The Rhodian Oration Ascribed to Aelius Aristides

Abstract

Among the works of Aelius Aristides is preserved one entitled the Rhodian ('Pοδιακ⋯ς, sc. λ⋯γος, no. 25) It concerns an earthquake which has recently struck the city of Rhodes, and since Keil's edition of 1898 it has usually been considered spurious.The work reproduces a true speech, not something like an open letter: the clearest sign is when the author uses the deictic pronoun τοετ⋯, ‘this here’, of the place in which he is speaking (53). One question is best discussed at the outset, since later it will prove vital to the question of authenticity: does the speaker claim to have been in Rhodes at the moment of the earthquake? Keil assumed without argument that he does. He had clearly visited the city before the disaster as well as after it (4, 32), but despite the vividness of his descriptions he nowhere says that he was present, and this reticence surely implies that he was not; and if he had been it is odd that he should talk of ‘the actual climax of the thing that befell you’ (τ⋯ν ⋯κμ⋯ν αὐτ⋯ν το comflex περιστ⋯ντος πρ⋯γματος, 19), using the second person plural. I infer that the speaker had not been present, but gave the speech several months after the event (εἰςμ⋯νας, 28); in the last part of this paper I will argue that he is Aristides, stopping at Rhodes on his wayback from Egypt to Smyrna in or about 142.