In Truly Beyond Wonders Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis investigates texts and material evidence associated with healing pilgrimage in the Roman empire during the second century AD. Her focus is upon one particular pilgrim, the famous orator Aelius Aristides, whose Sacred Tales, his fascinating account of dream visions, gruelling physical treatments, and sacred journeys, has been largely misunderstood and marginalized. Petsalis-Diomidis rehabilitates this text by placing it within the material context of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon, where the author spent two years in search of healing. The architecture, votive offerings, and ritual rules which governed the behaviour of pilgrims are used to build a picture of the experience of pilgrimage to this sanctuary. Truly Beyond Wonders ranges broadly over discourses of the body and travel and in so doing explores the place of healing pilgrimage and religion in Graeco-Roman society and culture. It is generously illustrated with more than 80 drawings and photographs, and four colour plates.

How have two-dimensional images of ancient Greek vases shaped modern perceptions of these artefacts and of the classical past? This is the first scholarly volume devoted to the exploration of drawings, prints, and photographs of Greek vases in modernity. Case studies of the seventeenth to the twentieth century foreground ways that artists have depicted Greek vases in a range of styles and contexts within and beyond academia. Questions addressed include: how do these images translate three-dimensional ancient utilitarian objects with iconography central to the tradition of Western painting and decorative arts into two-dimensional graphic images carrying aesthetic and epistemic value? How does the embodied practice of drawing enable people to engage with Greek vases differently from museum viewers, and what insights does it offer on ancient producers and users? And how did the invention of photography impact the tradition of drawing Greek vases? The volume addresses art historians of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, archaeologists and classical reception scholars.