The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  There is no firm evidence for Apuleius’s career after the mid-160s CE. Two works, De Mundo (a version of Aristotle’s treatise on the universe) and De Platone (a summary of Platonic doctrine), are ascribed to Apuleius, with some probability. Both books in their prefaces address a “son Faustinus”: if Apuleius had a son old enough to be concerned with such matters, likely to have been born after the Apologia, then these works would belong to the 170s or later; their use of a different system of prose rhythm would also fit a later date, though some have seen it as a major barrier to Apuleian authenticity (for discussion see Harrison 2000, 178–180). Their content would also suggest that the writer was concerned with didactic exposition in Latin of the major authorities of Greek philosophy, a credible development in Apuleius’s career given his track record as a Platonic philosopher and all-round intellectual who gives a Latin-speaking audience the benefit of his studies. The evidence of an encyclopedic trend in his writings (see below) and for the existence of pupils who studied with Apuleius (clear from Flor. 18) suggests an interest in education; it is possible to imagine a career of rhetorical performance and teaching for Apuleius continuing at Carthage into the 170s and 180s. Unlike some writers of the period, such as Fronto (see Fleury, chapter 16 in this volume), Apuleius did not pursue a political career after literary or rhetorical successes; Augustine, admittedly a jaundiced witness against a leading pagan, records that he never achieved a judicial magistracy in the province of Africa, and that the priesthood mentioned in Florida 16 was the highest public office he attained (Ep. 138.19).

  There are two other significant extant works ascribed to Apuleius. The De Interpretatione is a brief Latin version of Aristotelian logical doctrine in dry and technical language which offers little of stylistic or literary interest; it has a textual tradition separate from that of other Apuleian works, but has been attributed to Apuleius in its manuscript transmission and in the indirect tradition since Late Antiquity. Apuleian authorship is not impossible, and this work played an important role in transmitting Aristotelian logic to the Middle Ages (cf. Harrison 2000, 11–12). The Asclepius, a version of a largely lost Greek Hermetic treatise, has the same textual transmission as the philosophical works of Apuleius, but is unlikely to be Apuleian (cf. Harrison 2000, 11–12). Both these works may show the capacity of later writers and editors to compose para-Apuleian works or attach such works to the genuine Apuleian tradition; such pseudepigraphic additions are particularly common for writers in the period of the Second Sophistic with a large and varied output, inviting accretions of this kind (e.g., Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, and Lucian).

  Variety is already strongly evident in this extant output, of style as well as of genre: the Metamorphoses, Apologia, Florida, and De deo Socratis are written in a characteristically rhythmical style, highly archaic and colorful, while the De Platone and De Mundo demonstrate a much drier style appropriate to the technical treatise. Both Apuleius’s literary versatility and his close connections with the intellectual currents of his time are considerably extended if we add the fragments of and allusions to lost works found both in Apuleius himself and in other writers (for a basic discussion, see Harrison 2000, 14–38). His own characteristically immodest claims of wide versatility in prose and poetry (Flor. 9.27–28, 20.5–6) are almost justified by what we can piece together about his lost output, and no doubt there was more of which we know nothing. Apart from evidence of other speeches now lost to us (Apol. 24 and 55; Augustine Ep. 138.19), lost Apuleian works (in the numeration of Beaujeu 1973) include a collection of humorous archaizing poems (fr. 1); a work on proverbs (fr. 2); Hermagoras, another low-life novel (fr. 3–8); Phaedo, a rendering of Plato’s dialogue (fr. 9–10); an historical compilation (fr. 11–12); a work On the Republic (fr. 13); a work on medicine (fr. 14); one on agriculture (fr. 15); one on trees (fr. 16); a work on love (fr. 21); one on astronomy (fr. 22–25); zoological works in both Greek and Latin (cf. Apol. 36 and 38); another on topics for discussion at banquets (Sid. Apoll. Epist. 9.13.3, Macrob. Sat.7.3.23–24); and works on music and arithmetic (Cassiod. 2.4.7, 2.10).

  Such an output is characteristic of Apuleius’s time and place as a Latin writer in the second century CE, fundamentally influenced by the Second Sophistic. Forensic oratory (the Apologia) was the field where Fronto and other North Africans had achieved fame at Rome in the previous generation (see Champlin 1980, 18–19), while epideictic speeches, such as those evidenced by the Florida, and popular philosophical lectures, such as the De deo Socratis, were the intellectual life-blood of the Second Sophistic (see Part IV, “Rhetoric and Rhetoricians” in this volume). Works of prose fiction, too, such as the Metamorphoses, seem to have been particularly common in Apuleius’s time (see chapters 25–27 in this volume): of the two Latin novels and the seven complete Greek ones, at least four may belong to the later second century CE (see Bowie 2002). Finally, the kind of philosophical doxography found in the De Platone reflects the revival of interest in Platonic philosophy in this period, shown in similar contemporary handbooks of Platonic doctrine such as that by Alcinous (see Fowler on Platonism, chapter 36 in this volume).

  As noted at the outset, such success as Apuleius achieved in his lifetime seems to have been limited to his home region. Roman North Africa, though Carthage itself was in many ways a cosmopolitan city, was clearly something of a cultural backwater when compared to Rome or the great cities of the Greek Mediterranean, the normal arenas of sophistic operation. However, this gave Apuleius many advantages. He is able to present himself as the purveyor of Greek intellectual culture to an audience for whom he himself is the major source for such material; and though there were clearly rival performing intellectuals at Carthage, he could there avoid many of the problems of the sharp competition amongt contemporary sophists in the Greek world. Though he never uses the word “sophist” of himself, Apuleius can freely compare himself both implicitly and explicitly with the great sophists of the fifth century (Hippias in Flor. 9, Protagoras in Flor. 18), a characteristic sophistic move, while also maintaining his status as a Platonic philosopher. Such things were clearly permissible in the Latin West, where the cultural polemics of the Greek Mediterranean found only a distant echo. But though Apuleius proclaimed himself a philosopher, his status as a star public speaker in Carthage, his obvious self-promotion and cult of his own personality, and his prodigiously displayed literary and scientific polymathy plainly allow us to designate him a sophist, a Latin-speaking version of the great Greek rhetorical performers of his own time.

  THE APOLOGIA

  I first summarize Apuleius’s own account in the Apologia of the genesis of this speech and the trial at which it was delivered (this is our only source and is of course likely to be biased by its forensic circumstances). During a period of study in Athens, perhaps in the early 150s CE, Apuleius met and shared rooms with a fellow student named Pontianus, like himself from Roman North Africa, from Oea, the modern Tripoli in Libya (Apol. 72). Several years after his first acquaintance with Pontianus, probably toward the end of 156, Apuleius set out (perhaps from Carthage) on the long journey to Alexandria, and rested with friends at Oea on the way. He was there visited by Pontianus, who persuaded him to stay for a whole year and eventually to marry his mother Pudentilla, a rich widow, in order to protect her fortune for her sons: the marriage seems to have taken place in late 157 or early 158. Subsequently, in the course of appearing for his wife at the proconsular assizes in a case concerning a property dispute, Apuleius was accused by several relations of Pudentilla’s of having induced her to marry him through magic means. This case was heard (presumably during the same assizes) at Sabathra, near Oea, by the proconsul Claudius Maximus, apparently in late 158 or early 159. Though we are nowhere told so, it is clear that Apuleius was acquitted; the publication of such a tour de force as the Apologia is not the act of a defeated party, and it is an impressive advertisement of Apuleius’s talents as a public speaker.

  In its basic texture, the Apologia combines tight forensic argume
nt with expansive epideictic elements more naturally at home in sophistic declamation. The model on the forensic side is Cicero (see the evidence at Harrison 2000, 44n17; Hunink 1997 is more skeptical): in the Apologia Apuleius takes the opportunity to emulate the greatest orator of the Roman courts, and his language, though close to the jingling and colorful style of the Metamorphoses, is profoundly influenced by that of the great Ciceronian speeches. More particularly, the colorful characters and charges of the Apologia recall some of the more vivid criminal cases in which Cicero appeared, in particular the Pro Cluentio, where the scheming Oppianicus, impoverished and acquiring funds through marriage, inheritance, and a series of poisonings, is a more vicious and successful ancestor of the villains Aemilianus and Rufinus in Apuleius. The pillorying and ridicule of Apuleius’s opponents in the Apologia, one of its fundamental techniques, recalls Cicero not only in rehearsing the standard topics of invective used (for example) in the Verrines and Second Philippic (e.g., drunkenness, venality, sexual insatiability), but also in its use of humor as a forensic weapon. The charges made are often laughed out of court, just as they were in the Pro Caelio, where Cicero’s comic presentation of Clodia as the villain of the piece and as a “Medea of the Palatine” is similar to Apuleius’s ridicule of the rustic Aemilianus and use of mythological figures from literature (Charon and Mezentius: Apol. 56) in attacking him.

  But, as already indicated, the Apologia is not only an imitation of the Ciceronian forensic manner. Its many didactic digressions mark the speech out as (at least in part) an epideictic performance in the manner of the Florida and the De deo Socratis. This is clearly the work of a sophistic speaker, anxious to demonstrate his learning and intellectual interests and to produce a stylistic tour de force, just as much as the self-defense of a man accused of serious charges in a court of law. Some have criticized the Apologia for its learned digressions and found them inimical to Apuleius’s defense, but it is clear, on the contrary, that these are at the center of Apuleius’s forensic strategy, based according to the traditions of Greco-Roman rhetoric on the character and situation of the audience which the orator needs to persuade, here in particular on the proconsul of Africa Proconsularis presiding at the trial, C. Claudius Maximus.

  This Maximus, consul in 142 CE and proconsul in 158/9, is surely to be identified with the Claudius Maximus who was one of the teachers of Marcus Aurelius in Stoic philosophy (M. Aur. Med. 1.17.5). One of Apuleius’s fundamental strategies is to praise and flatter Maximus in every way, lauding his moral virtues as well as his intellectual qualities; here we get a glimpse of the Apuleius who was soon to compose the lavish tributes to proconsuls at Carthage to be found in the Florida (cf. Flor. 8, 9, 17). The prosecution is accused of wasting Maximus’s precious time and trying his patience with their frivolous and ill-educated calumnies (1.1, 1.6, 23.3–4, 35.7, 46.5), and Apuleius seeks to develop a complicity between himself and Maximus, men of literary education, philosophical learning, and elegant taste (cf. 41.4 ego et Maximus), against what he presents as the ignorance and rusticity of his accusers. Passages of Greek are cited in extenso to assert their mutual close acquaintance with the classic philosophical texts (10.9–10, 22.5, 25.10, 26.4, 31.5–6, 38.8, 65.5–7, 82.2, 83.1). Thus the so-called digressions are strategically important to Apuleius as a continued captatio benevolentiae directed toward the presiding magistrate.

  Just as Apuleius and Maximus share an understanding and appreciation of high intellectual culture, so Apuleius’s opponents are represented as ill-educated and uncivilized; just as Maximus is continually praised for his wisdom and other qualities (2.5, 11.5, 19.1, 25.10, 36.5, 38.1, 41.4, 48.5, 53.4, 63.6, 64.4, 81.2, 84.6, 85.2, 91.3, 98.8), so Apuleius’s opponents are repeatedly pilloried for their ignorance and lack of comprehension of higher things (5.6, 9.1, 9.6, 16.7, 23.5, 30.3, 33.2-3, 34.5, 42.1, 66.6, 74.7, 86.3, 87.4, 91.1). This is not purely gratuitous invective, but like the common ground between defendant and proconsul is essential for the details of Apuleius’s argument in making his case. His defense asserts above all that the charges of magic have been brought through ignorant misunderstanding and wilful misinterpretation of harmless and indeed highly respectable scientific, philosophical, and medical activities.

  An elaborate self-defense on a charge of magic is not a particularly surprising literary work to find in the age of the Second Sophistic; self-presentation and occasional self-justification against attack, whether forensic or other, were central to the activities of the Greek sophists. Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists narrates a number of cases where sophists were accused in law-suits, and they were well known for their highly publicized disputes with each other, which sometimes ended in court (cf. Anderson 1993, 35–39; Bowersock 1969, 89–100). The particular charge of magic is also not astonishing. Magical abilities were also suspected or alleged in the case of one or two of the more extraordinary sophistic performers, whether from malice or sheer astonishment at their capacity to persuade (Philostr. VS 1.22, 523; 2.10, 590).

  In terms of content, the Apologia bears the unmistakable stamp of sophistic discourse. The constant deployment of material from literature both Greek and Latin shows that Apuleius, like all sophists, is anxious to impress with the breadth of his reading, which can sometimes be traced to handbooks and summaries rather than original texts, but nevertheless shows a considerable width of knowledge. The interest throughout in philosophical topics, and in particular Plato, is not only forensically important in supporting Apuleius’s view of himself as a misunderstood philosophus and appealing to the personal tastes of Maximus, but also stresses Apuleius’s considerable reading in the works of one of the central intellectual and stylistic inspirations of the Second Sophistic. The Apologia shows a complete command of all rhetorical techniques, both forensic and epideictic, the everyday tools of the performing sophist. Apuleius can be seen demonstrating his ability in narrative, comparison, invective, encomium, description, and anecdote, all progymnasmata, the basic elements of speaking and composition taught to students in ancient rhetorical schools (see Pernot on Greek and Latin rhetorical culture, chapter 13 in this volume). He is also skilled in diatribe, popular moralizing on the Cynic model, a type of writing much favored by sophistic writers such as Dio Chrysostom and Aelius Aristides, and which is found again in the final section of the De Deo Socratis. The Apologia, like all Apuleius’s works, bears the mark of its time and of the particular culture of its author, one who had some experience of Athens and other Greek sophistic centers, but who had also studied in Rome and returned to live in his home province of Roman Africa.

  THE METAMORPHOSES

  Apuleius’s work has been well described as “a sophist’s novel” (Tatum 1979, 135); as already suggested above, the novel seems to have been a favorite literary form of Greek writers in the period of the Second Sophistic, and here as elsewhere we can see Apuleius following sophistic lines. The novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator Lucius is a foolish young man, who in the search for magic secrets is metamorphosed into a donkey and experiences a series of picaresque adventures in beast form, and is eventually retransformed into human shape through the agency of the goddess Isis, whose service he then enters. In effect, Lucius is a kind of sophist in the making, highly educated and able to rise to an elaborately fictional Ciceronian speech of self-defense (Met. 3.4) or to earn money by speaking in the law-courts (Met. 11.28); he is linked by family with Plutarch (Met. 1.2), and the famous twist at the end of the novel which seems to identify him with Apuleius as a man from Madauros (Met. 11.27) perhaps points similarly to the shared sophistic status of the two.

  Also sophistic in color is the complex function of the first-person narrative voice in this largely autodiegetic (formally autobiographical) novel. The main narrative voice we hear within the text, the primary intradiegetic voice, is that of Lucius, the elite young Greek; but we are aware from information both inside and outside the text that the novel is in fact written by a person of Roman culture, the extradiegetic autho
r and narrator Apuleius, and there are several occasions in the novel when the author’s Roman identity is indicated in a way which compels the reader to look to Apuleius rather than Lucius (see van der Paardt 1981). This problem of the narrative voice is famously highlighted at the novel’s opening, where the speaker could be Lucius, Apuleius, or the book itself (1.1.1–6; cf. Kahane and Laird 2001), and at its close, with the already mentioned suggestion that Lucius is somehow Apuleius, the “man from Madauros” (11.27). This kind of problematizing of the speaker’s identity and voice can be found in the Greek novels of the sophistic period: Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe is presented by an initial speaker as his own summary of an account given by an exegete of a picture in a grove of the Nymphs (1 praef.), a double distancing effect, while the prologue to Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Cleitophon (1.1–1.2) presents the novel as reporting the words of Cleitophon spoken to the author, without returning at the end to this original frame.