoi were always the students in the
inner circle of a teacher, as has been argued in a recent book.55 Philo-
stratus is not always consistent in using the term, and in Aristides it only
has the meaning ‘friend or known person’.56 It seems likely that when
Aristides asked the emperor to allow his followers to be in the audience,
the latter were friends and people who admired him and were in his
retinue, not necessarily his students or only students.57
In Or. 33.23 Aristides sheds some light on his role as a teacher. ‘To
those who were eager to meet with me on a private basis I offered
myself not only as I declaimed, but I also indicated to them well
how in my opinion they would become somewhat better’. He uses the
expression Oδ!>α συνεναι, that is, ‘to meet privately’ (probably in his or in
his student’s residence), which contrasts with Libanius’ expression ξω
συνεναι, ‘to meet students at school’ (Ep. 1038.1). Aristides considered
his declamations models for instruction and occasionally met some
young men to correct their rhetorical imperfections. His involvement
with teaching was probably not very significant and did not leave a
profound mark on him. The nineteenth -century Italian poet Giacomo
Leopardi, who studied Aristides in his youth, reported an amusing
adespoton epigram which may have referred to a namesake of the
renowned rhetor: ‘Hail to you seven pupils of the rhetor Aristides, four
walls and three benches!’58 This epigram in any case may have been
realistic if it alluded to Aristides having a school.
Two other orations are usually taken to show that Aristides had some
involvement with teaching. In 147 he wrote Or. 30, the Birthday Speech to
Apellas, who, the scholion explains, was his pupil.59 Very little, however,
54 This usage is compatible with Libanius’ terminology.

55 Watts 2006, 31.
56 See, e.g., Philostratus, VS 483.25 with the meaning ‘friend’, and Aristides, Sacred
Tales 1.23 and 4.23, besides 5.29.

57 Philostratus, however, may have believed they were students.
58 See App.Anth. 5.31; Prolegomena to the Panathenaic Oration Dindorf 1829, 741; Cugnoni
1878, 54; Tommasi Moreschini 2004, 11–12 and 269.

59 On this scholion, see Behr 1981, 390 n. 2.
indicates that this boy was indeed his student. In the phrase ‘We,
your relations, kinsmen, teachers, companions, and all of your dear
family’, the word ‘teacher’ does not necessarily refer to the orator. The
speech is a conventional and artificial presentation of the city’s and the
family’s glory and of the accomplishments of the young man. When he
composed it, Aristides had just emerged from a nearly two-year period
of incubation in the temple of Asclepius, so that his acquaintance with
Apellas must have been quite recent.
Years later, in 161, he wrote Or. 31, The Funeral Oration for Eteoneus,
a young man who apparently studied with him. Aristides seems to
have been more involved in this youth’s upbringing. And yet one per-
ceives that some remarks may be out of place. A vain Aristides seems
to be in competition with his student, as when he says that Eteoneus
was so devoted to him that he never even conceived of being at his
level (Or. 31.7–8). In a speech concerned with the study of rhetoric, the
boy’s silence—sometimes considered a positive quality in antiquity60—
nevertheless occupies too much space in the background of the effusive-
ness of his teacher.61 The insistence on Eteoneus’ handsomeness (four
remarks in such a small compass) also sounds a bit excessive.62 When
the orator says that in studying and declaiming Eteoneus used gestures
that would be appropriate in a painting, one cannot agree more: the
silent Eteoneus belongs in a painting (Or. 31.8). Aristides, the masterful
orator, appears at the end in a grand, emotional consolation that Liba-
nius, if he knew the passage, cannot have failed to appreciate, as when
Eteoneus is compared to ‘a poet who has ended his play while people
still desire to see him and hear him’.63
If we now return to the question I posed at the beginning, many
of the reasons why Aristides appealed so strongly to Libanius, and
implicitly to other rhetors in the fourth century, are already clear. In
the fourth century, when rhetoric was not as effective as before and
rhetors had lost some of their power, it was comforting to remember
an age when ‘rhetoric flashed like lightning’.64 Aristides was a shining
protagonist of that age, and applying his rhetorical rules reinforced the
illusion that one could revive it. For Libanius, moreover, rhetoric and
60 Cf. Or. 2. 384–385.

61 On silence, Or. 31. 8 and 10.
62 On this boy’s beauty, Or. 31.4, 11, 12, and 15.
63 The ēthopoiia of the deus ex machina pronouncing words of consolation is quite
moving.
64 See Libanius, Or. 2.43.
the worship of the gods were connected not only because, as he told the
emperor Julian, ‘rhetoric moved you towards reverence for the gods’,
but also because Aristides’ conception of oratory inspired by ‘a sacred
and divine fire’ stirred him.65 Aristides powerfully roused the emotions,
and his authoritative tone and confidence in his own ability strongly
attracted a sophist who doubted he could make a comparable impact.
So what was Libanius reading under Aristides’ portrait? So many are
the words of his predecessor that may have appealed to him, but we
know with certainty that he identified with Aristides declaring his love
for rhetoric in Or. 33.19–20:
Alone of all the Greeks whom we know, we did not engage in oratory for
wealth, fame, honor, marriage, power, or any acquisition… But since
we were its true lovers, we were fittingly honored by oratory… For
me oratory means everything, signifies everything, for I have made it
children, parents, work, relaxation and all else.
Libanius was under the same spell.
65 See Libanius, Or. 13.1; Aristides, Or. 28.110, and, e.g., the myth of Prometheus in
2.396–399. Cf. Swain 2004, 372–373.

chapter fourteen
AELIUS ARISTIDES’ RECEPTION AT

BYZANTIUM: THE CASE OF ARETHAS
Luana Quattrocelli
Non posso sapere se lo sono o no. Voglio dire che lo sciamano è un

messo celeste: fa da intermediario tra Dio e gli uomini. Perché la malat-
tia non è altro che un’offesa all’ordine cosmico. Dio abbandona l’uomo,
si allontana da lui… e allora interviene la malattia—
Sándor Márai, La sorella
In addition to providing much interesting material for the history of
religion and rhetoric, the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides offer a start-
ing point for understanding the success of the author among his con-
temporaries.1 In these six orations, while talking about his oratorical
performances, Aristides refers more than once to his universal repu-
tation (Or. 47.50; Or. 50.8, 19, 26), to the delirious enthusiasm of the
crowds (Or. 50.20, 48, 101; Or. 51.16, 29, 32–33), to insistent requests
from friends and acquaintances to write and deliver speeches (Or. 47.2,
64; Or. 48.1–2; Or. 50.17, 24, 95; Or. 51.30), and to the high esteem that
bestowed on by the emperors (Or. 47.23, 36–38, 41, 46–49; Or. 50.75–76,
92).
All of these remarks, however, would appear to contradict the need
that Aristides felt to write an entire oration, To Those Who Criticize Him
Because He Does Not Declaim (Πρ8ς το?ς αOτιωμ νους @τι μ" μελετF,η),
in order to complain bitterly about the scant interest in attending his
performances that people showed. One may wonder if Aristides’ long
absences from the rhetorical scene were really due to the poor condi-
tion of his health and to the orders given by Asclepius, or if, instead, all
of these reasons were only excuses designed to hide the reality of fickle
success. Besides, it should not be forgotten that a panoramic view of
1 I would like to thank Professor William Harris for giving me the opportunity to
present this paper before such an important audience.

280 luana quattrocelli
Greek rhetoric in those years would have included the works of great
professionals of the calibre of Polemon, Herodes Atticus, and Apollo-
nius Tyanensis.
Although Aristides made a great display of his success, he often
worried about the judgement of posterity. In a dream, he replies to a
doctor who is insisting that he recite something: ‘Because, by Zeus, it is
more important for me to revise some things which I have written. For I
must also converse with posterity’ (Or. 51.52).2 He writes elsewhere:
‘After the inscription, I became much more eager, and it seemed in
every way to be fitting to keep on with oratory, as our name would live
even among future men, since the god happened to have called our
speeches “everlasting” ’ (Or. 50.47).
Posterity has indeed paid Aristides all the honours of which he
dreamt while he was alive. Among the late Imperial Age rhetoricians,
Aelius Aristides is the only author whose oeuvre has been handed down
nearly complete: fifty-two orations (only the beginning of Or. 53 is pre-
served).3 The survival of Aristides’ corpus was due to the great admi-
ration that rhetoricians in later centuries had for him, as well as to
the high position reserved for him in schools and in scriptoria. If in the
third century Apsines, Longinus, and Menander Rhetor already con-
sidered Aristides to be a classical author and quoted him as a model for
style and composition, in the fourth century Aristides was often studied
and imitated in lieu of the classical authors themselves. Libanius (314–
393 AD) shows himself a true devotee of Aristides, imitating him just
as Aristides had once imitated Demosthenes. And Himerius (300/10–
380/90 AD), a representative of the Asiatic style, which was very dif-
ferent from Libanius’s Atticism, does not neglect to acknowledge Aris-
tides as one of his masters, especially in the Panathenaicus. As Libanius’s
pupils, even two church fathers of this period, Basil and John Chrysos-
tomus, took Aristides as a model, as did all the Christian authors whose
rhetorical style was deeply influenced by the Second Sophistic. Even a
fourth-century papyrus,4 containing a rhetorician’s funeral oration, cel-
ebrates Aristides as Smyrna’s second son after Homer.
2 All translations of the Sacred Tales are by C.A. Behr; the text used is Keil 1898.
Translations of the scholia are my own, with the assistance of David Ratzan.
3 F. Robert is preparing an edition of the fragments and the lost works of Aelius
Aristides as part of the ‘Aristides Programme’, which will result in an edition of the
complete works under the direction of L. Pernot (CUF, Les Belles Lettres).
4 Berliner Klassikertexte V, 1, 1907, 82–83. See Schubart 1918, 143–144.
aelius aristides’ reception at byzantium 281
In the following century Synesius, who had no love for the sophists,
accorded Aristides the same fame. The fame achieved in these cen-
turies, sealed by Eunapius (who calls him ‘divine’), allowed Aristides
and his orations to acquire first-class authority with lexicographers,
the authors of rhetorical manuals, commentators, and erudite schools
from the sixth century through the Byzantine period. At the end of
the thirteenth century, Maximus Planudes was still making scribes copy
a specimen of Aristides’ orations in his scriptorium for his library,5 and
Theodorus Metochites wrote an essay On Demosthenes and Aristides.6
But even though Aristides escaped unharmed from the hostile at-
tacks of Christian authors like Romanus Melodus, who had no scruples
about mocking pagan authors like Homer, Plato and Demosthenes in
his Hymns, he could not avoid the scorn of one tenth-century com-
mentator, who attacked his personality as it emerges in the pages of
the most autobiographical of his orations, namely the Sacred Tales. I
am referring to the scathing notes written in the margins of the sheets
of the manuscript Laurentianus 60, 3, (A) to the Sacred Tales, as a per-
sonal commentary on Aristides’ religious experiences. The commen-
tary includes a series of notes, never published,7 which, lying outside
the exegetical-grammatical typology of medieval comments, represent
a genuine attack by a Byzantine author on a pagan one.
Manuscript A, which is divided into two parts, Laurentianus 60, 3
and Parisinus graecus 2951, is the well-known manuscript of the Aris-
tidean tradition that belonged to Arethas, the famous archbishop of
Caesarea who read and commented on a number of pagan authors.
The manuscript was prepared around 920 AD for Arethas by John
Calligraphus,8 undoubtedly after Arethas had become archbishop of
Caesarea in Cappadocia.9 Arethas himself (see fig. 1) added the titles,
the capital letters, and the paragraph signs. He also wrote scholia in
his neat majuscule,10 modifying the Sopater scholia and supplementing
5 See Quattrocelli (forthcoming).

6 See Pernot 2006, 100–115.
7 Except for two cases that were edited by Dindorf in the scholiastic corpus (1829, III,
343–344). A complete edition of these notes will become an integral part of the Sacred
Tales edition being prepared by L. Pernot and L. Quattrocelli for Les Belles Lettres.
8 See Keil 1898, vii; Behr–Lenz 1976–1980, xxvii n. 79; Lemerle 1971, 220 n. 52;
Pernot 1981, 183.

9 Cf. Behr–Lenz, xxvii, n. 80.
10 Maass (1884, 764) speaks about the semiunciales solemnes used by Arethas for the
scholia: ‘Ecce Arethas, quippe qui praeter solemnes scholiorum semiunciales non in
sacris tantum verum etiam in profanis utitur uncialibus’.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
them with additions to which he occasionally attached his monogram

ΑΡΕΘ.11 These scholia cover Orations I–IV and some passages of μελ -
ται. In addition, one can read small notes to Orations XVII–LIII.
That the reproachful notes in the margin to the Sacred Tales were also
written by Arethas is proven above all by the handwriting, which faith-
fully imitates the unmistakable majuscule of Caesarea’s archbishop.12
The most characteristic letters are easily recognizable (see fig. 2):
– alpha: with the rounded part that slips into the line space to
distinguish itself from delta.
– delta: in majuscule form.
– epsilon: crescent-shaped.
– kappa: more frequently in the majuscule form than in the minus-
cule one.
– mu: sometimes enriched by an ornament.
– nu: which alternates between the minuscule form and the majus-
cule one, sometimes inclined on the right.
– the compendium for κα!.
11 On the personal notes added by Arethas, see Lenz 1964a, 58, 71–72, 84.
12 Maass (1884, 758) was already certain of Arethas’s authorship of the notes.
Arethas’s matrix is evident even in the arrangement of the note text

as an inverted pyramid or in the shape of a funnel, closed with a little
leaf or a small wavy line.
Once the handwriting has been securely identified as Arethas’s, it
is difficult to doubt that the ideas expressed are also his own, rather
than copied from notes in other manuscripts. That the notes were
copied is highly unlikely for two reasons: first, no copyist would have
ever transcribed such extensive comments into his own copy, even if
he had read them in the antigraph; second, and most importantly,
there is a large repertoire of attacks in the same tone that Arethas
addresses to other classical authors, enough to make Wilson speak
of ‘the characteristic style’ of Arethas’s notes on other authors (1983,
212). Therefore, even the unedited notes to Manuscript A should be
included among the other short polemical and scornful comments
with which Arethas glossed the texts preserved in the manuscripts he
owned.
It is true that, like Photius, the philologist of Patras belongs to the
period of the Byzantine culture commonly referred to as the ‘Renais-
sance’, which followed the Iconoclastic period. It is also true that, like
Photius, Arethas made a career in the church, eventually becoming the
archbishop in Cappadocia. However, if Photius provides an example
of the tolerance shown towards the pagan literature of the past by the
men occupying the highest offices of the church, this is not the case
with Arethas.
Those who deal with the Platonic textual tradition know the codex
Clarkianus 39 very well: it contains twenty-four Platonic dialogues, that
is, all of them except the Timaeus, the Republic, and the Laws. It was
commissioned from John Calligraphus by Arethas while he was still
deacon in November, 895 AD. In this manuscript, too, Arethas writes
scholia in his own hand, and he adds strictly personal evaluations to
them from time to time. Here is the passage from the Apology in which
Socrates defends himself against the charge of atheism:
εO δ’ α` οJ δα!μονες &ε.ν παδ ς εOσιν ν&οι τιν4ς D κ νυμφ.ν D *κ τινων
λλων pν δ" κα0 λ γονται, τ!ς #ν ν&ρ,πων &ε.ν μ4ν παδας Tγοτο εBναι,
&εο?ς δ4 μ; -μο!ως γ ρ #ν τοπον ε$η Sσπερ #ν ε$ τις jππων μ4ν παδας
Tγοτο D κα0 'νων, το?ς Tμινους, jππους δ4 κα0 'νους μ" Tγοτο εBναι (Pl.
Apol. 27d–e).
If on the other hand these supernatural beings are bastard children
of the gods by nymphs or other mothers, as they are reputed to be,
who in the world would believe in the children of gods and not in the
gods themselves? It would be as ridiculous as to believe in the young

of horses or donkeys and not in horses and donkeys themselves. (trans.
H. Tredennick).
Arethas glosses the text in this way: ‘you do well, Socrates, to compare
the Athenians’ gods to donkeys and horses’. Obviously, Socrates has
not done this, but the note gives us a glimpse of Arethas’s lack of
philosophical subtlety and familiarizes us with one of his characteristic
habits, namely that of conversing with his authors in a confidential and
intentionally irreverent tone. For the scholiast from Patras, the text that
he is reading is not just a monument of the past: the ancient author
comes to life in front of him, provoking his likes and dislikes depending
on his mood at that moment. A sort of dialogue opens up between
the reader and the author. Arethas addresses the author directly, both
to blame him and to express pleasure when he finds that he is in
agreement with him.13
Socrates is again the target of Arethas’s sharp tongue in the Char-
mides. Our Christian reader comments on the description of the phi-
losopher, who is struck by Charmides’ beauty in the Athenian palaestra,
and thus gains the opportunity to reflect at length on σωφροσνη,14 in
this way: ‘be cursed, Plato, for so cunningly corrupting simple souls’.15
At a later point, he goes to the heart of the philosophical discussion to
defend Charmides and to attack Socrates once again:16
Socrates, you are deceiving the noble Charmides with your speeches and
confusing him with sophistry. Because even if he has not shown adequate
temperance (σωφροσνη), he was not in conflict with the truth. It is at
least a part of temperance to act in a quiet and orderly way; for by quiet
I mean non-violent, but you take it as the equivalent of lazy, and of
course you spoil the reasoning.17
Since Arethas has no scruples about being so irreverent towards Soc-
rates’ auctoritas, we should not be surprised that he behaves similarly,
13 See Bidez 1934, 396.

14 Pl. Chrm. 155d.
15 Arethas lashes out against Lucian for a pederastic issue (Sch. in Luciani Amores 54):
μο0 μ4ν ο[τω παιδεραστεν γ νοιτο κτλ.], describing him as πKρατος: μγις ποτ , μιαρ4
κα0 πKρατε, τ8 σαυτο ξεπας. ξ,λης κα0 προ,λης γ νοιο. (‘With much hesitation you
admitted this about yourself, you damned scoundrel! May you be utterly destroyed!’). A
previous passage in the same work (Amores 35) had irritated Arethas’s sensitivity about
the issue of male homosexuality: the Byzantine reader calls Lucian μιαρολγος, an
adjective not found in the classical vocabulary.
16 Pl. Chrm.159a–c.
17 On this passage, see Lemerle 1971, 213–214; Wilson 1983, 206.
if not more irreverently, towards another late-imperial author, namely

Lucian. Lucian had already been the target of insulting epithets from
the first Christian authors: in the ancient and medieval scholia to
Lucian, the editor Rabe has registered no less than thirty-nine con-
temptuous terms used against him.18 Arethas readily adds his voice to
the chorus of reprobation directed against Lucian, who nevertheless
lived on among the favourite authors of Byzantine readers. Leafing
through the comments on Lucian’s works, one realizes that of thirty-
nine spiteful allocutions, as many as fourteen can be read in the notes
written by Arethas’s hand in the margins of the codex Harleianus 5694
(tenth century—E), and another thirty such epithets can be found in
the three manuscripts (Vindob. gr. 123, eleventh century—B; Coisl. gr.
345, tenth century – C; Pal. gr. 73, thirteenth century—R), in which
Rabe has identified scholia that can be ascribed to Arethas. Generally,
Lucian is blamed for his jokes about Greek religion and philosophy, for
his hyperbolic attacks against individuals, and for his presumed ped-
erasty. In the dialogue Hermotimus, or Concerning the Sects (=Ερμτιμος D
περ0 ΑJρ σεων) Lycinus, that is to say Lucian, is explaining to Hermo-
timus why no philosophical school can guide man in the quest for truth:
ΛΥΚ. κατ τα%τ το!νυν :παντες μ4ν οJ φιλοσοφοντες τ"ν ε%δαιμον!αν
ζητοσιν -πον τ! στιν, κα0 λ γουσιν λλος λλο τι α%τ"ν εBναι, - μ4ν
Tδονν, - δ4 τ8 καλν, - δ4 @σα 5τερK φασι περ0 α%τ7ς. εOκ8ς μ4ν ο`ν
κα0 τοτων 5ν τι εBναι τ8 εNδαιμον, ο%κ πεικ8ς δ4 κα0 λλο τι παρ’
α%τ πKντα. κα0 ο!καμεν Tμες νKπαλιν D χρ7ν, πρ0ν τ"ν ρχ"ν εXρεν,
πε!γεσ&αι πρ8ς τ8 τ λος. *δει δ4 μοι πρτερον φανερ8ν γεν σ&αι @τι
*γνωσται τλη&4ς κα0 πKντως *χει τις α%τ8 εOδcς τ.ν φιλοσοφοντων. εBτα
μετ τοτο τ8 \ξ7ς #ν _ν ζητ7σαι, Fp πειστ ον στ!ν.
ΕΡΜ. Sστε, { Λυκνε, τοτο φς, @τι ο%δ’ #ν δι πKσης φιλοσοφ!ας
χωρσωμεν, ο%δ4 ττε πKντως 5ξομεν τλη&4ς εXρεν. (66)
LUC: In the same way, all philosophers are investigating the nature of
Happiness; they get different answers, one Pleasure, another Goodness,
and so through the list. It is probable that Happiness is one of these; but
it is also not improbable that it is something else altogether. We seem to
have reversed the proper procedure, and hurried on to the end before
we had found the beginning. I suppose we ought first to have ascertained
that the truth has actually been discovered, and that some philosopher or
other has it, and only then to have gone on to the next question, which
of them is to be believed.
18 They are listed in Rabe 1906, 336. See also Baldwin 1980–1981.
HERM: So that, even if we go all through all philosophy, we shall have

no certainty of finding the truth even then; that is what you say (trans. H
W. and F.G. Fowler).
At this point, that is, at Hermotimus’s τλη&4ς εXρεν, the Christian
orthodoxy in Arethas objects:19
jνα κα0 ε[ρMη, τ!ς sν εXρσει, βδελυρ,τατε, ν&ρωπος Wν; κα0 τ!ς τοτFω
πιστεσει, τ7ς ν&ρ,που φσεως κατ σ4 ο%δ’ @λως χοσης τ8 κεκριμ νον
κα0 διKπταιστον;
To discover it (sc. the truth), who, oh despicable person, will find it while
he is still alive, since he is a man? Who, instead, will believe in this,
since human nature, according to you, does not have the capacity for
judgement and for not making errors?
Arethas uses the adjective βδελυρ,τατος, which Lucian often used
against his rival in Pseudologistes, or the Mistaken Critic (Ψευδολογιστ"ς D
Περ0 τ7ς ΑποφρKδος).20
If the convicia against Lucian reveal both the failure on Arethas’s part
to acknowledge the pagan author’s irony and his habit of excessively
literal interpretation,21 the mood is different in the notes written in the
margin of the Sacred Tales in the Laurentianus 60, 3, whose content, in my
view, confirms their attribution to Arethas.
In the first note on the left margin of f. 36v, we read:
λλ τ! τατης *δει τ7ς τοσατης κα0 νηντου πραγματε!ας, Αριστε!δη;
κα0 τ7ς τοσατης το χρνου τριβ7ς; κα0 τ7ς φασματ,δους Pνειρ,ξεως;
εO δναμις Xπ7ν τF. &εF. σου ΑσκληπιF., ξKντη σε νσου κα&ιστAν κα0
ν βραχει>A καιρο <οπM7 @περ *ργον &εο )ς τ παρ’ Tμν *χει &εα τ.ν
νσων φυγαδευτρια. Z ο% κα0 ανοτοις τοτο σαφ4ς )ς T παρολκ" τ7ς
Xγε!ας τ"ν φσιν στ0ν πισκοποντος* \αυτ"ν οOκονομοσαν κα0 πρ8ς
Xγεαν ναφ ρουσαν, μηνοντος δ4 τατα, λλ’ ο%κ νεργοντος τ"ν τ.ν
λυποντων παλλαγν; ε0 σ? συνιδεν ο%κ *χων τKχα συγκKμνοντος το
λογισμο τF. σ,ματι, λρους ναπλKττεις μακρο?ς κα0 φKσματα φασμKτων
εOς κμπον ποτελευτ.ντα κεν8ν Pδντων.22
* κα0 ναμ νοντος.
What is the need, Aristides, of such a never-ending business? Of such a
waste of time? Of dreaming hallucination? If the power to make you free
19 This note appears only in the Lucian manuscript Harleianus 5694 (E), written by
the scribe Baanes (text) with scholia and marginal notes by Arethas. We are thus here
right in front of one of Arethas’s notes. See Rabe 1906, 14–17, 244.
20 Lucian, Pseudologistes 3, 19. See Baldwin 1980–1981, 223.
21 See Baldwin 1980–1981, 233.
22 See the formulaic expression in Hom. Il. 11.417 and 12.149.
from disease resided in your god Asclepius, and that in the blink of an eye
being the work of a god? So among us there are divine ‘cities of refuge’
from diseases. Or, is it not clear even to the foolish that a delay of [the
return to] health is characteristic of the man who observes (and so waits)
that nature manages itself and returns to health of its own accord, and in
declaring such a view does not act in order to deliver himself from those
things which grieve him? But you, who are never able to see, perhaps
because your reason suffers along with your body, you invent heaps of
nonsense and ghosts of ghosts that produce only the empty gnashing of
teeth.
We are here in the second half of the first Sacred Tale (Or. 47.54–
56). Aristides, after listing a great number of dreams, visions, diseases,
and medical cures, pauses to relate the umpteenth strange strategy
that Asclepius used to order him to fast. In this case, it is a question
of poisoned figs, fortune-tellers, sanctuary doctors and phlebotomies,
between Smyrna and Pergamum.
The argument in this note is repeated in the margins of the third
Sacred Tale:
κενεαυχ"ς ν&ρωπος ξ γαν κουφτητος jνα μ" κα0 μπληξ!αν λ γω.
(f. 54v, ad 47.43)
A vainglorious man in consequence of his excessive levity, so that I am
not talking stupidity.
It appears again in the margins of the fourth:
οOηματ!ας ν&ρωπος κα0 κομπορρμων κα0 περιαυτολγοςk τ δ4 πKντα κ
κοφης γν,μης κα0 χανου. φ’ pν κα0 T π ραντος α[τη α%τF. Pνεριπολε-
σχ!α (f. 62v, ad 50.48).
A conceited person and a boaster and always talking about himself: all of
this comes from a weak wit and from vanity. From this it comes to him
even this boundless talking in dreams.
In more recent times, Giacomo Leopardi, at the age of sixteen, wrote
of the Sacred Tales: ‘Dopo aver letto tutto ciò, la persona saggia non può
sottrarsi, a causa del cieco egocentrismo dell’autore, ad una sensazione
di nausea’.23 In light of the judgement of such a sensitive and learned
mind, Arethas’s lack of restraint in his criticism of Arstides appears
less objectionable. Certainly, it is true that before the strange ravings
of the Sacred Tales, the learned Archbishop from Caesarea would have
23 Leopardi 1878, 43–80. See also Tommasi Moreschini 2005.

read on the same codex models of rare and irreproachable sophistic

expertise in the more typically rhetorical orations (Orations I–XV Keil),
where there is almost no trace of diseases, dreams, and the cult of
Asclepius. As a Christian Arethas must have been uneasy about the title
=Ιερο0 λγοι, Sacred Tales, which echoed his Sacred Scriptures too much.
When he then had to associate such an elevated title with content
that would have been completely improper in relation to the concept
of sacredness upheld by the Christian orthodoxy, Arethas could no
longer refrain from reprobation, albeit administered in small doses of
ironical comments, annoyed reactions, concise judgements, and true
contumelies. Later on he says:
$δε μβροντησ!αν κα0 μπληξ!αν ν&ρ,που κα0 τατα δξαι σοφο.24 (f. 44r;
ad 48.41)
Look at the stupidity and the rashness—and such things are the opinions
of a wise man.
A bit later still, Arethas has the following opinion about an enema to
which Aristides submits in order to purify his liver:
καλ.ς γε τοτο μνον εOσελ&8ν, )ς #ν ποκα&KρMη τ"ν φαντασιοκοποσαν
κπρον, κα0 πρ8ς τ8 φρονεν τε κα0 σωφρονεν παναχ&ε!ης εO κα0 μδε
ο[τω25 τF. δ οντι μετεγ νου (f. 44v, ad 48.43).
This is the only good thing that has come into his mind, that he might
purify the dung that overworks his imagination and that you might be
returned to your mind and your senses although you have not come
back to this condition at the point when it was necessary.
In the other notes the tone continues to alternate between insulting
epithets and scornful irony, resulting in some cases, as in the one just
seen, in unexpected vulgarity in a church man and a scholar like
Arethas. Soon after, Arethas mocks even the dietary remedies adopted
by Aristides:
δελφνιον σ&!ων κα0 χην8ς rπαρ—τ πεπττατα—βολου τ8ν στ-
μαχον ε%ρωστεν; Tδ?ς εB26 (f. 44v, but the reference is ad 48.43).
Eating delphynion and goose liver—by far the most indigestible food—did
you want to strengthen your stomach? How ingenuous!
24 Dindorf (1829, III,343) here adds an *χοντος that is not in the original text.
25 Dindorf (1829, II,344) writes 'ντως.
26 Cf. Pl. Gorg. 491e: )ς Tδ?ς εB (‘how foolish you are’!).
In his aversion to our pagan author, Arethas goes so far as to exploit

the exaggerated irony in his own comments, which ridicule Aristides’
quite unusual pronouncements. What Aristides had in fact said (Or.
48.43) was that when he was at death’s door, after an encouraging
apparition of the goddess Athena, he decided to administer to himself
an enema of Attic honey in order to purify his bile:
κα0 μετ τατα rκεν OKματα κα0 τροφα!k πρ.τον μ4ν rπαρ, οBμαι, χην8ς
μετ τ"ν πολλ"ν πρρησιν πρ8ς :παντα τ σιτ!α, *πειτα Xε!ου τι Xπογα-
στρ!ου. (Or. 48.43).
And after this came curatives and nourishment. First, I think, goose liver
after frequent refusal of all food. Then some sausage.
The Greek text, then, mentions rπαρ χην8ς and Xε!ου τι Xπογαστρ!ου.
In his comments on δελφνιον κα0 χην8ς rπαρ, Arethas, who was evi-
dently in the dark about dietary habits and pharmacopoeia in the sec-
ond century, deliberately distorts the foods prescribed with escalating
irony. The ‘some sausage’ (Xε!ου τι Xπογαστρ!ου) appears to Arethas
quite curious and out of place: it has become the vulgar δελφνιον,
which is probably the diminutive of δελφς, δελφος (vulva, uterus).
Given the harshness of Arethas’s censure, it is not surprising that
Aristides is also called a ‘terrible drunkard’: )ς *οικεν οOνοπτης δειν8ς
Αριστε!δης (f. 53v, ad Or. 49.32). In this case, the commentator shows
that he has fully understood the Greek author’s references (Or. 49.32):
@σον μ4ν ο`ν τινα χρνον δινεγκα τ"ν Xδροποσ!αν, ο%δ4 τοτο *χω λ γειν,
@τι δ’ ε%κλως τε κα0 <>αδ!ως, αOε! πως πρτερον δυσχερα!νων τ8 [δωρ κα0
ναυτι.ν. )ς δ4 κα0 τοτο λελειτοργητο, το μ4ν [δατος φ!ησ! με, ο$νου
δ4 *ταξεν μ τρον, κα0 _ν γε τ8 <7μα ‘Tμ!να βασιλικ’· γν,ριμον δπου
@τι *φραζεν Tμικοτλιον. χρ,μην τοτFω κα0 ο[τως Zρκει )ς ο%κ Zρκει
πρτερον τ8 διπλKσιον, *στιν δ’ @τε κα0 φειδομ νFω Xπ8 το δεδι ναι μ μ
τι λυπM7 περι7ν. ο% μ"ν τοτ γε ποιομην ξα!ρετον εOς τ"ν Xστερα!αν,
λλ’ ξ ρχ7ς *δει τF. μ τρFω στ ργειν. πε0 δ4 κα0 τατην εBχε τ"ν περαν,
φ!ησιν Zδη π!νειν πρ8ς ξουσ!αν, οXτωσ! πως χαριεντισKμενος, @τι μKταιοι
τ.ν ν&ρ,πων εBεν @σοι τ.ν Jκαν.ν ε%ποροντες μ" τολμ.σιν λευ& ρως
χρ7σ&αι.
I also cannot say for how long I endured water drinking, but it was easy
and pleasant, although before I always found water somehow disagree-
able and disgusting. When this duty also had been performed, he took
me off water, and assigned me a measure of wine. The word was ‘a
demiroyal’. It is quite clear that he meant a half pint. I used this, and
it sufficed, as formerly twice the amount did not. Sometimes there was
even some wine left over, since I was sparing through fear that it might be
harmful. Nor did I add this residue to the next day, but I had to be con-
tent anew with the measure. When he had also made this experiment, he
permitted me to drink as much as I wished, and made some sort of joke,
to the effect that they are foolish men who are rich in material goods and
do not dare to use them freely.
Aristides speaks about Tμικοτλιον, that is to say, a ‘half kotyle’, in
referring to the amount of wine assigned to him by the god. If the
quantity of wine permitted by Asclepius was so limited, the quantity of
wine that Aristides regularly drank prior to his disease must have been
more excessive—hence Arethas refers to him as a ‘terrible drunkard’
(οOνοπτης δεινς).
Even if we are simply observing Arethas’s usual behaviour here, as
the notes to Plato and Lucian suggest, his comments on Aristides’ Sacred
Tales have a peculiarity of their own. It is as if in the face of these ora-
tions Arethas developed a veritable intolerance of the classical author.
While his aversion to what he read in Plato or in Lucian grew out of
his cultural context, with the Sacred Tales he engages in a polemic of
a religious nature. He is no longer confronting Plato’s obvious pagan-
ism or Lucian’s alleged atheism; rather, he is confronting a true rival
of Christianity. Insofar as Aristides is devoted to one god alone, albeit
a pagan one, he becomes an imitator of Christian monotheism for
our Byzantine commentator. What appears most hateful about Aris-
tides is his representation of Asclepius as precisely the kind of god that
Arethas’s God is for the Christians: a god of redemption, who sees
everything, knows his believers, and does everything necessary for their
salvation.
If we are to understand Arethas and ‘his’ Aristides, we cannot lose
sight of two aspects of the Sacred Tales. First, we must consider the image
of Asclepius. The god is usually invoked as ‘the Saviour’ (- Σωτρ):
he is a god who loves his devoted suppliant Aristides and intervenes
directly to secure his salvation, a god who achieves miracles for him
and through him. Second, with respect to Aelius Aristides, we should
note the Aristidean triangle patient-god-tales that begins to emerge in
the Sacred Tales as a self-conscious reworking of the Hippocratic trian-
gle patient-disease-doctor.27 Without an addressee, Aristides’ experience
would be interesting only as a religious-mystical event, though a privi-
leged and in some respects extreme one. Aristides’ choice to communi-
cate that experience by giving it a literary form, however, confirms the
27 See Pernot 2002, 371.

validity of his experience and its successful outcome. Through being

recounted in the Sacred Tales, Aristides’ spiritual experience participates
in the ‘biological’ cycle proper to an orthodox religious experience,
a cycle made up of: 1) the god’s choice of the beloved believer; 2)
the personal experience of divine power; 3) the celebration of the
greatness of the god himself through a direct testimony before others,
regardless of whether they, too, are followers. It is evident that the
representation of Asclepius as a savior god, together with the religious
testimony that Aristides offers in the Sacred Tales, makes the second-
century pagan orator dangerous for a defender of the Christian faith.
From this perspective we can more easily understand the reason for
Arethas’s virulent attacks on Aristides in the margins to the Sacred
Tales, attacks that, as one might expect, are absent from the margins
to Aristides’ other orations.
It is because of his deep-seated aversion that Arethas directs his
irreverent contempt not only against Aelius Aristides and his travails,
but also against Asclepius. We have already seen in the first note how
ironic Arethas can be about Asclepius’ capacity to heal: εO δναμις Xπ7ν
τF. &εF. σου ΑσκληπιF. ξKντη σε νσου κα&ιστAν …(if the power resides
in your god Asclepius to make you free of your disease…). After reading
the long account of the baths in the river and in the sea that Asclepius
imposes on Aristides (Or. 48.52–55), Arethas comments in the same
scornful and vexed tone:
)ς *οικεν ντ0 χην8ς &ρματ! σοι κ χρητο, Αριστε!δη, - &αυμαστς σου
&ε8ς Ασκληπι8ς τοσοτοις λυτρος σε διKγων. (f. 46r, ad 48.52–55)
It seems, Aristides, that instead of a goose your wonderful god Asclepius
has made you his pet, amusing you with such baths!
The &αυμαστς σου, referring to Asclepius, and the &ρματ! σοι,

directed at Aristides, show the self-satisfaction that Arethas derives from
his displays of irony and contempt.
One particularly striking detail of the scholia is the contrast between
the quality of the prose of Aristides, who is the addressee of the convicia,
and the stylistic level of Arethas’s own prose as the author of those
convicia. Although the style of the Sacred Tales is certainly not one of the
best examples of Aristidean Atticism—indeed, André Boulanger has
spoken of their ‘naïveté profonde’ (1923, 348)—nevertheless it shines in
comparison with the writing of the medieval commentator. Lacking in
any rhetorical structuring or philological severity, Arethas’s phrasing is
difficult and elliptical, obscure and careless.
Despite Arethas’s ironic and contemptuous comments, Aelius Aris-

tides retains his favored position in Byzantium. Few pagan authors have
had their corpus of works so richly preserved in multiple manuscripts
(232). In the eleventh century, not too long after the Archbishop of
Caesarea wrote his harsh notes, Psellus, perhaps the most outstand-
ing author of the Byzantine Middle Ages, registers his high esteem for
Aristides’ eloquence by placing him next to Demosthenes. The great-
est praise that Psellus has for Basil and Gregorius Nazianzenus con-
sists of him stressing how much they recall Aristides, the first for the
breadth of his argumentation, the second for the grace of his style.
Aristides’ fame remains intact for centuries until we reach the scripto-
rium of Maximus Planudes, who made scribes copy both the weighty
volumes containing Aristides’ entire œuvre and smaller manuscripts of
selected orations, which were indispensable to the learned humanist’s
studies. We are now at the beginning of the fourteenth century. For the
eastern Renaissance, which first develops in this period, Aelius Aristides
has definitively become one of the classics of Greek literature.
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INDEX
Achilles, 1 204, 207, 246, 279; and sacrifice,

Aelius Aristides, and Attic Greek, 97–98; self-praise by, 160–167,
34, 261, 264, 292; use of concept 269–270, 279; sexuality of, 118;
‘barbarian’, 2, 93; and bathing, Stoic influence on, 204–205, 208–
chapter VI passim, 109–111; 210; as teacher of rhetoric, 275–
and the body, 82–85, 89–91, 277
109–113, 131–132, 138, 140; and Oration I: 31–49, 191–193
Byzantine authors, 281–293; Oration II: 16, 193–195, 273
and Christians, 100–101, 106– Oration III: 16
107, 179, 200–201, 289, 291– Oration IV: 186–187
292; conceit of, 4–5, 263, 273; Oration V: 195–196
and contemporary medicine, Orations XI–XV: 58
84–86, 104–106; detachment Oration XVI: 1–3, 16
from civic life, 169–171, 182– Oration XXIII: 107
185; and ‘defilement’, 120–121; Oration XXIV: 238–248
and divine inspiration, 94–95, Oration XXV: 218–237
163–166; dreams of, 4, 83, 84– Oration XXVI: 2–3, 47–48, 144,
85, 86–98, 103, 116–121, 127– 145, 188–190, 203–216
128, 129, 135–137, 139, 149–150, Oration XXVII: 131–150
164; ekphrasis by, 132–135, 142– Oration XXVIII: 18–21, 160–163,
143; ‘figured speech’ in, 2, 185– 165–167, 187, 255
197; Greek identity of, 199; and Oration XXIX: 275
the historians, 31–49, 203–216, Oration XXX: 276–277
261–262; humour(lessness) of, Oration XXXI: 277
5; ‘hypochondria’ of, 4, 84; and Oration XXXIII: 116, 119, 123–
‘immunity’, 123; his journeys, 127, 129–130, 187, 271, 272,
136–137, 139, 141; and landscape, 275–276, 279
Chapter VII passim; and myths, Oration XXXIV: 60, 75, 273
Chapter III passim; narcissism of, Oration XXXVI: 141
3; compares self with Odysseus, Oration XXXVII: 255
112, 138, 141; and Old Comedy, Oration XL: 17
261; and oratory, 45–46, 66, 123– Oration XLII: 107
126, 130, 131, 136–137, 267–268, Oration XLV: 16
277–278; and the pantomimes, Orations XLVII–LII (Hieroi Logoi,
Chapter IV passim; popularity of, Sacred Tales): 127, 130, 131, 135–
5, 280–281, 293; portraits of, 266– 140
267; and regeneration, 104–105, Oration XLVII: 81, 90, 91, 93,
107–108; religiosity of, 3–4, 82, 95, 104–105, chapter VI passim,
111–112, 131, 150, 178–185, 199– 178–180, 287–288
201, 291–292; and the Roman Oration XLVIII: 87–88, 98, 110–
Empire, 43–44, 47–48, 178–201, 112, 128, 164, 288
320 index
Oration XLIX: 106, 108, 288, 290 Commodus, 257

Oration L: 93, 95, 183–184, 164, consolation orations, 218, 220, 235–
165, 280, 288 236
Oration LI: 96–97, 131, 135–138, Cribiore, R., 2, 5
181, 269, 276, 280 L. Cuspius Pactumeius Rufinus, 260,
Thersites (lost): 264–265 262
agonistic culture, 154, 166–167, 171, Cyzicus, 131–138
218–219, 228–229, 232, 269–270
Alcaeus, 10 Damianus of Ephesus, 181
Alcman, 10–11 dancing, 60–61, 73–74; and see pan-
Alexander of Cotiaeum, 178 tomimes
Alexander of Seleuceia, 256 death, 125–126
alousia (abstention from bathing), Demetrius Poliorcetes, 226–227
119–123, 125, 128, 130 Demosthenes, 161, 264–265, 293
Ammianus Marcellinus, 235 Dierkens, J., 118
Anacreon, 13, 14 Dindorf, G., 219
Antonine plague, 87, 126 Dio of Prusa, 12–14, 51, 56, 154, 177,
Apollonius of Tyana, 122 200, 226, 228, 240, 242, 245–246
Apsines, 185, 280 Diodorus Siculus, 246–247
Archilochus, 11–12, 13–14, 15 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 210
Arethas, 279–293 Dionysius Periegetes, 48
Ariphron, 15 dreams, 89; and see Aelius Aristides
Aristophanes, 9, 261 dunamis (power), 34–37, 47
Aristotle, 209, 211, 246
Artemidorus Daldianus, 76, 120–121, Epidaurian miracle tablets, 103
122 Eunapius, 271, 281
Asclepieion at Pergamum, 108, 255,
259 Ferrary, J.-L., 208
Asclepius, 85–86, 90–91, 98–99, Fields, D., 3, 4–5
101–104, 106–107, 117, 122, 131, ‘figured speech’, 185–188; and see
132, 137, 139, 140–141, 200, 292 Aelius Aristides
Athenaeus, 12 Foerster, R., 264
Fontanella, F., 3
‘barbarians’, 2, 93, 96 Franco, C., 3
Bakhtin, M.M., 153 Freud, S., 89
Basil of Caesarea, 280, 293 Fronto, 237
bathing, 121–122: and see Aelius
Aristides, alousia Galen, 86, 106, 120, 121, 253
Boulanger, A., 293 Gangloff, A., 51
Bowersock, G.W., 2, 3, 183 Gellius, A., 229–230
Bowie, E.L., 2 Gkourogiannis, T.K., 9
Byzantine Renaissance, 284–285 Gotteland, S., 51
Gregory Nazianzenus, 293
Celsus, 122 Gregory of Nyssa, 100
Christian rampages, 70
Cicero, 208, 209–210, 212, 215, 247 Hadrian of Tyre, 72
Claudius Aristocles, 258–260, 262 Helen, 81–82, 91, 92, 94
index 321
Henry, R., 254–255 mixed constitutions, 211–212, 247

Heracles myth, 51–52, 54, 56, 57–64 muthos, 51–57
Hermogenes, 185, 197
Herodian, 76 national character, 33, 40
Herodotus, 242 Neritus, 108
Herzog, R., 233 Norman, A. F., 268–269, 271
hieroscopy, 96–97
Himerius, 280 Odysseus, 81–82, 86, 91, 92, 94, 112
Holmes, B., 4 Oracula Sibyllina, 232
Homer, 1, 9, 81–82, 125, 265, 266,
275 Pack, R., 268–269
homonoia, among Greek elites, 159– Panaetius, 208–210, 247
160 pantomimes, Chapter IV passim
Paris the pantomime, 72–73
imitation, 267 parrhêsia, 162
Imouthes-Asclepius, 102 Pausanias the periegete, 12, 146–147,
Isocrates, 63, 66 232, 237, 242
Iulius Apolaustus, Ti., pantomime, Pax Romana, 214–215
74–75 Pearcy, L., 97
Iulius Iulianus, Ti., 259–260, 262 periautologia, in public life, 152–155,
Plutarch and, 155–160, Aristides
John Chrysostom, 280 and, 160–167
Jones, C.P., 5, 219 Pericles, 33, 36–37, 44–45
Julian, 70 Pernot, L., 2, 3, 47, 216
Persian Empire, 204–207
kairos, 169, 218, 244 philanthropia, 34, 38, 42
Keil, B., 218–219, 221, 235 Philostratus, 15, 122, 181, 186, 200,
230, 258, 271, 276
laudes urbium, 222, 226–228, 230 Photios, 253–258, 260, 284
Leopardi, G., 276, 288 Phrynichos, 253–262
Libanius, 69–74, 76–77, 236, 263– phthonos (envy), 159, 213–214
278, 280 Pindar, 10, 16–18, 21, 262
local autonomy, 159–160, 171–172, Plato, 16, 59, 65, 124, 126, 129, 186,
244–246, 248–249 188, 193–194, 211, 215, 284–285
Longinus, 17, 194, 280 Pliny the Elder, 226
Lucian, 49, 73–74, 177, 200, 230, Pliny the Younger, 233
286–287 Plutarch, 3, 4, 12, 44, 48, 122, 152–
luxury, concern about, 122–123, 160, 161, 168–170, 172, 194, 245,
125 246
poets, archaic, Chapter I passim
Marcus Aurelius, 135, 169, 179–182, Polybius, 203–216, 228, 246, 261
256–257, 276 Posidonius, 210, 247
Maximum Planudes, 281, 293 Prokonnesos, 133–134
Maximus of Tyre, 14–15 Prometheus myth, 65–67
Menander, 261 Psellus, 291
Menander Rhetor, 146–147, 280 Pseudo-Dionysus of Halicarnassus,
Michenaud, G., 118 186, 191, 197
322 index
Quattrocelli, L., 5 Swain, S., 5

Quintilian, 186 Synesius, 281
Rabe, H., 286 Tacitus, 194, 198, 247

Rhodes, 218–249 Telesphorus, 98, 109
Robert, L., 73, 74, 76, 228 Tennyson, A., 112
Rome, 189–190, 215–216; and see Terpander, 239
Aelius Aristides Theodorus Metochites, 281
Rutherford, I., 153, 169 Theodotus, 104
Thucydides, 31–49, 195, 197, 261
Said, S., 2 tragedy, 73–74
Sappho, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16
Satyrus, 106 Vergil, 208
Schmid, W., 219 Verus, L., 135
Sedatus of Nicaea, 260 Vologeses IV, 179–180
Seneca the Elder, 186
Sider, D., 20 Xenophon, 261
Simonides, 11, 14, 18–19, 20, 21 Xenophon of Ephesus, 230
Solon, 14, 20–21, 239
Socrates, 124, 129–130 Watts, E., 276
Sophocles, 9 Weiss, C., 118
Sparta, 40, 71–72, 75–77 Wilson, N.G., 284
Stesichorus, 11, 13, 14, 15 Wissmann, J., 66
Strabo, 48, 226, 229, 246
Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition publishes monographs by members of the
Columbia University faculty and by former Columbia students. Its subjects are the fol-
lowing: Greek and Latin literature, ancient philosophy, Greek and Roman history,
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1. MONFASANI, J. Georg of Trebizond. A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and

Logic. 1976. ISBN 90 04 04370 5
2. COULTER, J. The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later
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3. RIGINOS, A.S. Platonica. The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of
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4. BAGNALL, R.S. The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions outside Egypt. 1976.
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6. SCHEIN, S.L. The Iambic Trimeter in Aeschylus and Sophocles. A Study in Metrical
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7. O’SULLIVAN, T.D. The De Excidio of Gildas: Its Authenticity and Date. 1978.
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9. TARÁN, S.L. The Art of Variation in the Hellenistic Epigram. 1979.
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11. BRUNO, V.J. Hellenistic Painting Techniques. The Evidence of the Delos Fragments.
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12. WOOD, S. Roman Portrait Sculpture 217-260 A.D. The Transformation of an Artistic
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13. BAGNALL, R.S. & W.V. HARRIS (eds.). Studies in Roman Law in Memory of
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14. SACKS, R. The Traditional Phrase in Homer. Two Studies in Form, Meaning and
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26. HARRIS, W.V. & G. RUFFINI (eds.). Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece. 2005.
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30. MARZANO, A. Roman Villas in Central Italy. A Social and Economic History. 2007.
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32. CICCOLELLA, F. Donati Graeci. Learning Greek in the Renaissance. 2008.
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33. HARRIS, W.V. & B. HOLMES (eds.). Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome, and the Gods. 2008.
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INTRODUCTION

Aelius Aristides' Embassy Speech to Achilles (Oration XVI) seems at first

I As to how Aristides came to be writing on such a theme, see Kindstrand 1973,

was emulation involved ('modesty', as Raffaella Cribiore observes later

religiosity could be found than his conviction that Asclepius constantly

B On this practice of his see Harris 2009, chapter I.

ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC,

This paper investigates Aristides' quotations of and allusions to early

! In Athenaeus, Bowie 2000; in Plutarch, Bowie 1997 and forthcoming (b); in

What, then, emerges from an examination of this relatively narrow

Oration 60, Nessus or Deianeira, opens with a report of criticism of

15 See Bowie 2001.

Philostratus if Athens' Apollonius

This may, or may not, be a satisfactory account of why in citing lyric

Then at Or. 28.63 Aristides cites Further Greek Epigrams 'Simonides' 21

At Or. 28.65 Aristides moves from Attic examples, which he concedes

24 TAM 1.44.1 = Kaibel Ep.Gr. 768 = CEG 888.

were grouped according to their metrical category (as for example in

Conclusions can be briefly stated. Aristides' knowledge of early Greek

Orn. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

Sappho Simonides Solon Stesichorus

582P at 97 34 lW @ 549 35 5W@ Pal@557

34 Widely known, e.g [Plut] reg. et imp. apoph. 207C, IG 14.2136.

Orn. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

Sappho Simonides Solon Stesichorus

193V at 51 (?= 89W2 @* 60 42 21

40 IILaljYlh;LQov 'ta~ O\jJEL~: or is this a recollection of 3UI and lO5(a)?

Orn. Aleaeus Aleman Archiloehus Pindar

50 The first of three lines quoted by Strabo 17.1.19, 802C.

Sappho Simonides Solon Stesichorus

Pal @ 2=* fro 24lP

Or n. Alcaeus Aleman Archilochus Pindar

52 For a list of Pindaric reminiscences in Oration 45 (arranged by section and includ-

Sappho Simonides Solon Stesichorus

AELIUS ARISTIDES AND THUCYDIDES:

But the reason why this particular discourse is to be studied is deeper.

the speech is divided into two main parts---deeds in peacetime and

15 Oliver 1968, 14.

the disputed battle at Tanagra.l" nor, by Zeus, like that at Marathon,

And a little further on he writes:

In the perspective of this paper, what matters is the expression ~ M-

Boldness and bravery (av6QEtu, EU'IjJUXLu, xUQ'tEQLu, 'tOAJ-tU)33 can be

48 Panathenaic Oration 197.

defender' (ro 'WLI; :1t:QO'tEQOLI; E:1t:L~OVAEUOaOLV UV'tE:1t:EA.{tEi:V alJ'tOUI;, EAEV-

oration: 'Indeed', Aristides says, mentioning the money the Lacedae-

So oratory alone has the legitimacy to speak about Athens, and

rehabilitates the Athenians, whom Thucydides' Cleon had described as

ARISTIDES' USES OF MYTHS

An exhaustive study of Aristides' mythology' would require a full book,

1 On Aristides and myths, see Pernot 1993a, II, 762-772.

had himself portrayed as Heracles." To conclude, I analyze Aristides'

In Aristides' speeches muthos is not always the antonym of logos.' The

3 Lenz 1964, 228.

Smyrna, he distinguishes between Theseus, the mythical founder of

tides sometimes expresses some reluctance to use them. In the Hymn to

30 37.11 ; C£]ohrens 1981, 85.

they are untrue and sometimes implausible and without substance at

49 2.4 0 0 ; see also 48-42.

II. The Heracles Myth and Rhetoric

In his speeches, Aristides displays his rhetorical expertise by exploiting

70 Lausberg 1998, 197.

III. The Heracles Myth and Ideology

Like his contemporaries, Aristides attempts to recycle the myth of

6 Implied by the phrase κα0 :μα νενησα.

censure (πιτ!μησις π’ ε%νο!ας)’.

dialogue to face-to-face dialectic are described as ‘rolling about’ (κυλινδεται) indiscrim-