Aretology

An aretology (from ancient Greek aretê, "excellence, virtue") in the strictest sense is a narrative about a divine figure's miraculous deeds. In the Greco-Roman world, aretologies represent a religious branch of rhetoric and are a prose development of the hymn as praise poetry. Asclepius, Isis, and Serapis are among the deities with surviving aretologies in the form of inscriptions and papyri. The Greek aretologos (ἀρετολόγος, "virtue-speaker") was a temple official who recounted aretologies, and who might also interpret dreams.