Defense

original: "Apologia" — This is the title of the speech Apuleius delivered in his own defense against charges of magic.

It would be a matter of envy if I, who from my earliest years to the present moment have devoted myself with all my powers to the sole study of literature and for this spurned all other pleasures, had sought to win eloquence Eloquence The art of persuasive and powerful speaking, which was a vital skill for public figures and lawyers in the Roman world. to be mine with toil such as few or none have ever expended, ceasing neither night nor day, to the neglect and impairment of my bodily health.

But my opponents need fear nothing from my eloquence. If I have made any real advance therein, it is my aspirations rather than my attainments on which I must base my claim. Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius Caecilius A famous Roman comic poet of the 2nd century BCE; though most of his work is lost, he was highly regarded by later authors like Cicero. be true, that "innocence is eloquence itself," to that extent I may lay claim to eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on that assumption what living man could be more eloquent than myself?

I have never even harboured in my thoughts anything to which I should fear to give utterance. Nay, my eloquence is consummate, for I have ever held all sin in abomination; I have the highest oratory The formal practice of public speaking; Apuleius is arguing that his moral purity makes him a naturally great speaker. at my command, for I have uttered no word, I have done no deed, of which I need fear to discourse in public. I will begin therefore to discourse of those verses of mine, which they have produced as though they were something of which I ought to be ashamed. You must have noticed the laughter with which I showed my annoyance at the absurd and illiterate manner in which they recited them.

6. They began by reading one of my playful trifles original: "jeux d'esprit" — literally "plays of spirit," referring to lighthearted, witty literary works., a brief letter in verse, addressed to a certain Cal- The text likely refers to Calpurnianus, one of his accusers.