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Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

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42<br />

APULEIUS<br />

Apuleius (no praenomen is attested) was born at Madauros (Mdaurusch in<br />

Algeria) in the middle izos A.D., the son of a wealthy duumvir. His Apology<br />

sketches the main lines of his earlier career. Having studied locally at Carthage<br />

under the grammaticus <strong>and</strong> rhetor <strong>and</strong> having developed philosophical interests<br />

there, he continued his researches for some years at Athens <strong>and</strong> spent a period<br />

in Rome. By the time of his chance arrival at Oea (Tripoli) in 15 5—6, he was<br />

a literary celebrity. His marriage there to Pudentilla, a wealthy widow, led<br />

to indictment on a charge of magic. After acquittal he resided in Carthage, his<br />

life as sophist <strong>and</strong> leading dignitary being documented in his Florida. Nothing<br />

is known of any activities after about A.D. 170.<br />

In the history of Latin literature Apuleius has two main claims to attention.<br />

As a philosopher without original genius he is important for his transmission<br />

of the ideas of Middle Platonism, <strong>and</strong> as a writer of fiction he is the author of<br />

the Metamorphoses (' Transformations'), the one Latin romance to have survived<br />

complete from the classical period. These contributions have traditionally<br />

been studied in isolation from each other, to the impoverishment of criticism<br />

of the Metamorphoses. The student of the novel cannot adequately assess its<br />

nature <strong>and</strong> purpose without prior investigation of its author's leading attitudes<br />

<strong>and</strong> preoccupations.<br />

Everything that the man touches reflects the curiosity of the scientist or the<br />

enthusiasm of the philosophical litterateur. Practical treatises on trees, agriculture,<br />

medicines; a long compilation in Greek on natural history (Quaestiones<br />

naturales); educational works on astronomy, music, arithmetic, as well<br />

as a disquisition on proverbs; light verses after the manner of Catullus of both<br />

a risque <strong>and</strong> a satirical kind; symposium-literature in the manner of Gellius or<br />

Athenaeus; in the sphere of fiction, in addition to the Metamorphoses a second<br />

romance Hermagoras, an anthology of love-anecdotes, not to mention a<br />

mysterious Epitome historiarum — no one seriously regrets the loss of much of<br />

this, but the catalogue indicates the author's phenomenal intellectual energy.<br />

Yet his main concerns lay beyond these enthusiasms. Philosophy was his<br />

major love; in addition to his surviving volumes he composed a De re publica,<br />

774<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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