1 Earliest Rome

Aelius Aristid.es, Sacred Tales II.39-45
9-5 Sickness and trouble
The disease got worse and I was suffering from a terrible burning of the bilious mixture;
this caused continuous trouble, by day and by night. I was prevented from taking any
food and my strength was failing. The doctors gave me up for lost and despaired
completely, so my imminent death was announced. But as Homer has it ,
'The mind was still steady'. I was aware of myself as though I was somebody else and was
watching my own body as I was sliding rowards my death. In this condition I chanced to
turn towards the inside of the bed. Now was the end - but, as if it were all a dream, I
seemed to be at the conclusion of some drama and to be putting aside my stage shoes,
and to be putting on the shoes of my father. 1
And while I was busy doing this Asklepios
the Saviour turned me round in the bed, towards the outside. Soon afterwards, Athena
appeared, complete with the aegis, the beauty, the height and in fact the whole form of
the Athenian Athena of Pheidias. 2
There came a perfume from the aegis, as sweet as
possible, and it was like wax, and she herself was wonderful in beauty and size. She
appeared to me alone, standing in front of me, right where I would be able to see her as
well as possible. I pointed at her for those - two friends and my foster sister - who were
present and named her as Athena, saying rhat she was there and speaking to me and I
pointed at the aegis. They didn't know what to do, were quite at a loss and thought I was
delirious, until they saw my strength returning and heard the words I had heard from her.
I remember her saying that I should remember The Odyssey, for these were not idle tales,
but could be assessed even in the present situation; I must persevere; I was Odysseus and
also Telemachus,- 1
and she must help me. And other things of this kind. Thus the goddess
appeared, comforted me, saved me when I was lying there on my deathbed. It
immediately came to me that I should have an enema of Attic honey, and there was a
purge of my bile. After this came drugs and then food. The first was goose-liver, I think,
after long fasting. Then some sausage. Then I was brought to the city in a long, covered
carriage. And thus step by step, with difficulty and trouble, I recovered.
1. The changed shoes were apparently a sign that the disease would end with Aelius
Aristides' death - though that was contradicted by his turning around in his bed,
2. That is, he had a vision or Athena in the guise of her cult statue, the work of the sculptor
Pheidias, in the Parthenon at Athens. The aegis was the symbol of Athena, represented
in art either as a goatskin or a shield. The mention of wax is obscure.
3. Odysseus and his son Telemachus are the two heroes of the Odyssey, to whom Athena
brings salvation from their troubles by the end of the epic.
9.5d 'Superstition and worship
This passage - quotation and paraphrase by St Augustine from a (now lost)
work of Seneca - offers a glimpse of the richness and variety of the private wor­
ship that might be devoted to the traditional pagan deities. It suggests that the
elite literary sources may well offer an impoverished picture of the religious
experience (within the traditional cults) of ordinary' Romans - and that the
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