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 (£20,000). 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 ??????? ? ????, 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.
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 = £40,000), 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.
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.
He was accused of having won the heart of Pudentilla by sorcery, of being a man of immoral life, and of having married his elderly bride solely for the sake of her money. The trial took place at Sabrata (Apol. 59), the modern ZowÂra, lying on the coast some sixty miles west of Oea. The case was tried by the proconsul himself, Claudius Maximus. The date cannot be precisely fixed. But Claudius Maximus was probably proconsul at some time between the years 155-158 a.d. (see note on Apol. 1), at any rate not later than 161 a.d., since Antoninus Pius is mentioned as the reigning princeps (died March 161 a.d.). Apuleius had no difficulty in disposing of the charges brought against him, and incidentally found an opportunity for a flamboyant display of the learning of which he was so proud. He may well on occasion have practised magic: his insatiable curiosity must assuredly have led him to experiment in this direction, and his subsequent reputation confirms these suspicions. But the specific charges of magic on this occasion were frivolous and absurd. In the first portion of the speech Apuleius plays with his accusers, mocking them from the heights of his superior learning. In the second portion, where he defends his marriage with Pudentilla and justifies his dealings with his step-sons, he clears himself in good earnest, nay does more than clear himself. For he unveils in the most merciless fashion the villany of his accusers—the base ingratitude of Pudens, and the unspeakable turpitude of Rufinus.
That Apuleius was acquitted cannot be doubted. His case speaks for itself. But it is noteworthy that we hear of him no more at Oea, where he had resided for three years at the time of the trial. This distressing family quarrel must have caused some bitterness of feeling, and Augustine (Ep. 138. 19) mentions a quarrel with the inhabitants of Oea on the question of the erection of a statue in his honour. These facts may not improbably have led him to seek residence elsewhere. Be this as it may, when we next hear of him he is in Carthage, enjoying the highest renown as philosopher, poet, and rhetorician. It was during this residence at Carthage that he delivered the flamboyant orations of which fragments have been preserved to us in the Florida. A few of these excerpts can be dated. The seventeenth is written during the proconsulate of Scipio Orfitus in 163-164 a.d. The ninth contains a panegyric of the proconsul Severianus, who must have held office some time during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, 161-169 a.d. (see note, p. 236). The sixteenth refers to Aemilianus Strabo, who was consul in 156 a.d. and had not yet become proconsul of Africa. As the interval between holding the consulate and the proconsulate was from ten to thirteen years, this fragment may be dated, if not before 166, at any rate before 169 a.d.
Apuleius won more than mere applause. Carthage decreed a statue in his honour (Florida 16), and conferred on him the chief-priesthood of the province. This office entitled its holder to the first place in the provincial council, and was the highest honour that the province could bestow (Florida 16). Civil office he never held (Augustine, Ep. 138. 19), perhaps never sought. His genius, it may be said with confidence, was far from fitting him for judicial or administrative functions. If we may trust Apollinaris Sidonius (Ep. II. 10. 5), Pudentilla showed herself a model wife by the passionate interest she took in her husband's work. 'Pudentilla was for Apuleius what Marcia was for Hortensius, Terentia for Cicero, Calpurnia for Piso, Rusticiana for Symmachus: these noble women held the lamp while their husbands read and meditated!' It is even possible that she bore him a son, as the second book of the de Platone is dedicated to 'my son Faustinus'. Of his death we know nothing. Testimony as to his appearance is conflicting. His accusers (Apol. 4) charge him with being a 'handsome philosopher'. He replies that his body is worn by the fatigues of study and his hair as tangled as a lump of tow!
His works were astonishingly numerous. Beside those already mentioned there have come down to us two books on the life and philosophy of Plato,[3] a highly rhetorical treatise on the 'Demon of Socrates', and a free translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise 'on the Universe', though Apuleius is regrettably far from making due acknowledgement of his debt to the original. None of these works can be described as interesting, though the treatise on the 'Demon of Socrates' contains some characteristic purple passages.
It would, however, scarcely be an exaggeration to say that more of Apuleius' works have perished than survived. He has told us in the Florida (20) that he has written dialogues, hymns, music, history, and satire. And we have copious references to works from his pen, that, perhaps fortunately, no longer exist. Beside the three poems which survive in the Apologia and a translation of a passage of Menander, preserved in a manuscript once at Beauvais, but now lost (Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min. 4, p. 104), he mentions a hymn to Aesculapius, written both in Latin and Greek (Florida 18), and a panegyric in verse on the virtues of Scipio Orfitus (Florida 17). He wrote also another novel entitled Hermagoras, a collection of famous love-stories of the past, sundry 'histories', a translation of the Phaedo, and numerous scientific works, dealing with problems of mathematics, music, astronomy, medicine, botany, and zoology.
The glory won by Apuleius during his lifetime survived after his death. Augustine knows his works well. He recognizes his importance as a writer, but abhors him as a magician. Apuleius is a thaumaturge against whom the faithful need to be warned. 'The enemies of Christianity,' says Augustine (Ep. 138), 'venture to place Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana on the same or even a higher level than Christ.' But in the same letter he speaks of him as a 'great orator' whose fame still lives among his fellow countrymen of Africa. Above all the Golden Ass has kept his name alive to our own day. Even those who know nothing of the work as a whole, or who would relegate it to obscurity for its occasional gross indecency, know and love the story of Cupid and Psyche, if not in the original at least in many a work of art, and in the pages of La Fontaine, Walter Pater, or William Morris.
As might be expected from one who left so few themes untouched, Apuleius is one of the most superficial of ancient writers. It has been well said of him by M. Paul Monceaux, 'ApulÉe est un de ces esprits encyclopÉdiques, Âpres À la curÉe de toutes les connaissances, qui se rencontrent au commencement et À la fin des civilisations.' For the acquisition of his extraordinary reputation he needed an age and an audience in which learning and literature alike were decadent, though far from forgotten. He has none of the scientific spirit. He does not really understand the authors he quotes; he has no critical spirit, and his own investigations are prompted by indiscriminate curiosity. But he has vast stores of miscellaneous knowledge such as might delight the half-educated, and as a rhetorician he possesses a strange and debased brilliance, fired by an astonishing if disorderly imagination. The verve, the humour, and above all the welter of warmth and colour that characterize the Golden Ass make us forgive the palpable degradation of the Latin language. Not less remarkable is the Apologia. There are few speeches of antiquity that give such a vivid impression of the character of the author and of the life of the society in which he moved. The style, it is true, is often bombastic and affected, many of the arguments are almost more puerile and absurd than the accusations, while the intense conceit and complacency of the author often make him ridiculous. A man of wide and varied knowledge, he has no depth of intellect. He is always half charlatan, and the reader is rarely free from the impression that he is taking liberties with the uncertain taste and ignorance of his provincial audience. But even the weaknesses of style and argument have their charm for the modern reader. For, if he never entirely fails to laugh with Apuleius, he certainly indulges in many a hearty laugh at him.
The Florida are no less superficial and bombastic, and the vanity of Apuleius is revealed even more remarkably than in the Apologia. But they are never long enough to be tedious, and contain much that is amusing, be the humour unconscious or intentional; and even if we can rarely give whole-hearted admiration to the style, we cannot but marvel at its dexterity, while its very bizarrerie is not without its charm.
This is hardly the place for a disquisition upon African Latin. It is sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of Apuleius are its archaism and its extreme floridity. It has been asserted that this strange style is of purely African growth,[4] and that it owes much of its oriental wealth of colour to the Semitic element that must still have formed so large a proportion of the population of Africa. But there seems little really to support this view; it is probable that, allowing for the personal factor, in this case exceptionally important, and the eccentricities to which Apuleius' erudition may have led him, we are confronted with no more than an exaggerated revival of the Asiatic style of oratory. No doubt the seed fell on good ground, but it is impossible to set one's finger on any definitely African element.[5]
The style presents grave difficulties to the translator. The English language will not carry the requisite amount of bombast; the assonances and the puns are generally incapable of reproduction. Even when this allowance has been made, it is in many cases impossible to give anything approximating to a translation in natural English. I can only trust that the English of this translation has not wholly lost the colour to which Apuleius owes so much of his charm. The sacrifice is not so great in these works as it must necessarily be in any English translation of the more exotic and more brilliant-hued Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. But in any case the cooler tints and sobriety of our native language must—even in hands less unskilled than mine—fail to do justice to the fantastic Latin of the original. The vivacity of French coupled with the richness and warmth of Italian would need to be combined to produce anything approaching a really good translation, even of the least fantastic works of Apuleius.
