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Life-Change and ‘Conversion’ in Antiquity: An Analysis of the Testimonies of Dion of Prousa and Aelius Aristeides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2020

Katherine Moignard
Katherine Moignard*
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[email protected]
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Abstract

Our image of ‘conversion’ takes its form from well-known episodes in the lives of St Paul and St Augustine. Paul's life is turned around by a blinding vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus (Act. Ap. 9.1–22); Augustine is directed by an oracle to a scriptural passage that ends his hesitations and sets him on the course that he has long known he should take (August. Conf. 8.12). Very much in parallel, although in a non-Christian context, are crisis-provoked life-changes reported by the Second Sophistic orators Dion of Prousa and Aelius Aristeides. Aristeides finds his life transformed by the intervention of the god Asklepios; Dion receives – he claims, from a god – advice that, put into effect, makes him the philosopher he has aspired to be. Were Dion and Aristeides ‘converts’? Adopting a conservative definition of ‘conversion’, I will argue that their accounts – though not autobiographies in the strict sense of that term – can legitimately be called ‘conversion narratives’. I will then test each for its goodness-of-fit to two influential life-change models, the first developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner in the context of initiation rituals, and the second, Lewis Rambo's process model of conversion.

Keywords

conversionliminalityautobiographyDio ChrysostomAelius Aristidesvan GennepRamboSecond Sophistic
Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 54 , 2020 , pp. 164 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © The Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2020

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