Socrates (469-399 BC) is one of history's most enigmatic figures. Our knowledge of him comes to us second-hand, primarily from the philosopher Plato, who was Socrates' most gifted student, and from the historian and sometime-philosopher Xenophon, who counted himself as a member of Socrates' inner circle of friends. We also hear of Socrates in one comic play produced during his lifetime (Aristophanes' Clouds) and in passing from the philosopher Aristotle, a student of Plato. Socrates is a figure of enduring interest. (...) He is often considered the father of Western Philosophy, yet the four most famous accounts we have of him present a contradictory, confusing picture. Just who was Socrates? A brilliant philosopher, at times confounding and infuriating, morally serious and yet ironic; the ever-worldly man, sometime mystic, and uncommon martyr depicted by Plato? Or did Plato conflate Socrates' views with his own startling genius, as Aristotle suggests? Was So rates instead the less impressive, more mundane man whose commonsense impressed the laconic Xenophon? Or was Socrates the charlatan, the long-winded phony of Aristophanes' play? The Socratic works of Diogenes Laertius (3rd century AD), Libanius (AD 314 -- c. 393), Maximus of 'Tyre (2nd century AD), and Apuleius (born c. AD 125) add important dimensions to the portrait of Socrates: Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates emphasizes Socrates' deep ethical nature and his extraordinary personality; Libanius' Apology of Socrates is based on sources now lost to us; Maximus of Tyre's Whether Socrates Did the Right Thing When He Did Not Defend Himself makes the star ling claim (against testimony of Plato and Xenophon) that Socrates never spoke athis own trial; from Apuleius' On the God of Socrates we hear at length of Socrates' infamous daimonion: the "divine sign" only mentioned elsewhere, the sign that warned Socrates against certain courses of action. In short, from these four texts we are reintroduced to Socrates, and new wrinkles are added to an already intriguing historical figure. (shrink)

Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche, the relationship of the human Soul with divine Love, is one of the great allegories of world literature. It forms an integral part of and profoundly illuminates the message of his novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, which relates the adventures of a young man and his spiritual fall and redemption. To enrich and deepen his basic plot, the origins of which are obscure, Apuleius has combined poetic sources, Platonic philosophy and popular (...) iconography in an unprecedented tour de force of literary creation. This edition sensitively elucidates the subtle art with which this transformation has been accomplished, and comprehensively illustrates both Apuleius' inventive handling of his various models and sources and the exuberant and idiosyncratic Latinity with forms the vehicle for it. It places in a fresh light the results of recent work on the ancient Novel and on Apuleius himself, and offers a stimulating, occasionally provocative, reading of his much-discussed text. The Latin is accompanied by a facing English translation, making the edition more accessible to students of comparative literature as well as to classicists. (shrink)

Apuleius of Madauros, writing in the latter half of the second century CE in Roman North Africa, is best known to us today for his Latin fiction, the Metamorphoses aka The Golden Ass, about a man who turned into a donkey and back again. However, he was also a Platonic philosopher, who, even though many of his writings are lost, wrote a range of rhetorical and philosophical works which survive to this day. This book examines these works to reveal (...) how Apuleius' Platonism is a result of his 'impersonation of philosophy', that is, a rhetorically powerful methodological tool that allows him to 'speak' on behalf of Plato and his philosophy. This book is the first exploration of the full scope of his idiosyncratic brand of Platonism across his multifarious literary corpus and is a major contribution to the study of the dynamic between literature and philosophy in antiquity and beyond. (shrink)

Imperial Plato presents new translations of three introductions to Plato's thought from the second half of the second century CE: the Introduction to Plato by Albinus of Smyrna, Dissertation 11 of Maximus of Tyre, and On Plato and his Teaching by Apuleius of Madaurus. These three presentations of Plato's ideas--one a Greek dialectic introduction with a suggested reading order for Plato's dialogues, another a Greek speech in the sophistic style of the time, and one a lengthy doxological study in (...) Latin--are examples by three distinct authors using divergent methods of the assorted ways in which Plato and Platonism were understood and discussed during the revival of Hellenism and Greek Philosophy, and the period of the Roman Empire often referred to as the Second Sophistic. (shrink)

Loewe drew attention to the fact that Apuleius is one of the authors drawn upon by the compiler of the Glossary that has come to be known as ‘Abolita’; and Professor Lindsay in his article on this Glossary gives as examples of Apuleius glosses three short batches from the CA-, the CI-, and the CO- sections. These batches are respectively as follows: C.G.L. IV. p. 29, 33 = Met. 7, 12 or 8, 13: 34 = Met. 9, 16: (...) 35 = Met. 11, 16. (shrink)

The note presents the discovery of a spurious Apuleian work entitled De fato from MS n° 1040 at the Bibliothèque patrimoniale Villon in Rouen. This work is, in fact, a series of excerpts from Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis Book 1.

Apuleius’ tale of Cupid and Psyche is shown to feature detailed knowledge of ancient magic integrated into the plot, especially the magic of the so-called ‘Sword of Dardanus’ spell and of other papyri with Middle Platonic content. A recently published gemstone from Perugia testifies to the wide distribution of the ‘Sword’. Apuleius’ allusion to the erotic spell involves both Cupid and Venus torturing Psyche. Although Venus’ intentions are to prevent the bond between the lovers, her actions inadvertently echo (...) those depicted in the ‘Sword’ and contribute to the couple's eternal union. Ancient magic is therefore shown to be potent and effective, despite Venus’ plans. This is a methodology Apuleius is known to use widely, for example in his obvious allusions to, and adaptations of, Hellenistic poetry in the story. Magic joins poetry and philosophy as a category of texts shown to be playfully integrated into Apuleius’ construction of the plot of Cupid and Psyche. (shrink)

This book provides the first general account of the works of the Latin writer Apuleius, most famous for his great novel the `Metamorphoses' or `Golden Ass'. Living in second-century North Africa, Apuleius was more than an author; he was an orator and professional intellectual, Platonist philosopher, extraordinary stylist, relentless self-promoter, as well as a versatile author of a remarkably diverse body of other work, much of which is lost to us.

Apuleius’ generation was caught in the passage from philosophic monotheism to that form of imperial henotheism whose aim was to counteract the tension between philosophy and popular religiosity. It can be affirmed that terminology, vocabulary and especially the motive of discreetness and the prudence in the use of defining syntagmatic expressions are a common fact of Medioplatonism. Author’s attitude is that of a philosopher resorting to the mystic cults, plainly aware of their value and, not the last of the (...) things, of the worship responsibilities devolving on a deliberate attachment. The prudence characterizing the discourse on the ineffable nature of the divinity dwells rather on the meaning and requirement of Platonic mysteries, as they were translated and interpreted by Medioplatonism, in its semi-literal manner, current that Apuleius joined on a base of a certain familiarity from a stylistic and thematic point of view. (shrink)

These rhetorical texts by Apuleius, second-century Latin writer and author of the famous novel Metamorphoses or Golden Ass, have not been translated into English since 1909. They are some of the very few Latin speeches surviving from their century, and constitute important evidence for Latin and Roman North African social and intellectual culture in the second century AD, a period where there is increasing interest amongst classicists and ancient historians. They are the work of a talented writer who is (...) being increasingly viewed as the major literary artist of his time in Latin. (shrink)

Anyone who wants to understand the very considerable art which Apuleius displays in narrating the stories of the Metamorphoses must naturally first describe the various modes of narration which he employs. Such description can scarcely be photographic: it requires its own language of categories and concepts – a language which Apuleius might, or might not, have understood. A valuable modern addition to the vocabulary has been the concept of ‘Point of View’: this concept is used to categorize modes (...) of narration according to the relationship which they set up between reader, narrator and the narrated. The narrator may be more or less involved in the events he narrates; he may know everything about them, or very little; he may relate them as present or as past. The reader may be told much or little of what the narrator knows; he may be made to view the story from the point of view of the narrator, of one of the characters, or even, I suppose, ‘objectively’. This whole sort of categorization has been dear to many authors and critics of this century, but has only recently been taken up by critics of the ancient novels: Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles 1971 ; Petronius 1973 ; Apuleius 1972 , 1978. (shrink)

nec iuvenis sororis suae mortem tam miseram et quae minime par erat inlatam aequo tolerare quivit animo, sed … exin flagrantissimis febribus ardebat, ut ipsi quoque iam medela videretur esse necessaria. This is the text of the passage describing the reaction of the young man at the news that his beloved sister has been murdered flagris and titione candenti inter media femina detruso as it is transmitted by the Florentine MS. With the few exceptions which I discuss below, the vast (...) majority of editors accept the text of F, betraying resignation before a paradosis that can hardly seem genuine, since it can be maintained only by forcing both word order and syntax. Editors either refer quae to mortem, assuming an ellipsis of ei in the relative clause and taking par as ‘fitting’, or refer quae to soror, assuming an ellipsis of in eam and taking par as equivalent to digna. (shrink)

Apuleius tells us of his own popularity as a writer, and yet both the literary and the material records are silent about his works for almost one hundred and fifty years after his death. Various attempts to identify allusions to his works before Lactantius and other fourth-century authors have proven unconvincing. This article suggests that there is a clear allusion to theMetamorphosesin Tertullian's treatiseAduersus Valentinianos(beginning of the third century). Tertullian uses Apuleius to denigrate the Valentinians and to assimilate (...) the name of one of their gods to the braying of an ass. (shrink)

Peter Lombard lamented the abandonment of Augustine’s position affirming the materiality of demons and the demonic body, since by his time (some 700 years after Augustine), under the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius, it was generally agreed within the Christian tradition that demons (and angels) are intelligible, disembodied substances. The principles that the cosmos is spatially and materially divided and stratified and that demons share ontologically in the nature of the part that they inhabit allowed figures such as Apuleius, Porphyry, (...) and Augustine to account for various aspects of demonic nature and activity that seemed to follow from reason, revelation, and practical experience. The material body of the demon and its relation to the pneuma, or vehicle of the soul, is often invoked to explain demonic agency and the extent of demonic knowledge and to distinguish between evil and good demons (or angels). The following paper weighs in on and clarifies Augustine’s demonic ontology. Although scholars generally recognise Augustine’s position maintaining that demons possess aerial bodies, nevertheless, the ambiguity surrounding Augustine’s opinion, attested to even by Peter Lombard, is overlooked, and Augustine’s conviction is often taken for granted and supported by citing the prominent City of God, the very work in which Augustine’s own views are suspect. This paper provides support to the assessment of Augustine’s doctrine of the demonic body by examining his cosmology, particularly his spatial and elemental division of the cosmos, and exhibits his adherence to the spatio-material principle according to which a creature’s bodily constitution is cognate with the elemental composition of the physical stratum of the cosmos in which they dwell. The paper concludes by indicating how Augustine’s explanations of demonic agency, far from being ambiguous on the nature of the demonic body, are in fact premised on their aerial corporeality, thereby demonstrating more definitively his conviction that demons possess material bodies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an alternative explanation to the notorious similitude detected in two ancient treatises on logic, namely, the Liber Peri Hermeneias, attributed to Apuleius of Madaura, and De syllogismo categorico, written by Boethius. Both were enormously authoritative in posterity. I argue that their similitude is due to the presence of an internal division of categorical propositions that Boethius gives in full in his De syllogismo categoricos, and repeats with extensions in his Introductio ad (...) syllogismos categorico. The division outlines the three main parts of the theory: opposition, conversion and syllogism. This leads us to argue that similarity and correspondence of these two ancient logical treatises can be sufficiently explained from this resource, and insufficiently explained by a certain common literary source, which was proposed by Isaac, without clarifying some important dissimilarities and divergences contained in these treatises. Also, our hypothesis does not need to suppose, as Sullivan, that Boethius borrowed from Apuleius. (shrink)

quaeras forsitan satis anxie, studiose lector, quid deinde dictum, quid factum. dicerem, si dicere liceret; cognosceres, si liceret audire. sed parem noxam contraherent et aures et lingua[e] illae temerariae curiositatis. In spite of the reader's curiosity, the narrator will not break the secrecy of Isis’ mysteries. Precisely an act of curiositas had brought about Lucius’ transformation into an ass; at the end of the novel he demonstrates that he has learnt his lesson.

The most authoritative testimony for the text of Apuleius’ defence-speech known as Apologia or Pro Se De Magia is a Cassinese MS indicated with the siglum F, written under the abbotship of Desiderius in a mature Beneventan script, which also preserves the text of the Metamorphoses and the Florida. The text that F preserves is unsurprisingly not flawless, and in this note I argue for the presence of a corruption affecting aut in Apol. 47.1. For the sake of clarity, (...) I provide the passage from Apol. 46.6 to 47.2 below. (shrink)

A New Work by Apuleius presents what may be the first lengthy Latin text from antiquity to be published in almost a century. The volume reveals that this new work is in fact the lost third book of Apuleius' De Platone et eius dogmate, and provides the key to understanding Apuleius' use and interpretation of Plato.

Considering the absence of any ancient systematic approach to the reading of the novel, this paper turns to ancient dream hermeneutics as a valuable field of reference that can provide the theoretical framework for studying the ancient novel within its own cultural context. In introducing dream interpretation as one of the ancient novel's creative sources, this essay focuses on Apuleius' Metamorphoses. It explores the dream logic in Apuleius' novel by turning to such authorities as Heraclitus, Plato, Cicero, Artemidorus, (...) and Macrobius, whose characterization of the phenomenon of dreaming sheds light on specific narratological trtaits of the Metamorphoses. It argues that the lower dream category, the insomnium , provides a notion of textuality that can clarify the traditional status of the Metamorphoses as a marginal work of art. In contrast to divinely sent symbolic dreams, it is primarily the insomnium—conceived as a by-product of the lower functions of the soul—that lends psychological force to Apuleius' fiction. (shrink)

Justin Stover has recently edited a collection of Platonic placita, organized by individual dialogue, which he identifies as the lost third book of Apuleius’ De Platone. The work is preserved only in a thirteenth-century manuscript, Vatican BAV Reg. lat. 1572. The manuscript is filled with trivial errors, including a large number of one-word or two-word lacunae. Stover has worked ably to clean up the text and many of his emendations are uncontroversial. But any editio princeps is likely to be (...) susceptible of improvement. I offer here some notes on a few points where I think either the text or Stover's translation and commentary can be bettered. I am not primarily concerned here with the ascription to Apuleius, although one or two points may have some relevance to this question. (shrink)

The publication of a new text on ancient philosophy tends to be an exciting event, but there can be years between discovery and availability. This is an extreme case. Raymond Klibansky discovered the text in 1949 and transcribed it, making it available to friends who were under an obligation not to anticipate his publication of it—which failed to happen. It contains summaries, of very different lengths, of the doctrinal content of thirteen Platonic dialogues. I saw the transcription of this so-called (...) Epitome, or Compendiosa Expositio as it may be more accurately called, in 1998, and have done so subsequently. Yet, without much indication of date, its use would be limited. Found in an Apuleius manuscript, it... (shrink)