Publius Aelius Aristides Theodorus (Ancient Greek: Πόπλιος Αἴλιος Ἀριστείδης Θεόδωρος; 117–181 AD) was a Greek orator and author considered to be a prime example as a member of the Second Sophistic, a group of celebrated and highly influential orators who flourished from the reign of Nero until c. 230 AD.
His early success was interrupted by a decades-long series of illnesses for which he sought relief by divine communion with the god Asclepius, effected by interpreting and obeying the dreams that came to him while sleeping in the god's sacred precinct; he later recorded this experience in a series of discourses titled Sacred Tales (Hieroi Logoi).
His travels in Egypt included a journey upriver in hopes of finding the source of the Nile, as he later recounted in "The Egyptian Discourse".
Hoping to advance his career as an orator, late in 143 AD Aristides traveled to Rome, but his ambitions were thwarted by severe illness.
[3] Despite recurrent bouts of illness, by 147 AD Aristides resumed his career as a writer and occasional lecturer, though he sought legal immunity from various civic and religious obligations expected of a citizen of his standing.
In 171 AD he set about writing the Sacred Tales to record the numerous omens and insights he had received from Asclepius in his dreams over a period of almost thirty years.
His greatest career success came in 176 AD, when Marcus Aurelius visited Smyrna and Aristides delivered an oration that greatly impressed the emperor.
Living a generation after Aristides, the most famous physician of antiquity, Galen, wrote: "As to them whose souls are naturally strong and whose bodies are weak, I have seen only a few of them.
"[6] Aristides' "many-sided literary output...made him a giant in his own day", and the subsequent popularity of his work—addresses for public and private occasions, polemical essays, declamations on historical themes, and prose hymns to various gods—established him (according to Glen Bowersock) as a "pivotal figure in the transmission of Hellenism".
According to Philostratus, "Since his natural talent was not in the line of extempore eloquence, he strove after extreme accuracy...he was well endowed with native ability and purified his style of any empty verbosity."
When he met Marcus Aurelius in Smyrna and the emperor asked him to declaim, Aristides replied: "Propose the theme today and tomorrow come and hear me, for I am one of those who do not vomit their speeches but try to make them perfect.
The first Smyrnaean Oration, a sort of guided tour of the city for a visiting official, gives "the best description of ancient Smyrna which we possess".
For they deceive like flatterers, but they are insolent as if they were of higher rank, since they are involved in the two most extreme and opposite evils, baseness and willfulness, behaving like those impious men of Palestine.
A record of revelations made to Aristides in dreams by the healing god Asclepius ... they are of major importance, both as evidence for the practices associated with temple medicine, and as the fullest first-hand report of personal religious experience that survives from any pagan writer.
The earliest surviving medieval manuscript is codex A (written ca.917 by the scribe John the Calligrapher for the archbishop Arethas of Caesarea), now divided in two: Parisinus graecus 2951 and Laurentianus 60.3.
[19] A new Loeb edition is being prepared by Michael Trapp (with Greek text after Lenz-Behr and Keil), of which two volumes are available: vol.1 (Orations 1-2, 2017, LCL 533) and vol.