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)

These notes, which are conservative more often than they are revolutionary, have originated from some reviews which I have recently written of books on Apuleius. I have found that the only way to preserve any consistency in the format is to open each note by citing the text I should prefer and then following that with a Latin apparatus criticus. The aim of the notes is generally only to shed light on the individual passages, to offer conversion or conviction, but (...) some notes serve the rather larger purpose of bolstering a general view of the editors of Apuleius against some modern misconceptions. (shrink)

What merit should we find in Heliodoros' novel? Towards its end Hydaspes, agonizing over whether to save Charikleia from human sacrifice, sees before him an internal audience stirred by πθη equal to his and ‘weeping through pleasure and pity at Fortune's stage-management’ . This is a popular audience, a demos, evincing a popular reaction, but one which Heliodoros anticipated and doubtless welcomed. Their reaction is characterized by simple, direct emotions and some limited awareness of the larger processes that have been (...) going on in this novel. For them this is a world of τχη and amazement. Does the novel invite any deeper critical reaction than this? (shrink)

These lines, which I cite according to Hill's forthcoming edition, have caused scholars some difficulty of interpretation. Trabibus has generally been taken to refer to battering-rams and thus, for instance, we find in the Delphin edition as an interpretation of trabibusque … loco the words ‘et strepenti ariete loco extrudunt lapides firme constrictos’’. Certainly, if they drive stones from their place with a ram, it is the ram that is the best candidate for the epithet sonorus – a candidature every (...) ω manuscript rejects, except two alleged by Barth. P, however, has et ariete, replacing the rather uninformative adjective artata and providing an explicit noun for sonoro to agree with; and P was followed by the early editors Lindenbrogius and Cruceus. ‘Infeliciter’’, says Barth. Infelicitously indeed: et is deleted by P in the first hand and would not scan; without et the sentence does not construct and the line still does not scan – for the word is ariěte. (shrink)