Aristidea IV: esplorazioni sulla tradizione indiretta dei Discorsi sacri

The article aims to explore the indirect tradition of Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales. The investigation shows that although the work circulated in schools of rhetoric and was widely read in the late antique and Byzantine period, it was nevertheless little quoted: quotations of it can be found only in Philostratus, Sopater, Thomas Magister—the most significant account—and Nicephorus Gregoras. Such quotations offer almost no readings that are not already known from the direct tradition, so they are of little value for the constitutio textus of the Sacred Tales; in any case, they are of some interest, because, in addition to allowing us to reconstruct new stages of the circulation of the Aristidean text, they bear few conjectures.