The Dreams and Visions of Aelius Aristides: A Case-Study in the History of Religions

The second century CE Greco-Roman sophist Aelius Aristides was a member of the cult of Asclepius, a popular religious cult of the Hellenistic world. In his diary, the Sacred Tales, Aristides presents a first-person account of the multitude of nocturnal and waking dream-visions and miraculous healings that took place in his life while belonging to this cult. An examination of Aristides' religiosity, especially the accounts of the dream-visions and spiritual healings recorded in his dream diary, helps to shed light upon the spiritual environment of the Roman world in the first and second centuries CE. Furthermore, it may elucidate some of the reasons behind Christianity's appeal to the pagan masses, especially among the educated Roman upper classes to which Aristides belonged. Previous scholarly studies have sought to explain away Aristides' religious experiences described in the Sacred Tales in various ways, viewing the text as a rhetorical composition or the product of literary invention. Aristides has been labelled as "psychopathological" and the text as a creation of a deluded mind. However, the main premise of this book is that first and foremost, Aristides is an example of "homo religiosus" and that the Sacred Tales should be seen as a religious document. This approach highlights the religious dimension of the text. Rather than explain away Aristides' religious experiences, this book incorporates a variety of methodological approaches in order to identify and elucidate the many socio-historical and psychological factors affecting the nature of Aristides' religiosity and its symbolic articulation in textual form. Attention to the religious dimension of the text and an interdisciplinary perspective towards it reveals Aristides as less neurotic and eccentric as many have supposed him to be. In fact, Aristides is the "Not-So-Anxious Pagan".