Search Results (2)

This article adopts the thesis formulated by Laurent Pernot, according to which sophists existed in every period of history. By comparing the rhetorical strategies developed by the Second Sophistic authors—in particular Aelius Aristides—with the works of the Late Byzantine politician and literatus Demetrius Kydones, striking similarities emerge, allowing an argument for the continuity of the Sophistic tradition. Authors of the Second Sophistic did not only contribute to the Byzantine politikòi stylistic models, but provided them with pragmatic approaches to navigating moments of crisis, even at the cost of negotiating and transforming traditional values. This emerges also in Kydones’ attempt to bring together East and West in order to contain the Turkish threat. His efforts mirror those of Aelius Aristides and other members of the Second Sophistic who similarly tried to mediate with the Roman empire. Furthermore, Kydones’ adoption of Greek paideia as a form of “soft power” in the West played a key role in the diffusion of the Sophistic tradition among Italian Humanists, like Leonardo Bruni. This phenomenon is closely linked with the “Sophistic Renaissance” explored by MacPhail and Katinis. Full article

The close conceptual links between symbolic death, rebirth, and pilgrimage are widely known to modern sociologists and anthropologists and can be observed in several modern pilgrimage traditions. This study argues that the same connections can already be detected in Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi, “the earliest detailed first-person account of pilgrimage that survives from antiquity”. In terms of methodology, this article follows recent scholarly work on ancient lived religion perspectives and religiously motivated mobility that favours a broader understanding of the notion of pilgrimage in the Greek-speaking world. Rutherford, in particular, has produced a plethora of pioneering studies on all aspects of ‘sacred tourism’ experience in various media including documentary papyri, inscriptions, and graffiti. This chapter builds further on Rutherford’s work and focuses on Aristides’ accounts of his visits to smaller, less-well known healing centres. The main aim is to demonstrate how Aristides’ pilgrimage experience to the healing temple of Asclepius at Poimanenos or Poimanenon (a town of ancient Mysia near Cyzicus) is wholly recast and presented in terms of travelling to the sacred site of Eleusis, one of the most important cultural and religious centres of the Roman Empire in the Antonine Era. Thus, Aristides’ pilgrimage experience to Poimanenos is successfully reframed as a mystic initiation that marks the death of the previous ill self and the birth of the new, enlightened, and healthy self. Full article