ARETALOGY. - The meaning of this word is manifold due to 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, corrected and interpolated. Indeed, Philodemus of Gadara links ἀρεταλόγος, of uncertain reading, to συγγραφεύς. A passage from Strabo (XVII, 1, 17) is not genuine and presents a meaning adapted by moderns.
Two inscriptions from a temple of Serapis, discovered at Delos in 1882 (Bull. de Corresp. hellén., 6 [1882], p. 327, no. 2, and p. 339, no. 43), each mention an aretalogos. But the aretalogos of the second inscription, Ptolemy, son of Dionysius, also exercised the function of dream interpreter, a role that must be recognized as having a distinctly sacerdotal character (cf. M. Waddington, Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, Paris 1870, no. 419), since healings effected through dreams are also recalled by Strabo (loc. cit.). The function of aretalogos too must have had a sacerdotal character, as evidenced by the inscription from Stratonicea (Inscriptions d'Asie Mineure, no. 519), which shows the equivalence in meaning between ἀρετή and ἐπιφάνεια in the sense of divine intervention on behalf of men. This sense in turn naturally leads to that of miracle, which in the Greek of the Gospels is expressed by δύναμις 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 miracle, supernatural effect, even if literary texts have left no trace of II. One may then agree that A., at least in the temples of Isis and Serapis, signified the science that interprets and reveals wonderful things, omens, sudden noises, deformities of men and animals, etc. To this signification is connected the other sense of fabulous narrative, attested especially by later sources in Latin literature. Indeed, according to Suetonius (Oct., 74), Augustus liked to surround himself at table with actors, trivial circus performers, and more frequently with aretalogoi. In turn, Juvenal (Sat. 15, 15 ff.) compares the lying aretalogos Ulysses, who recounts wonderful things at the table of Alcinous. Porphyry (ad Horat. serm., I, 1, 120) says that Plotius Crispinus was a student of philosophy and wrote such scurrilous verses as to be called an aretalogos. However, since no ancient text supports it, the explanation of A. as burlesque philosophy, given by Casabon (Animadversiones ad Sueton., Paris 1605, p. 150) and later repeated even in scholarly dictionaries (cf. Ch. Morel, s. V. Aretalogi, in Darmberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des ant., I, Paris 1875, p. 404), must be rejected as an etymological nonsense.