One of the less known but by no means of the less voluminous or peculiar among the Greek writers of the imperial age was Publius Aelius Aristides of the second century, Roman citizen, Greek landowner and rhetorician, and unique in surviving literature as a nervous hypochondriac and lifelong devotee of Asclepius. The details of his career, as recorded in his own writings and in Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists, have been conveniently set forth with full references by André Boulanger in his exhaustive, but very readable, study, Aelius Aristide. Only the framework can be indicated here, to be filled in at certain points with the extraordinary experiences which befell Aristides after illness had altered the course of his life. These are described at length and in great confusion in his Hieroi Logoi, written to glorify Asclepius, which perhaps they do; of Aristides they give a picture which deserves greater fame than it enjoys. Their testimony is of particular value because they have not been selected and edited by an interested priesthood, but are the remnants of a collection which bears all the marks of individual sincerity and private eccentricity.

Aristides was born in A.D. 118 on his family's estate at Laneum in Mysia, near Hadrianutherae. His father Eudaemon, who died in his childhood, was a philosopher and priest of Zeus, and evidently a man of wealth and refinement. As a boy he was sent to study under the famous grammaticus, Alexander of Cotiaeum, who was later tutor to Marcus Aurelius, and by him instructed most thoroughly in the poets, orators, historians, and philosophers.