Apologia. Florida. De Deo Socratis (Loeb Classical Library)

Apologia. Florida. De Deo Socratis (Loeb Classical Library)

<p>Apuleius, one of the great stylists of Latin literature, was born ca. 125 AD in Madauros to a politically prominent family and received an elite education in the provincial capital Carthage and at Athens, where he began a lifelong allegiance to Platonic philosophy. In the later 150s, he married Pudentilla of Oea, a wealthy widow, and seems to have enjoyed a distinguished public career in Africa and perhaps as an advocate in Rome.</p><p>Although Apuleius is best known for his picaresque novel <i>Metamorphoses or </i><i>The Golden Ass </i>(LCL 44, 453), he also wrote and declaimed on a wide variety of subjects. This edition contains the other surviving works of Apuleius that are considered genuine. <i>Apologia</i> is a speech in which Apuleius defends himself against in-laws who had accused him of having used sinister means, including magic, to induce Pudentilla to marry him. The <i>Florida</i> is a collection of twenty-three excerpts from speeches by Apuleius. <i>De Deo Socratis </i>(<i>On Socrates’ God</i>) locates Socrates’ invisible guide and protector (<i>daimonion</i>) within the more general concept of <i>daimones</i> as forces intermediary between gods and humans.</p><p>This edition, new to the Loeb Classical Library, offers fresh translations and texts based on the best critical editions.</p>