Apparent ignorance of magic and occult virtue.
In defending what he terms his scientific investigations from the aspersion of magic Apuleius is at times either a trifle disingenuous and inclined to trade upon the ignorance of his judge and accusers, or else not as well informed himself as he might be in matters of natural science and of occult science. He contends that fish are not employed in magic arts, asks mockingly if fish alone possess some property hidden from other men and known to magicians, and affirms that if the accuser knows of any such he must be a magician rather than Apuleius.[1096]He insists that he did not make use of a sea-hare and describes the “fish” in question in detail,[1097]but this description, as is pointed out in Butler and Owen’s edition of theApology,[1098]tends to convince us that it really was a sea-hare. In the case of the two fish with obscene names, he ridicules the arguing from similarity of names to similarity of powers in the things so designated, asif that were not what magicians and astrologers and believers in sympathy and antipathy were always doing. You might as well say, he declares, that a pebble is good for the stone and a crab for an ulcer,[1099]as if precisely these remedies for those diseases were not found in the Pseudo-Dioscorides and in Pliny’sNatural History.[1100]
Despite an assumption of knowledge.
It is hardly probable that in the passages just cited Apuleius was pretending to be ignorant of matters with which he was really acquainted, since as a rule he is eager to show off his knowledge even of magic itself. Thus the accusers affirmed that he had bewitched a boy by incantations in a secret place with an altar and a lamp; Apuleius criticizes their story by saying that they should have added that he employed the boy for purposes of divination, citing tales which he has read to this effect in Varro and many other authors.[1101]And he himself is ready to believe that the human soul, especially in one who is still young and innocent, may, if soothed and distracted by incantations and odors, forget the present, return to its divine and immortal nature, and predict the future. When he reads some technical Greek names from his treatise on fishes, he suspects that the accuser will protest that he is uttering magic names in some Egyptian or Babylonian rite.[1102]And as a matter of fact, when later he mentioned the names of a number of celebrated magicians,[1103]the accusers appear to have raised such a tumult that Apuleius deemed it prudent to assure the judge that he had simply read them in reputable books in public libraries, and that to know such names was one thing, to practice the magic art quite another matter.
Attitude toward astrology.
Apuleius affirms that one of his accusers had consulted he knows not what Chaldeans how he might profitably marry off his daughter, and that they had prophesied truthfully that her first husband would die within a few months. “As for what she would inherit from him, they fixed that up, asthey usually do, to suit the person consulting them.”[1104]But in this respect their prediction turned out to be quite incorrect. We are left in some doubt, however, whether their failure in the second case is not regarded as due merely to their knavery, and their first successful prediction to the rule of the stars. Elsewhere, however, Apuleius does state that belief in fate and in magic are incompatible, since there is no place left for the force of spells and incantations, if everything is ruled by fate.[1105]But in other extant works[1106]he speaks of the heavenly bodies as visible gods, and Laurentius Lydus attributes astrological treatises to him.[1107]
His theory of demons.
In one passage of theApologyApuleius affirms his belief with Plato in the existence of certain intermediate beings or powers between gods and men, who govern all divinations and the miracles of the magicians.[1108]In the treatise on the god or demon of Socrates[1109]he repeats this thought and tells us more of these mediators or demons. Their native element is the air, which Apuleius thought extended as far as the moon,[1110]just as Aristotle[1111]tells of animals who live in fire and are extinguished with it, and just as the fifth element, that “divine and inviolable” ether, contains the divine bodies of the stars. With the superior gods the demons have immortality in common, but like mortals they are subject to passions and to feeling and capable of reason.[1112]But their bodies are very light and like clouds, a point peculiar to themselves.[1113]Since both Plutarch and Apuleius wrote essays on the demon of Socrates and both derived, or thought that they derived, their theories concerning demons from Plato, it is interesting to note some divergences between their accounts. Apuleius confines them to the atmosphere beneath the moon more exclusively than Plutarch does; unlike Plutarch he represents them as immortal, not merely long-lived; and he has more to say about the substance of their bodies and less concerning their relations with disembodied souls.
Apuleius in the middle ages.
Apuleius would have been a well-known name in the middle ages, if only indirectly through the use made by Augustine inThe City of God[1114]of theMetamorphosesin describing magic and of theDe deo Socratisin discussing demons.[1115]He also speaks of Apuleius in three of his letters,[1116]declaring that for all his magic arts he could win neither a throne nor judicial power. Augustine was not quite sure whether Apuleius had actually been transformed into an ass or not. A century earlier Lactantius[1117]spoke of the many marvels remembered of Apuleius. That manuscripts of theMetamorphoses,ApologyandFloridawere not numerous until after the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be inferred from the fact that all the extant manuscripts seem to be derived from a single one of the later eleventh century, written in a Lombard hand and perhaps from Monte Cassino.[1118]The article on Apuleius in Pauly and Wissowa states that the best manuscripts of his other works are an eleventh century codex at Brussels and a twelfth century manuscript at Munich,[1119]but does not mention a twelfth century manuscript of theDe deo Socratisin the British Museum.[1120]Another indication that in the twelfth century there were manuscripts of Apuleius in England or at Chartres and Paris is that John of Salisbury borrows from theDe dogmate Platonisin hisDe nugis curialium.[1121]In the earlier middle ages there was ascribed to Apuleius a work on herbs of which we shall treat later.