Aretology

An aretology or aretalogy[1][2] (from ancient Greek aretê, "excellence, virtue") in the strictest sense is a narrative about a divine figure's miraculous deeds.[3] There is no evidence that these narratives constituted a clearly defined genre but there exists a body of literature that contained praise for divine miracles.[4] These literary works were usually associated with eastern cults.[4]

In the Greco-Roman world, aretologies represent a religious branch of rhetoric and are a prose development of the hymn as praise poetry. Asclepius, Isis, and Serapis are among the deities with surviving aretologies in the form of inscriptions and papyri.[5] The earliest records of divine acts emerged from cultic hymns for these deities, were inscribed in stones, and displayed in temples.[1] The Greek aretologos (ἀρετολόγος, "virtue-speaker") was a temple official who recounted aretologies and may have also interpreted dreams.[6]

By extension, an aretology is also a "catalogue of virtues" belonging to a person; for example, Cicero's list and description of the virtues of Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great") in the speech Pro Lege Manilia.[7] Aretology became part of the Christian rhetorical tradition of hagiography.[8]

In an even more expanded sense, aretology is moral philosophy which deals with virtue, its nature, and the means of arriving at it. It is the title of an ethical tract by Robert Boyle published in the 1640s.[9] Other scholars also consider literature that involve the praise of wisdom as aretology.[2]

See also

References
  1. Koester, Helmut (1995). History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age, Second Edition. New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 131. ISBN 3110146932.
  2. Tenney, Merrill C. (2010). The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume 1: Revised Full-Color Edition. Zondervan Academic. ISBN 9780310876960.
  3. Fortna, Robert (2004). The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor. London: T&T Clark International. p. 53. ISBN 9780567080691.
  4. King, Daniel (2018). Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. p. 138. ISBN 9780198810513.
  5. Laurent Pernot, Rhetoric in Antiquity, translated by W.E. Higgins (Catholic University of America Press, 2005), p. 80
  6. Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Ashgate, 2003), p. 17.
  7. Roger Rees, "Panegyric," in "A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (Blackwell, 2007), p. 140.
  8. Walter, The Warrior Saints, p. 17; Alistair Stewart-Sykes, From Prophecy to Preaching: A Search for the Origins of the Christian Homily (Brill, 2001), p. 75.
  9. John T. Harwood, The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), p. xvii.


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