Apuleius (the prænomen Lucius is doubtful) was, like Fronto, an African, though he may have been of Roman descent..
He was born probably about
125 a. d., at Madaura, on the borders of Numidia and Gætulia.
He was educated at Madaura,
Carthage, and Athens, travelled extensively, and was for a time in Rome, where
he was employed as an advocate.
He married Æmilia
Pudentilla, a wealthy widow of Oea, in Africa, and was accused by her relatives
of having led her into the marriage by means of magic arts.
His defense against this
charge is the extant book De Magia (On Magic), also called the Apologia.
In its present form the book
is a revised and enlarged edition of the speech in court.
Apuleius was evidently
acquitted, and he became a man of great influence and reputation.
He prided himself on his
versatility, wrote and spoke both Greek and Latin, and confined himself to no
one branch of literature, but was orator, poet, scientist, philosopher, and
novelist, without, however, displaying any great originality in any direction.
He preferred to call himself
a Platonic philosopher, but his chief activity was that of a travelling orator,
or sophist, who went from place to place giving public exhibitions of his skill
in composing and delivering interesting speeches on all sorts of subjects.
He seems to have spent most
of his life in Africa, and he held the office of priest of the province
(sacerdos provinciæ) at Carthage.
He was initiated into the
mysteries of Isis and seems to have been one of those who sought in the mystic
worship of foreign deities the satisfaction of their religious yearnings which
the Roman state religion did not give.
He seems to have been
opposed to Christianity, though he nowhere mentions it directly.
His great reputation and the
number of works ascribed to him would seem to indicate that he lived to a good
age, but the date of his death is unknown.
Works of Apuleius
The extant works of Apuleius
are the Metamorphoses, a novel in eleven books, the Apologia, a book on spirits
especially the familiar spirit of Socrates, De Deo Socratis, two books on the
doctrines of Plato, De Dogmate Platonis, and a collection of extracts from his
speeches entitled Florida.
The dialogue Asclepius, the
treatise On the World (De Mundo), and the treatise published as the third book
on Plato’s teachings, are not by Apuleius.
Of these works the most
interesting is the novel entitled Metamorphoses, in which are narrated the
adventures of a certain Lucius of Corinth, who was changed by magic into an
ass, and in that form passed through many vicissitudes and saw and heard many
strange things, until he was finally restored to human form by the aid of the
goddess Isis, to whose service he afterwards devoted himself.
This story is derived from a
Greek original which appears in abbreviated form among the writings falsely
ascribed to Lucian, under the title Lucius or The Ass.
Apuleius amplified his Greek
original by inserting nearly twenty stories that have no connection with the
plot.
These are usually introduced
in an unskillful way, interrupting the narrative and destroying the unity of
the work, but they are in themselves the most interesting parts of the whole
novel.
The longest and most famous
among them is the charming story of Cupid and Psyche, beautifully rendered by
William Morris in his Earthly Paradise.
This mystic love tale was
derived, like the other tales inserted in the story of Lucius, from a Greek
original. It is not an invention of Apuleius, but he inserted it in his novel,
and thus preserved it to later times.
The style of Apuleius
The style of Apuleius is not
the same in his different works.
Everywhere, to be sure, he
aims at striking effect by means of unusual words arranged in peculiar order,
and of sentences curiously broken up into short rhythmical members, very
different in effect from the dignified, sonorous periods of Cicero and other
classical writers.
But in the Metamorphoses he
adopts many expressions from the common speech of the people, whereas in his
oratorical and philosophical works he reverts, like Fronto, to the early
writers.
Apuleius and Fronto, both
Africans, are the chief representatives of the elocutio novella, the new
rhetoric, which broke with the continuous tradition of classical Latin and
tried to infuse new life into Latin literature.
Neither Fronto nor Apuleius
was a man of great inventive genius.
Both imitated the Greek
sophists of their time, such as Maximus of Tyre and Ælius Aristides, not only
in the subject matter of their discourses, but to some extent in their style;
yet the fact that they wrote and spoke in Latin and tried to influence the
course of Latin literature gives them an importance not possessed by any of the
later Greek sophists except Dio Chrysostom and Lucian.
Apuleius was apparently more
gifted by nature than Fronto, and his works show a surprising ability in the
use of language, which makes up in a measure for the lack of originality in
thought.
Of his extant works the
Metamorphoses is the most important.
It not only shows the
qualities of the elocutio novella more completely than any other work, but it
gives a picture of the life of the times, with its superstitions, loose morals,
robberies, friendships, hospitalities, and social amenities.
Moreover, it has preserved
to us many interesting tales, among them the story of Cupid and Psyche.
Owing probably to the
supernatural elements in the Metamorphoses and to the fact that he had been
accused of magical arts, Apuleius came soon after his death to be regarded as a
mighty sorcerer, and as a sorcerer he was associated with Virgil in mediæval
times.
Innovations in poetry
While Fronto, Apuleius, and
others were practising the elocutio novella in prose, attempts were made to
introduce innovations in poetry.
Terentianus Maurus, who
wrote in verse a handbook on letters, syllables, and metres toward the end of
the second century, mentions poetæ novelli, and Diomedes, a grammarian of the
latter part of the fourth century, speaks of poetæ neoterici, to whom he
ascribes a variety of innovations.
The names of several of
these poets are mentioned, but too little is known of them to awaken any
interest in their personalities.
Their innovations seem to have consisted largely of verbal juggling, a remarkable example of which is seen in these lines:
Nereides freta sic verrentes caerula tranant,Flamine confidens ut Notus Icarium.
Icarium Notus ut confidens flamine, tranant
Caerula verrentes sic freta Nereides.
Here lines three and four
are lines one and two read backward.
Other examples are less
elaborate, but show the same spirit, the same foolish playing with words.
From such things as this no
new life could be infused into poetry, and most of the verses preserved to us
from the second and even the third centuries after Christ are little more than
feeble echoes of the distant music of Virgil.
Nevertheless there are
already indications of the new mediæval spirit, which was not to find its full
development until the days of the minnesinger and the troubadours.
Whether the Pervigilium
Veneris (Night-watch of Venus) belongs to the second century or the third is
not certain.
At any rate it is the most
striking early example of the romantic sentiment peculiar to mediæval and
modern times.
The poem is written for the
spring festival of Venus Genetrix, whose worship was revived and encouraged by
Hadrian.
It is therefore probable
that it belongs to the second century.
It consists of ninety-three trochaic septenarii (the rhythm of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall), a verse freely used by the early Latin poets, but hardly to be found in the first century after Christ.
At irregular intervals the refrain:is repeated. In the beginning of the poem,
Ver novum; ver iam canorum; vere natus est Iovis;Vere concordant amores; vere nubunt alites,
may well have suggested to Tennyson the lines:
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
At the end of the poem the lines:
Illa cantat, nos tacemus. Quando ver venit meum?Quando fiam ut chelidon et tacere desinam?
Perdidi Musam tacendo nec me Apollo respicit,132
sound like the wail of the
old literature, which no spring was to awaken to new song.
Indeed, the Pervigilium
Veneris is almost as much mediæval as classical.
Its quantitative rhythm
coincides with the natural accent of the words, it is full of assonances that
suggest both alliteration and rhyme, its spirit is almost modern in its
sentiment; and even in its grammatical structure, especially in the use of the
preposition de, it points forward to the great changes to come.
In prose and verse alike,
the second century after Christ was a period of innovations.
The new methods of Fronto
and Apuleius did not hold their own for any great length of time, but they
serve as symptoms of the decay of Latin speech, and may even have hastened that
decay by turning men away from the continued imitation of the classic writers.
The history of classical
Roman literature may be said to end with Suetonius.
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