Aretalogy

ARETALOGY. - The meaning of this word is manifold, as a consequence of the imprecise sense of ἀρετή, commonly translated in dictionaries as virtue, courage and the like, and of ἀρεταλόγος in the few literary testimonies that have come down to us corrupted and interpolated. Indeed Philodemus of Gadara brings ἀρεταλόγος, of uncertain reading, close to συγγραφέας. A passage of Strabo (XVII, 1, 17) is not genuine, and presents itself with a sense accommodated by the moderns.

Two inscriptions coming from a temple of Serapis, discovered at Delos in 1882 (Bull. de Corresp. hellén., 6 [1882], p. 327, n. 2, and p. 339, n. 43), each recall an aretalogus. But the aretalogus of the second inscription, Ptolemy, son of Dionysius, exercised at the same time the function of interpreter of dreams, to which a purely priestly character must be recognized (cf. M. Waddington, Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, Paris 1870, n. 419), since healings worked by means of dreams are also recalled by Strabo (loc. cit.). The function of aretalogus too must have had a priestly character, since from the inscription of Stratonicea (Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, n. 519) there results the equality of meaning between ἀρετή and ἐνέργεια in the sense of intervention of the gods in favor of men. This sense in turn leads naturally to that of miracle, which in the Greek of the Gospels is expressed by δύναμις and by the Vulgate with "virtus." It is therefore certain that the word ἀρετή was used in the Greek world, even before Christ, to signify miracle, supernatural effect, even if the literary texts have preserved no trace of it. One may then agree that a., at least in the temples of Isis and Serapis, meant the science that interprets and reveals marvelous things, portents, sudden noises, deformities of men and animals, etc. To this signification is linked the other sense of fabulous narration, denounced especially by later sources of Latin literature. Indeed, according to Suetonius (Oct., 74), Augustus loved to surround himself, at table, with actors, with vulgar circus jesters and more frequently with aretalogi. In turn Juvenal (Sat. 15, 15 ff.) compares to the lying aretalogus Ulysses, who recounts marvelous things at the table of Alcinous. Porphyry (ad Horat. serm., I, 1, 120) says that Plotius Crispinus was a student of philosophy and wrote verses so scurrilous that he was called an aretalogus. In any case, finding no support in any ancient text, the explanation of a. as burlesque philosophy, given by Casaubon (Animadversiones ad Sueton., Paris 1605, p. 150) and subsequently repeated even in scientific dictionaries (cf. Ch. Morel, s. v. Aretalogi, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire d. ant., I, Paris 1875, p. 404), must be rejected as an etymological contradiction.

Alberto Galietti