The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura tr by HE Butler (1909).pdf

THE APOLOGIA AND FLORIDA

OF APULEIUS OF MADAURA

TRANSLATED

By H. E. BUTLER

FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK

TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

PREFACE

FOR the purposes of this translation I have

used Helm's text of the Apologia, and Van der

liet's text of the lorida. B o t h texts are

published by the irm of Teubner, to whom

I am indebted for permission to use their

publications as the basis of this work. Diver

gences from the text are indicated in the foot

notes, and I have made a few, perhaps un

necessary, expurgations. For the elucidation

of the magical portions of the Apologia I am

specially indebted to Abt's commentary (Apologi �

des Apuleius, Giessen, 1906). I also owe much

to the articles on Apuleius in Schanz's Geschichte

der romischen Litteratur, and in Pauly-Wissowa's

Real-Encyclopidie, and to Hildebrand's com

mentary on the works of Apuleius (Leipzig,

184z).

H. E. BUTLER.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION

1 9

1 5 9

219

THE ApOLOGIA

THE FLORIDA .

NOTES ON THE ApOLOGIA

2 35

NOTES ON THE FLORIDA .

INTRODUCTION

OUR authorities for the life of A � us 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 conidence, 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 lourishing 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 oice (Apol. loco 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 uncer

tainty. 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 identiication of himself with Lucius, the

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