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

APULEIUS
return to Carthage. The few evidences of dating are confined to the 160s, and
the snatches of civic addresses to Roman officials, references to tenure of the
chief priesthood and to honorific statues, and the pungent odour of complacent
self-satisfaction reveal him as the province's social lion of that decade. The
passages have a homogeneity in that each is part of a personal exordium
prefacing a speech or lecture, the content being polite philosophy for everyman.
Apuleius makes his public appearances as the African Plutarch, discoursing
now on the life-style of Hippias or Crates, now on the voyages of Pythagoras
or the gymnosophists of India.
II
The extant philosophical works traditionally attributed to Apuleius are De
deo Socratis, De Platone et eius dogmate, De mundo, TTepl fepiiTivefas, and
Asclepius. The authenticity of the first is generally accepted, though the praefatio
is now assigned to the Florida. Scholars have been divided about the second
and third because of their less exuberant style, but this may be explicable not
only by an earlier date but also by the likelihood that the De deo Socratis was
declaimed whereas the other two were written with no epideictic intent for
a reading public. The content and attitudes revealed in the works encourage
attribution of them to Apuleius, as does identification of the author by the
manuscripts and by Augustine. The TTepl Ipunveicxs (' On interpretation') has
less well authenticated claims, for it appears in a separate manuscript-tradition,
and is more jejune in content; it cannot however be dismissed out of hand as
non-Apuleian. The Asclepius is a Latin translation by an unknown hand of a
lost Greek hermetic work. This brief survey of Apuleius' importance as philosopher
concentrates on the first three of the five treatises.
De deo Socratis ('On Socrates' god') is a thoroughly misleading title, for
Apuleius' primary concern is to preach the existence of demons in general; the
treatise has immense importance in the history of ideas as the most systematic
exposition of the subject from the ancient world. With admirable clarity of
structure the first section surveys the separated worlds of gods (visible stars
and invisible members of the Pantheon) and of men; the second part describes
the place of demons in the hierarchy of rational beings as intermediaries between
the two. After outlining their role and nature, Apuleius assigns them into three
classes. The first are souls within human bodies. The second have quitted
human shape to become Lemures, Lares, Larvae, Manes. The third are wholly
free of bodily connexions, being endowed with special powers and allotted
specific duties. Somnus and Amor are offered as examples, the second being of
particular interest to the student of the Metamorphoses. The nature of Socrates'
demon forms the final section; Apuleius labels it deus because this is the word
familiar to his readers from Cicero and Ovid. The protreptic conclusion
776
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008