Introduction

the authors he quotes; he has no critical spirit, and his own investigations are prompted by indiscriminate curiosity. But he has vast stores of miscellaneous knowledge such as might delight the half-educated, and as a rhetorician he possesses a strange and debased brilliance, fired by an astonishing if disorderly imagination. The verve, the humour, and above all the welter of warmth and colour that characterize the Golden Ass also known as the "Metamorphoses," a famous novel about a man who is accidentally transformed into a donkey make us forgive the palpable degradation of the Latin language. Not less remarkable is the Apologia original title: "Pro Se De Magia," a courtroom speech delivered by Apuleius to defend himself against the capital charge of practicing black magic. There are few speeches of antiquity that give such a vivid impression of the character of the author and of the life of the society in which he moved. The style, it is true, is often bombastic and affected, many of the arguments are almost more puerile and absurd than the accusations, while the intense conceit and complacency of the author often make him ridiculous. A man of wide and varied knowledge, he has no depth of intellect. He is always half charlatan, and the reader is rarely free from the impression that he is taking liberties with the uncertain taste and ignorance of his provincial audience. But even the weaknesses of style and argument have their charm for the modern reader. ✓For, if he never entirely fails to laugh with Apuleius, he certainly indulges in many a hearty laugh at him.

The Florida a collection of twenty-four excerpts from Apuleius's public speeches and lectures are no less superficial and bombastic, and the vanity of Apuleius is revealed even more remarkably than in the Apologia. But they are never long enough to be tedious, and contain much that is