Aelius Aristides (AD 117 - 181) was a popular Greek orator, who lived during the Roman Empire. He is considered to be a prime example of the Second Sophistic, a group of showpiece orators who flourished from the reign of Nero until ca. 230 AD. His surname was Theodorus. He showed extraordinary talents even in his early youth, and devoted himself with remarkable zeal to the study of rhetoric, which appeared to him the worthiest occupation of a man, and along with it he cultivated poetry as an amusement. Besides the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, whom he heard at Athens, he also received instructions from Aristocles at Pergamum, from Polemon at Smyrna, and from the grammarian Alexander of Cotiaeum.