[Transcriber's Note: Out-of-order entries in the endnotes have been corrected.]
THE APOLOGIA AND FLORIDA OF APULEIUS OF MADAURA
TRANSLATED
BY H.E. BUTLER
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE
OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909
HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
PREFACE
For the purposes of this translation I have used Helm's text of the Apologia, and Van der Vliet's text of the Florida. Both texts are published by the firm of Teubner, to whom I am indebted for permission to use their publications as the basis of this work. Divergences from the text are indicated in the footnotes, and I have made a few, perhaps unnecessary, expurgations. For the elucidation of the magical portions of the Apologia I am specially indebted to Abt's commentary (Apologie des Apuleius, Giessen, 1906). I also owe much to the articles on Apuleius in Schanz's Geschichte der roemischen Litteratur, and in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopaedie, and to Hildebrand's commentary on the works of Apuleius (Leipzig, 1842).
H.E. BUTLER.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
THE APOLOGIA 19
THE FLORIDA 159
NOTES ON THE APOLOGIA 219
NOTES ON THE FLORIDA 235
INTRODUCTION
Our authorities for the life of Apuleius are in the main the Apologia, the Florida, and the last book of the Metamorphoses. He has a passion for taking his audience into his confidence, and as a result it is not hard to reconstruct a considerable portion of his life. He was a native of Madaura, the modern Mdaurusch, a Numidian town loftily situated above the valley of the Medjerda. The town was a flourishing Roman colony (Apol. 24), and the family of Apuleius was among the wealthiest and most important of the town. His father attained to the position of duumvir, the highest municipal office (Apol. loc. cit.), and left his son the considerable fortune of 2,000,000 sesterces (L20,000). As to the date of Apuleius' birth there is some uncertainty. But as he was the fellow student (Florida 16) at Rome of Aemilianus Strabo (consul 156 A.D.), and was considerably younger than his wife Pudentilla, whom he married about 155 A.D., when she had 'barely passed the age of forty' (Apol. 89), the estimate which places his birth about 125 A.D. cannot be far wrong. His name is generally given as Lucius Apuleius, though the only authority for the praenomen is the evidence of late MSS., and it is not improbable that the origin of the name is to be found in the curious identification of himself with Lucius, the hero of the Metamorphoses (xi. 27). At an early age the young Apuleius was sent to school at Carthage (Florida 18), whence on attaining to manhood he proceeded to complete his education at Athens (Florida loc. cit.). There he studied philosophy, rhetoric, geometry, music, and poetry (Florida 20), and laid the foundations of that encyclopaedic, if superficial knowledge, which in after years he so delighted to parade. On leaving Athens he set forth on lengthy travels, in the course of which he spent a large portion of his patrimony (Apol. 23). He speaks of the temple of Hera at Samos as an eyewitness (Florida 15), and elsewhere mentions a visit to Hierapolis in Phrygia (de mundo 17). Returning from the East he came to Corinth, where--if we may accept his identification of himself with the Lucius of the Metamorphoses--he fell into the clutches of the priests of Isis, who played upon his emotional and superstitious temperament to their hearts' content. He was first initiated into the mysteries of Isis (Metamorph. xi. 23, 24). A few days after this auspicious event the goddess appeared to him in a vision and bade him set forth homewards. He therefore took ship for Rome, where for the space of a year he dwelt, a fervent worshipper at the temple of Isis on the Campus Martius. Once more visions of the night began to afflict him; he consulted the priests and discovered the cause; he required yet to be initiated into the mysteries of Osiris. The priests of Corinth had worked upon his credulity to such good effect, that he found himself in serious financial difficulties, but by practising as a lawyer he succeeded in making a sufficient income to provide more than adequately for the expenses of this fresh initiation (Metamorph. xi. 28, 30). While at Rome he made the acquaintance of Aemilianus Strabo and Scipio Orfitus, men of distinguished position, whom he was to meet again when their official career brought them to Africa as proconsuls of that province (Florida 16, 17).
At last he returned home, and it was probably at this period of his career that he wrote his famous novel, the Metamorphoses or Golden Ass.[1] It is based on the lost work of a certain Lucius of Patras, of which we have another version in the [Greek: Loukios e onos], falsely attributed to Lucian. He enlarged the original by the free insertion of sensational or humorous stories of the kind popularized later by the Decameron of Boccaccio, above all by the insertion of the beautiful fairy-tale of Cupid and Psyche. And then at the end comes the curious personal note, where Lucius, a Greek at the outset of the romance, becomes strangely transformed into a native of Madaura.
[Footnote 1: See Introd. to my translation of Metamorphoses.]
But he did not settle down in his native town. After a time he visited Alexandria, and it was in the course of his return from the capital of Egypt that the crisis in his life occurred, to which we owe that remarkable human document, the Apologia. For on his homeward journey he fell sick at Oea, the modern Tripoli.[2] In this town there dwelt a wealthy lady, named Aemilia Pudentilla, the widow of Sicinius Amicus, by whom she had two sons, Sicinius Pontianus and his younger brother, Sicinius Pudens. Pontianus was already the friend of Apuleius; he had made his acquaintance at Athens; an intimacy had sprung up between them, and they had lived together in the same lodgings. Hearing, therefore, of Apuleius' sickness, he called on him at the house of their mutual friends the Appii, where he was lodging. The reasons for Pontianus' visit were somewhat remarkable. His grandfather had been anxious that Pudentilla should take a second husband in the person of his son and her brother-in-law, Sicinius Clarus, and with this end in view threatened to exclude her sons, whose guardian he was, from the possession of any of their father's property, if she married elsewhere. She therefore suffered herself to be betrothed to Sicinius Clarus, 'a boorish and decrepit old man,' but put off the marriage, until her father-in-law's death released her from all embarrassment. Pontianus and Pudens succeeded to the property, and Pudentilla felt herself free to take a husband of her own choice. She informed her sons of her intentions. Pontianus approved, but since the property left to himself and Pudens by their grandfather was small, and all his expectations of wealth depended on the ultimate inheritance of his mother's fortune (4,000,000 sesterces = L40,000), he was most anxious that his mother should marry an honest man who might reasonably be expected to treat his step-sons fairly. At this point, in the very nick of time, Apuleius was detained at Oea. Pontianus saw in him a heaven-sent step-father, and it was with this in his mind that he called upon Apuleius. He did not declare his intentions at once. He contented himself at first with dissuading Apuleius from pursuing his journey homeward till the next winter came round, and persuaded him to come and stay in his mother's house. Apuleius accepted his offer and their old intimacy revived. At last a suitable occasion offered for the declaration of Pontianus' wishes. Apuleius had given a public lecture at Oea. His audience broke into frenzied applause and begged Apuleius to become a citizen of their town.
[Footnote 2: See Apol. 68 sqq.]
When the audience were gone, Pontianus took Apuleius aside and, saying that the popular enthusiasm was a sign from heaven, begged Apuleius to marry Pudentilla. After much deliberation Apuleius consented, though the lady was neither fair to view nor young. She had been a widow for more than thirteen years, and was now over forty. Soon, however, he began to love Pudentilla for her own sake; her virtues and intelligence won his heart and overcame his desire for further travel. The marriage was duly solemnized. But it brought Apuleius no peace. Sicinius Aemilianus, another brother of her first husband, and Herennius Rufinus, the disreputable father-in-law of Pontianus, were both up in arms. Rufinus had hoped, through his son-in-law, to reap a rich harvest from Pudentilla's fortune; Aemilianus resented the treatment of his brother, Sicinius Clarus. They sought, therefore, how they might have their revenge. Their first step was to win Pontianus and Pudens to their side. This they succeeded in doing, in spite of the generous treatment accorded by Apuleius to his step-sons. Pontianus fell sick and died before they could carry out their designs. He had, moreover, repented of his baseness to his former friend, though death prevented him from showing what his repentance was worth. Pudens, however, was completely under the thumb of Aemilianus and Rufinus, and a number of more or less serious charges were brought against Apuleius in his name.