PREFACE

The present book is an attempt to provide a full critical and explanatory commentary on the Apologia Defense of Apuleius. In spite of the intrinsic interest of the work, it has found no modern commentator. The text and commentary of Hildebrand (1842), though they are far from contributing nothing to our knowledge of Apuleius, are as a whole scarcely satisfactory. Since that date, much work has been done on the text, language, and certain aspects of the subject-matter. But the results of these researches have never been collected or sifted, and many questions of interest have been left untouched. The present commentary endeavours to make good these deficiencies. The text and apparatus criticus notes on variations in manuscripts are based on a fresh collation of F the Laurentian manuscript, the primary source, while all manuscripts anterior to 1469, the date of the appearance of the editio princeps first printed edition, have been carefully examined. This examination, though it has to some extent broken new ground, has only confirmed the prevailing view that all extant manuscripts derive from F. The search has resulted in the discovery of a few readings of interest, but they must all be regarded as the conjectures of scholars of the Renaissance, though not a few of them forestall the emendations of scholars of considerably later date.