At the Limits of Art

Abstract

This book presents a reassessment of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi, a unique first-person narrative from the ancient world. While scholars have embraced the Logoi as a rich source for Imperial-era religion, politics and elite culture, the style of the text has presented a persistent stumbling block to literary analysis. Setting this dream-memoir of illness and divine healing in the context of Aristides’ professional concerns as an orator, this book investigates the text’s rhetorical aims and literary aspirations. The book begins from the proposition that understanding the Hieroi Logoi requires grappling with Aristides’ deliberate conjunction of rhetoric and the sacred, and five chapters offer new perspectives on unresolved questions, including the problem of the text’s artistic unity, the unique texture of Aristides’ dream descriptions, the professional claims of his curative performances, and the place of the Hieroi Logoi amid his literary concerns. Reading the Logoi in the context of contemporary oratorical practices, in dialogue with contemporary technical writings on the interpretation of dreams, and in tandem with Aristides’ own polemical orations and prose hymns makes it possible to discern his professional agenda in this unusual, experimental self-portrait. In this multi-layered and open text, the book argues, Aristides works at the limits of rhetorical convention to fashion an authorial voice that is transparent to the divine. In the HL, Aristides claims a place in the world of the Second Sophistic on his own terms, offering a vision of his professional inspiration in a style that pushes the limits of literary convention.