Elisabetta Bianco

In 167 A.C. the rhetor Aelius Aristides went to Pergamus in order to plead an important and actual case for the historical situation: the end of contentions among the towns of the Asian province. For this purpose he delivered his oration XXIII, a splendid summa of the most frequent topics on the subject, which he often interpreted in a new way. The analysis of this oration and of its lexicon sheds light on his character: he is not of a vain rhetor, used to topoi and nostalgic of the past, but an acute statesman, who knows how to intervene in the new Greek society inside the universal pax romana.