INTRODUCTION

Apuleius' birth there is some uncertainty. But he was more or less a contemporary of Aemilianus Strabo, whom he claims as a fellow student.¹ Now Aemilianus Strabo was consul suffectus a substitute consul in A. D. 156,² and is not likely to have been consul before the age of 33.³ This places the birth of Apuleius as, at the most, a few years later than A. D. 123. Further, the Apologia was delivered somewhere between the years A. D. 156–8,⁴ at which date Apuleius' wife Pudentilla was only a little over 40.⁵ Apuleius himself is frequently spoken of as iuuenis a young man, and was in any case considerably younger than his wife,⁶ of whose son he was an elder contemporary at the University of Athens.⁷ But he was no longer in his first youth. He speaks as a man of wide experience. He had travelled much,⁸ and established a reputation as a writer and an orator.⁹ The estimate therefore which places his birth about A. D. 124 cannot be far wrong.¹⁰ His name is commonly given as Lucius Apuleius, though the only authority for the praenomen first name is found

¹ Flor. 16 commemorauit inter nos iura amicitiae a commilitio studiorum eisdem magistris honeste incohata. He commemorated the bonds of friendship between us, honestly begun from the fellowship of studies under the same teachers.
² Act. Arv. anno 156; p. clxxi, Henzen.
³ See Mommsen, R. Staatsr. i. 473. Aemilianus Strabo may have been older than Apuleius, but the periods of their studies must have overlapped.
⁴ The speech was delivered before the proconsul Claudius Maximus, who was the successor of Lollianus Avitus (see c. 94). Lollianus was cos. ord. ordinary consul in 144 (see Borghesi, Œuvr. iv, 508 f.). At this period there was an interval of at least ten and usually thirteen years between consulate and proconsulate (see S. Waddington, Fastes des Prov. Asiat., pp. 12 ff., 231; Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, i. 405–6). Therefore Lollianus was not proconsul before 154, and is most likely to have been proconsul in 157. The proconsulate of Cl. Maximus therefore probably falls between A. D. 155 and 157. In any case the speech was delivered in the principate of Ant. Pius Antoninus Pius (d. 161); see c. 85.
⁵ c. 89.
⁶ iuuenis young man, see cc. 27, 70, 92: maior natu older by birth, c. 27.
⁷ c. 72. See Appendix on the age of Pontianus.
⁸ Apol. 23.
⁹ Apol. 36, 37, 55, 73. He was also clearly on fairly intimate terms with Lollianus Avitus, Claudius Maximus' predecessor in the proconsulship of Africa. Cp. c. 94.
¹⁰ See Rohde, op. cit.