---

In the middle decades of the second century AD the acclaimed orator Aelius Aristides wrote a number of prose hymns to traditional Greek gods and thereby demonstrated that the cults of these gods had not yet become obsolete and were more than just a topic of backward-looking paideia. This volume presents four of these texts, specifically those that focus on the god of healing, Asclepius, together with a new edition of the Greek text, a new English translation with commentary, and a number of essays shedding additional light on these texts from various perspectives. All in all, the volume wants to show how in these texts of Aristides the author´s rhetorical skills, his outlook on the world and his personal religiosity come together to form a remarkable whole.

---