Introduction

amusing, be the humour unconscious or intentional; and even if we can rarely give whole-hearted admiration to the style, we cannot but marvel at its dexterity, while its very bizarrerie strangeness or eccentric quality is not without its charm.

This is hardly the place for a disquisition a long or formal speech or writing on a particular subject upon African Latin African Latin: a theory among older scholars that Latin written by North African authors possessed a distinct, "exotic" regional character. It is sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of Apuleius are its archaism the use of old-fashioned or obsolete words and its extreme floridity. It has been asserted that this strange style is of purely African growth,¹ and that it owes much of its oriental wealth of colour to the Semitic element that must still have formed so large a proportion of the population of Africa. But there seems little really to support this view; it is probable that, allowing for the personal factor, in this case exceptionally important, and the eccentricities to which Apuleius' erudition may have led him, we are confronted with no more than an exaggerated revival of the Asiatic style of oratory Asiatic style: a highly ornamental, rhythmic, and emotional style of rhetoric, often contrasted with the plainer "Attic" style. No doubt the seed fell on good ground, but it is impossible to set one's finger on any definitely African element.²

The style presents grave difficulties to the translator. The English language will not carry the requisite amount of bombast high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people; the assonances repetition of vowel sounds and the puns are generally incapable of reproduction. Even when this allowance has been made, it is in many cases impossible to give anything approximating to a trans-

¹ For a vivacious exposition of this view cf. Monceaux, The Africans original: "Les Africains". Paris, 1894.
² See the chapter on Apuleius in Norden's admirable work, Ancient Artistic Prose original: "Die antike Kunstprosa", Leipzig, 1898.