LIFE OF APULEIUS

distressing family quarrel must have left much bitterness behind it, while Augustine¹ mentions a dispute with the inhabitants of Oea on the question of the erection of a statue in his honour. Be this as it may, when we next hear of him, not long after, he is at Carthage, enjoying the highest renown as philosopher, poet, and rhetorician. It was during this residence at Carthage that he delivered many of those fantastic declamations of which fragments have been preserved in the Florida. Of these excerpts a few can be dated. The seventeenth is written during the proconsulate of Scipio Orfitus in A. D. 163-4.² The ninth contains a panegyric of the proconsul Severianus, who must have held office some time during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, A. D. 161-9.³ The sixteenth refers to Aemilianus Strabo, who was consul suffectus a substitute consul in A. D. 156, and was perhaps at the time of Apuleius’ speech proconsul designate of Africa. His proconsulate cannot be dated with certainty, but probably falls between A. D. 166 and 170.⁴ Only one further indication of date is found in the works of Apuleius. In the eighteenth excerpt he says that the Carthaginians have been familiar with his declamations both in Greek and Latin for the past six years. As his first known appearance in public at Carthage was before Lollianus Avitus, the predecessor of Claudius Maximus, this passage may perhaps be dated five years after the delivery of the Apologia.⁵

Apuleius won more than mere applause. Carthage decreed

¹ Ep. 138. 19.                                  ² C. I. L. viii. 24.
³ This is proved by the mention of fauor Caesarum favor of the Caesars (Flor. 9).
⁴ Cp. fragment of acta Arualium records of the Arval Brethren, p. clxxi, Henzen. The proconsulate was generally held 10–13 years after consulate. Serius Augurinus, cos. ord. ordinary consul in 156, was proconsul of Africa A.D. 169, 170 (cp. Waddington, Bullett. dell’ Instit., 1869, p. 254), which suggests that Aemilianus followed him rather than preceded him. Aemilianus Strabo was a contemporary of Apuleius and probably an African. He had at any rate studied eisdem magistris under the same teachers (Flor. 16). In the same excerpt he is spoken of as breui uotis omnium futurus proconsul destined to be proconsul shortly by the prayers of all, which may possibly mean that he was already designated proconsul.
⁵ uox mea utraque lingua iam uestris auribus ante proximum sexennium probe cognita my voice in both languages has been well known to your ears for the last six years.