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 in corrupted and interpolated form. Indeed, Philodemus of Gadara brings ἀρεταλόγος, whose reading is uncertain, close to συγγραφέας. A passage of Strabo (XVII, 1, 17) is not genuine and appears with a meaning adapted by modern scholars.
Two inscriptions 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 mention an aretalogus. But the aretalogus of the second inscription, Ptolemy, son of Dionysius, at the same time exercised the function of interpreter of dreams, which must be regarded as having a distinctly sacerdotal character (cf. M. Waddington, Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, Paris 1870, n. 419), since Strabo too (loc. cit.) mentions healings performed through dreams. The function of aretalogus, likewise, must have had a sacerdotal character, since the inscription from Stratonicea (Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, n. 519) establishes an equality of meaning between ἀρετή and ἐνέργειο in the sense of the intervention of the gods on behalf of human beings. This meaning, in turn, naturally leads to that of miracle, which in the Greek of the Gospels is expressed by θύναμις and in the Vulgate by «virtus». It is therefore certain that the word ἀρετή was used in the Greek world, even before Christ, to signify a miracle, a supernatural effect, even if the literary texts have preserved no trace of II. One may therefore agree that, at least in the temples of Isis and Serapis, aretalogy signified the science that interprets and reveals wondrous things, omens, sudden noises, deformities of human beings and animals, and so forth. Connected with this meaning is the other sense of fabulous narration, attested especially by later sources of Latin literature. Thus, according to Suetonius (Oct., 74), Augustus liked to surround himself at table with actors, vulgar circus entertainers, and, more frequently, aretalogi. Juvenal (Sat. 15, 15 ff.), in turn, compares Ulysses, who recounts wondrous things at Alcinous’s table, to the lying aretalogus. Porphyry (ad Horat. serm., I, 1, 120) says that Plotius Crispinus was devoted to philosophy and wrote verses so scurrilous that he was called an aretalogus. In any case, since it finds support in no ancient text, the explanation of aretalogy as burlesque philosophy, given by Casaubon (Animadversiones ad Sueton., Paris 1605, p. 150) and subsequently repeated even in scholarly dictionaries (cf. Ch. Morel, s. V. Aretalogi, in Dacemberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire d. ant., I, Paris 1875, p. 404), must be rejected as an etymological absurdity.