Aelius Aristides, Five Prose Hymns
The aim of this book is to make five prose hymns of Aelius Aristides accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to understand each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while reading outstanding examples of epideictic rhetoric on rich and interesting topics. Aristides’ work is great for intermediate readers of Greek. He is an author of the imperial period of Greek literature, and his Greek is typical of the so-called “second sophistic,” a period of intense cultivation of classical Greek literature and culture. His language is entirely classical in grammar and vocabulary, and his engagement with the classical tradition brings to bear the whole range of classical literature. The prose hymns of Aristides reflect the imperial period’s innovative approach to genres. At the beginning of the Hymn to Sarapis, he gives a spirited defense of his originality worthy of Lucian, arguing that prose is the superior medium for praising the gods.
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