Complete Works of Apuleius, Vol. IV

effective; rather, the evil was restrained by many Senate decrees, which were for the most part ineffective, and therefore numerous. "A class of men," says Cornelius Tacitus (History, Book 1), "untrustworthy to the powerful, deceitful to those who hope, which will always be forbidden in our state, and always retained." The causes were not only the desire of the human mind, which always seeks what is forbidden and prohibited, even with the danger of choosing and pursuing it, but also the power of those who were associated with these studies. Even the Emperors themselves, although none were more hostile and opposed to that nation of mathematicians due to the predictions by which fickle minds were impelled toward new things and the hope of changing masters, nevertheless held many of them among the instruments of the court and the secrets of the house. Thus, Tiberius joined Thrasyllus to himself in intimate familiarity, being himself ἐμπειρότατος τῆς διὰ τῶν ἄστρων μαντικῆς most experienced in the divination through the stars, as Dio says. But I find the most noble of all those accused of magic during the times of the Caesars to be Apollonius of Tyana and this our Apuleius of Madaura. Both were accused publicly of these arts: Apollonius before the Emperor Domitian, and Apuleius in Carthage before Claudius Maximus, the proconsul of Africa, under the rule of the Divine Pius or Hadrian (for he lived around those times). And they defended themselves and their studies without anyone's help; but our Apuleius by denying it, and Apollonius by freely professing and utilizing it. Both were certainly of such fame that pagan men, enemies of our religion, were accustomed to oppose and prefer no others to our Savior Christ by the majesty of their miracles, as Lactantius writes in Book 5, chapter 3, and Saint Augustine in his letter to Marcellinus. But the Tyanean was a most true magician and a trickster, and by those tricks he snatched himself from judgment, as they report, when he suddenly vanished from the middle of the investigation and the sight of the judges. Apuleius is absent?
And this speech of his deserved: not?
I would say rashly, of innocence;
prejudiced by all? of his contem?
poraries and Christians ju?
to the opinion of writers cer?
because he himself not obscurely as?
a student of the arts?
and that he even created experiments
in one place of the work he?
shows. Nor in this his?
Apology does he so much deny himself to be?
such a Magician, as was?
commonly understood, that is, a man?
with the knowledge of spirits, and of nature's
investigation of secrets, for
wicked and criminal things, abusing.
Briefly, that he is a Philosopher, a wor?
shipper of the Gods, and of the family of Jupiter?
a fosterling, which would approve of nothing except what is holy?
and joyful, and festive. He?
foresaw however for himself that?
it would happen for this reason, in the?
end of the same work: 'Lest?
with the donkey removed I should? appear as?
Lucius, I might encounter
evident destruction at the hands of robbers
through the suspicion of Magic art or of
(bad) judgment'
'through the accusation of a future crime.' Clearly
both this speech, and his incredible
and singular learning, and the friendship
of all the great men who lived in those times, persuade
that he was a good and temperate man,
and also, which a little before I did not yet
dare to say, innocent; if it is shown that he did no
injury to anyone, but on the contrary
served the advantage and honor of many, and helped poverty: which
he professes concerning himself, as most known to all,
both in this speech and in other
works. Nor should it be given as a vice or crime
if he wished to fill the gaps of his family estate
with an honest and wealthy matri-
mony. Nor did he need Magical arts
or incantations, as his enemies
objected, to win the mind and marriage of Pudentilla
for himself, a young man who was exceptional in both appearance and nobility