Aelius Aristides Libri

Aelius Aristides (117 after 180), among the most versatile authors of the Second Sophistic and an important figure in the transmission of Hellenism, produced speeches and lectures, declamations on historical themes, polemical works, prose hymns, and essays on a wide variety of subjects.

Aelius Aristides (117-after 180), among the most versatile authors of the Second Sophistic and an important figure in the transmission of Hellenism, produced speeches and lectures, declamations on historical themes, polemical works, prose hymns, and essays on a wide variety of subjects.

In the middle decades of the second century AD the acclaimed orator Aelius Aristides wrote a number of prose hymns to traditional Greek gods and thereby demonstrated that the cults of these gods had not yet become obsolete and were more than just a topic of backward-looking paideia. This volume presents four of these texts, specifically those that focus on the god of healing, Asclepius, together with a new edition of the Greek text, a new English translation with commentary, and a number of essays shedding additional light on these texts from various perspectives. All in all, the volume wants to show how in these texts of Aristides the author's rhetorical skills, his outlook on the world and his personal religiosity come together to form a remarkable whole.