AELIUS ARISTIDES AS TEACHER

Abstract

Education was the core activity of the Greek sophists, the πεπαιδευμένοι or ‘those who have received an education’, during the Roman period. Publius Aelius Aristides (c.117–180ce) is by far the best known of them. He studied under the grammarian Alexander of Cotiaeum, received additional training from the sophists Polemo and Herodes Atticus, and then made a successful speaking tour through Asia Minor and Egypt. Aristides’ career seemed assured, with his good connections among the Roman intelligentsia, but a serious illness struck him on his way to the imperial capital. A series of health issues led him to a long period of convalescence at the Asklepieion at Pergamum until 147, which he combined afterwards with stays and brief appearances at Smyrna and other cities. It is therefore commonly believed that his career failed because of his poor health and also because he disliked teaching and performing in public. Aristides would rather be a pure lover of speeches, concerned with his literary afterlife and devoted to the production of exemplary speeches for future generations (especially after his retirement in 170), as he maintained at the end of hisSacred Tales(Or.47–52): ‘it is more important for me to revise some things which I have written; for I must converse with posterity’.