Chapter Fourteen

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 malattia 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 τ?ς αOτιωμ νυς @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.Ifinthe 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– 393AD) shows himself a true devotee of Aristides, imitating him just as Aristides had once imitated Demosthenes. And Himerius (300/10– 380/90AD), 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 arebyC.A.Behr;thetextusedisKeil1898. 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.