seducing her by magic. His Apologia (De magia), our only source for this episode, recounts the
trial at Sabratha in 158 or 159. In the 160s he delivered epideictic speeches and philo-
sophical lectures in Carthage, received a statue thanks to his friend Aemilianus Strabo, and
possibly was made a priest of the imperial cult in Africa. Two of his works are dedicated to
his son Faustinus.
Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) is Apuleius’ best known work. The rhetorical De deo Socratis
analyzes So ̄crate ̄s’ daimonion. The authenticity of two other works, De Platone et eius
dogmate and De mundo, is questioned, though not conclusively. Peri Hermeneias (in Latin, despite
its title), a work on Peripatetic logic citing also T and Aristo ̄n of Alexandria
(ca 70 BCE), is generally considered spurious. Certainly spurious are Asclepius (a H
treatise), Herbarius (see next entry), De remediis salutaribus and Physiognomonia. Among the sig-
nificant lost works are Quaestiones naturales in Greek; a work on ichthyology, presumably
adapted from works by A, Theophrastos, E R and L
A T (Apol. 36); De arboribus and De medicinalibus (frr.14–17); a work on
astronomy and meteorological miracula (frr.22–25); a translation of N
G (C Inst. div. 2.4.7); De republica (fr.13); a translation of P’s Phaedo
(frr.9–10); a handbook on music (Cassiod., Inst. div. 2.5.10).
Apuleius inserted into his De mundo, a free translation of O K, F’
account of the winds (13–14: based on Aulus Gellius 2.22). De Platone et eius dogmate is an arid
and superficial exposition of Platonic physics and ethics, supplementing Plato’s medical
views with Aristotelian elements. The Apologia contains sections on the mechanism of vision
(15) and ichthyology (29–36; 40–42).
Apuleii fragmenta, in W.A. Oldfather, H.V. Canter and B.E. Perry, Index Apuleianus (1934) –; DPA 1
(1989) 294–297, J.-M. Flamand; Dillon (1996) 306–340; OCD3 131 – 132, S.J. Harrison; Idem,
Apuleius. A Latin Sophist (2000); BNP 1 (2002) 905–909, M. Zimmermann.
Jan Opsomer
Apuleius, pseudo, Herbarius (500 – 530 CE)
About 20 Latin MSS in two distinct families have herbals under names Apuleius Platonicus,
A M, and S P, with an Anonymus occasionally but inconsis-
tently attached. An ancestral archetype (what Howald and Sigerist call Herbarius pseudo-
Apulei genuinus) seems to have emerged sometime in the first decades of the 3rd c., soon
augmented by a synonym-list in the mid 4th c., a hypothetical Herbarius synonymis aliis addit.
auctus. About 500 CE, this text becomes conjoined with three more herbals, one presumably
authored by a Latinated -D (the De herbis femininis), another pseudo-
Apuleius, and an otherwise unknown Sextus Placitus. In turn, ca 600 CE, this collection
splits into two separate traditions, with various MSS omitting some passages, others sup-
plemented with apparent borrowings from M’ De medicamentis of about 400 CE, or
yet other texts attributed to Antonius Musa, or still others without a definite author. Inter-
twining are echoes of P’s Natural History, and the MSS edited by Howald and Sigerist
bear some affinities to similar traditions known as the M P and the P
P, but were transmitted independently from them.
“Antonius Musa” prefaces his De herba uettonica liber with an obviously confused Antonius
Musa M. Agrippae salutem, followed by Caesari Augusto, praestantissimo omnium mortalium, sed et
iudicibus proximum esse auxilium quodque artis meae carissimum Caesaris iudicio (CML 4, p. 4); in the
succeeding lines (p. 5, esp. line 30), the editors signal a parallel to Marcellus, 30.106, and the
APULEIUS, PSEUDO, HERBARIUS