Complete Works of Apuleius, Vol. IV

ra were; but the evil was restrained by many Senate decrees, mostly 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 cause was 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 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 insulting them. 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 and punishment when he suddenly vanished from the middle of the investigation and the sight of the judges. Apuleius was acquitted. And this speech of his deserved: I would not say rashly, innocence; so that I might not detract from the prejudiced opinion of all the men of his century and especially of the Christian writers; and because he himself not obscurely demonstrates in more than one place of that Milesian work of his that he was a most studious follower of magical arts, and even had taken up experiments of them. Nor in this most beautiful Apology does he deny that he is a Magician so much as he denies being such a Magician as that name was commonly accepted, that is, a sorcerer, and one abusing the knowledge of names and the investigation of the secrets of nature for base and wicked things. Briefly, that he is a Philosopher, and a worshipper of the Gods, and a fosterling of the Platonic family, which would approve of nothing except what is holy, joyful, and festive. He foresaw, however, that he would eventually have trouble for this reason, in Book 3 of that same last work: "Lest, if with the donkey removed I should appear again as Lucius, I might encounter evident destruction at the hands of robbers, either through the suspicion of Magical art or through the accusation of a future judgment." It is clear to me that both this speech, 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, what I did not dare to say a little before, 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 marriage. Nor did he need Magical arts or incantations, as his enemies objected, to win for himself the mind and marriage of Pudentilla, being a young man who was exceptional in both appearance and nob-