Aelius Aristides
The sacred orator
117 AD – 181 AD
Aelius Aristides was born in 117 AD in Mysia (northwest Turkey) and became the most famous orator of the Second Sophistic — the great revival of Greek rhetoric under the Roman Empire. He studied with the best teachers, including Herodes Atticus, and toured the Greek-speaking world giving virtuoso performances.
Then chronic illness intervened. From his late twenties Aristides suffered a bewildering array of symptoms — breathing difficulties, headaches, digestive troubles, fevers — that dominated the rest of his life. He spent years at the Asclepieion at Pergamum, the great healing sanctuary, where the god Asclepius appeared to him in dreams and prescribed treatments. The Sacred Tales, his account of these divine visitations, is one of the most remarkable documents of ancient religious experience: intensely personal, neurotically detailed, and utterly sincere.
His formal orations range from the Panathenaic Oration (a rival to Isocrates' Panegyricus) to hymns to the gods to the famous oration To Rome, a panegyric on the Roman Empire that remains our best statement of how the Greek intellectual elite understood Roman imperial power. Fifty-five orations survive — a corpus that reveals both the technical mastery and the human frailty of its author.
A panathenaïc oration celebrating Athens' greatness — Aristides' response to Isocrates' Panegyricus, four centuries later.
The Panegyric of Rome. Aristides' most famous speech — a celebration of the Roman Empire as the culmination of civilisation. The most eloquent defence...
The twenty-third oration — a Sacred Tale recording Aristides' experiences of divine healing by Asclepius.
A hymn to Asclepius, the healing god who dominated Aristides' life and writings.
The Sacred Tales — Aristides' account of his chronic illness, his devotion to Asclepius, and the god's miraculous cures. The most detailed ancient acc...