THE DEFENSE

original: "Apologia"; this is Apuleius's famous legal speech delivered to defend himself against charges of using magic to win a wealthy wife.

1. For my part, Maximus Claudius Claudius Maximus was the Roman Proconsul of Africa and the presiding judge of this trial, and you, gentle-
men who sit beside him on the bench, I regarded it
as a foregone conclusion that Sicinius Aemilianus Apuleius’s accuser and the brother of his late father-in-law
would for sheer lack of any real ground for accusation
cram his indictment with mere vulgar abuse; for the
old rascal is notorious for his unscrupulous audacity,
and, further, launched forth on his task of bringing
me to trial in your court before he had given a thought
to the line his prosecution should pursue. Now
while the most innocent of men may be the victim
of false accusation, only the criminal can have his
guilt brought home to him. It is this thought that
gives me special confidence, but I have further ground
for self-congratulation in the fact that I have you for
my judge on an occasion when it is my privilege to
have the opportunity of clearing philosophy In the 2nd century, "philosophy" often included the study of nature, which many uneducated people confused with sorcery of the
aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of
proving my own innocence. Nevertheless these false
charges are on the face of them serious enough, and
the suddenness with which they have been improvised
makes them the more difficult to refute. For you
will remember that it is only four or five days since
his advocates of malice prepense a legal term for premeditated or intentional harm attacked me with
slanderous accusations, and began to charge me with
practice of the black art the practice of magic or sorcery, a capital offense under Roman law and with the murder of my