Professing illness: Healing narrative and rhetorical self-presentation in Aelius Aristides' "Hieroi Logoi".

In this dissertation I present a new reading of the Hieroi Logoi , arguing that the text constitutes not a rare example of unguarded personal revelation from the classical world, but rather a piece of rhetorical self-positioning: Aelius Aristides' apologia in the professional realm. Challenging the division of Aristides' personality and literary output into public and private, I suggest that in order to understand his aims and interests in the HL, we should read this work in light of other texts in which he defines his ethos as an orator. I argue that Aristides shapes the distinctive account of his illness and divine healing in the HL to appropriate tropes of athletic heroism and mystery initiation that were common metaphors for rhetorical practice and training in the Greek tradition. Aristides transforms his cures into physical performances that function as touchstones of authority when he extends his claims to heroism and divine inspiration into the professional realm. Aristides' heroic self-depiction in the HL depends upon his relationship with the god Asclepius. Yet, his prominent ego-narrative is in tension with the overt aretalogical frame of the text. Meta-narrative moments, especially in HL IV and V, suggest that Aristides was aware that mixing personal account with divine homage violated rhetorical decorum. Indeed, Or. 28 shows that he had faced criticism on this score in the past. This, I argue, explains why Aristides exploits the stylistic freedom of lalia when he undertakes, in the middle of his career, to give an account of the god's interventions in his life. The HL are an eccentric literary project in which Aristides sets out deliberately to stretch the generic conventions of hymnic aretalogy, claiming parrhesia as an inspired orator.