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The Defense
By Apuleius


Translated by H. E. Butler

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SECTION 1

Part 1 

For my part, Claudius Maximus, and you, gentlemen who sit beside
him on the bench, I regarded it as a foregone conclusion that Sicinius
Aemilianus would for sheer lack of any real ground for accusation
cram his indictment with mere vulgar abuse; for the old rascal is
notorious for his unscrupulous audacity, and, further, launched forth
on his task of bringing me to trial in your court before he had given
a thought to the line his prosecution should pursue. Now while the
most innocent of men may be the victim of false accusation, only the
criminal can have his guilt brought home to him. It is this thought
that gives me special confidence, but I have further ground for self-congratulation
in the fact that I have you for my judge on an occasion when it is
my privilege to have the opportunity of clearing philosophy of the
aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of proving my own
innocence. Nevertheless these false charges are on the face of them
serious enough, and the suddenness with which they have been improvised
makes them the more difficult to refute. 

For you will remember that it is only four or five days since his
advocates of malice prepense attacked me with slanderous accusations,
and began to charge me with practice of the black art and with the
murder of my step-son Pontianus. I was at the moment totally unprepared
for such a charge, and was occupied in defending an action brought
by the brothers Granius against my wife Pudentilla. I perceived that
these charges were brought forward not so much in a serious spirit
as to gratify my opponents' taste for wanton slander. I therefore
straightway challenged them, not once only, but frequently and emphatically,
to proceed with their accusation. 

The result was that Aemilianus, perceiving that you, Maximus, not
to speak of others, were strongly moved by what had occurred, and
that his words had created a serious scandal, began to be alarmed
and to seek for some safe refuge from the consequences of his rashness.

Part 2

Therefore as soon as he was compelled to set his name to the indictment,
he conveniently forgot Pontianus, his own brother's son, of whose
death he had been continually accusing me only a few days previously.
He made absolutely no mention of the death of his young kinsman; he
abandoned this most serious charge, but -- to avoid the appearance
of having totally abandoned his mendacious accusations -- he selected,
as the sole support of his indictment, the charge of magic -- a charge
with which it is easy to create a prejudice against the accused, but
which it is hard to prove. 

Even that he had not the courage to do openly in his own person, but
a day later presented the indictment in the name of my step-son, Sicinius
Pudens, a mere boy, adding that he appeared as his representative.
This is a new method. He attacks me through the agency of a third
person, whose tender age he employs to shield his unworthy self against
a charge of false accusation. You, Maximus, with great acuteness saw
through his designs and ordered him to renew his original accusation
in person. In spite of his promise to comply, he cannot be induced
to come to close quarters, but actually defies your authority and
continues to skirmish at long range with his false accusations. He
persistently shirks the perilous task of a direct attack, and perseveres
in his assumption of the safe role of the accuser's legal representative.
As a result, even before the case came into court, the real nature
of the accusation became obvious to the meanest understanding. The
man who invented the charge and was the first to utter it had not
the courage to take the responsibility for it. Moreover the man in
question is Sicinius Aemilianus, who, if he had discovered any true
charge against me, would scarcely have been so backward in accusing
a stranger of so many serious crimes, seeing that he falsely asserted
his own uncle's will to be a forgery although he knew it to be genuine:
indeed he maintained this assertion with such obstinate violence,
that even after that distinguished senator, Lollius Urbicus, in accordance
with the decision of the distinguished consulars, his assessors, had
declared the will to be genuine and duly proven, he continued -- such
was his mad fury -- in defiance of the award given by the voice of
that most distinguished citizen, to assert with oaths that the will
was a forgery. It was only with difficulty that Lollius Urbicus refrained
from making him suffer for it. 

Part 3

I rely, Maximus, on your sense of justice and on my own innocence,
but I hope that in this trial also we shall hear the voice of Lollius
raised impulsively in my defence; for Aemilianus is deliberately accusing
a man whom he knows to be innocent, a course which comes the more
easy to him, since, as I have told you, he has already been convicted
of lying in a most important case, heard before the Prefect of the
city. Just as a good man studiously avoids the repetition of a sin
once committed, so men of depraved character repeat their past offence
with increased confidence, and, I may add, the more often they do
so, the more openly they display their impudence. For honour is like
a garment; the older it gets, the more carelessly it is worn. I think
it my duty, therefore, in the interest of my own honour, to refute
all my opponent's slanders before I come to the actual indictment
itself. 

For I am pleading not merely my own cause, but that of philosophy
as well, philosophy, whose grandeur is such that she resents even
the slightest slur cast upon her perfection as though it were the
most serious accusation. Knowing this, Aemilianus' advocates, only
a short time ago, poured forth with all their usual loquacity a flood
of drivelling accusations, many of which were specially invented for
the purpose of blackening my character, while the remainder were such
general charges as the uninstructed are in the habit of levelling
at philosophers. It is true that we may regard these accusations as
mere interested vapourings, bought at a price and uttered to prove
their shamelessness worthy of its hire. 

It is a recognized practice on the part of professional accusers to
let out the venom of their tongues to another's hurt; nevertheless,
if only in my own interest, I must briefly refute these slanders,
lest I, whose most earnest endeavour it is to avoid incurring the
slightest spot or blemish to my fair fame, should seem, by passing
over some of their more ridiculous charges, to have tacitly admitted
their truth, rather than to have treated them with silent contempt.
For a man who has any sense of honour or self-respect must needs --
such at least is my opinion -- feel annoyed when he is thus abused,
however falsely. Even those whose conscience reproaches them with
some crime, are strongly moved to anger, when men speak ill of them,
although they have been accustomed to such ill report ever since they
became evildoers. And even though others say naught of their crimes,
they are conscious enough that such charges may at any time deservedly
be brought against them. It is therefore doubly vexatious to the good
and innocent man when charges are undeservedly brought against him
which he might with justice bring against others. For his ears are
unused and strange to ill report, and he is so accustomed to hear
himself praised that insult is more than he can bear. 

If, however, I seem to be anxious to rebut charges which are merely
frivolous and foolish, the blame must be laid at the door of those,
to whom such accusations, in spite of their triviality, can only bring
disgrace. I am not to blame. Ridiculous as these charges may be, their
refutation cannot but do me honour. 

Part 4

To begin then, only a short while ago, at the commencement of the
indictment, you heard them say, `He, whom we accuse in your court,
is a philosopher of the most elegant appearance and a master of eloquence
not merely in Latin but also in Greek!' What a damning insinuation!
Unless I am mistaken, those were the very words with which Tannonius
Pudens, whom no one could accuse of being a master of eloquence, began
the indictment. 

I wish that these serious reproaches of beauty and eloquence had been
true. It would have been easy to answer in the words, with which Homer
makes Paris reply to Hector which I may interpret thus: `The most
glorious gifts of the gods are in no wise to be despised; but the
things which they are wont to give are withheld from many that would
gladly possess them.' Such would have been my reply. 

I should have added that philosophers are not forbidden to possess
a handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take the name of `philosopher',
was the handsomest man of his day. Zeno also, the ancient philosopher
of Velia, who was the first to discover that most ingenious device
of refuting hypotheses by the method of self-inconsistency, that same
Zeno was -- so Plato asserts -- by far the most striking in appearance
of all the men of his generation. It is further recorded of many other
philosophers that they were comely of countenance and added fresh
charm to their personal beauty by their beauty of character.

But such a defence is, as I have already said, far from me. Not only
has nature given me but a commonplace appearance, but continued literary
labour has swept away such charm as my person ever possessed, has
reduced me to a lean habit of body, sucked away all the freshness
of life, destroyed my complexion and impaired my vigour. As to my
hair, which they with unblushing mendacity declare I have allowed
to grow long as an enhancement to my personal attractions, you can
judge of its elegance and beauty. As you see, it is tangled, twisted
and unkempt like a lump of tow, shaggy and irregular in length, so
knotted and matted that the tangle is past the art of man to unravel.
This is due not to mere carelessness in the tiring of my hair, but
to the fact that I never so much as comb or part it. I think this
is a sufficient refutation of the accusations concerning my hair which
they hurl against me as though it were a capital charge.

Part 5

As to my eloquence -- if only eloquence were mine -- it would be small
matter either for wonder or envy if I, who from my earliest years
to the present moment have devoted myself with all my powers to the
sole study of literature and for this spurned all other pleasures,
had sought to win eloquence to be mine with toil such as few or none
have ever expended, ceasing neither night nor day, to the neglect
and impairment of my bodily health. But my opponents need fear nothing
from my eloquence. If I have made any real advance therein, it is
my aspirations rather than my attainments on which I must base my
claim. 

Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius Caecilius
be true, that innocence is eloquence itself, to that extent I may
lay claim to eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on that
assumption what living man could be more eloquent than myself? I have
never even harboured in my thoughts anything to which I should fear
to give utterance. Nay, my eloquence is consummate, for I have ever
held all sin in abomination; I have the highest oratory at my command,
for I have uttered no word, I have done no deed, of which I need fear
to discourse in public. I will begin therefore to discourse of those
verses of mine, which they have produced as though they were something
of which I ought to be ashamed. You must have noticed the laughter
with which I showed my annoyance at the absurd and illiterate manner
in which they recited them. 

Part 6

They began by reading one of my jeux d'esprit, a brief letter in verse,
addressed to a certain Calpurnianus on the subject of a tooth-powder.
When Calpurnianus produced my letter as evidence against me, his desire
to do me a hurt blinded him to the fact that if anything in the letter
could be urged as a reproach against me, he shared in that reproach.
For the verses testify to the fact that he had asked me to send him
the wherewithal to clean his teeth: 

Good morrow! Friend Calpurnianus, take 
the salutation these swift verses make. 
Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call, 
a powder rare to cleans thy teeth withal. 
This delicate dust of Arab spices fine, 
shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away 
the relics of the feast of yesterday. 
So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen, 
if laughter shown thy teeth their lips between. 

I ask you, what is there in these verses that is disgusting in point
either of matter or of manner? What is there that a philosopher should
be ashamed to own? Unless indeed I am to blame for sending a powder
made of Arabian spices to Calpurnianus, for whom it would be more
suitable that he should 

Polish his teeth and ruddy gums, 

as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the Iberians.

Part 7

I saw a short while back that some of you could scarcely restrain
your laughter, when our orator treated these views of mine on the
cleansing of the teeth as a matter for savage denunciation, and condemned
my administration of a tooth-powder with fiercer indignation than
has ever been shown in condemning the administration of a poison.

Of course it is a serious charge, and one that no philosopher can
afford to despise, to say of a man that he will not allow a speck
of dirt to be seen upon his person, that he will not allow any visible
portion of his body to be offensive or unclean, least of all the mouth,
the organ used most frequently, openly and conspicuously by man, whether
to kiss a friend, to conduct a conversation, to speak in public, or
to offer up prayer in some temple. Indeed speech is the prelude to
every kind of action and, as the greatest of poets says, proceeds
from `the barrier of our teeth'. If there were any one present here
today with like command of the grand style, he might say after his
fashion that those above all men who have any care for their manner
of speaking, should pay closer attention to their mouth than to any
other portion of their body, for it is the soul's antechamber, the
portal of speech, and the gathering place where thoughts assemble.
I myself should say that in my poor judgement there is nothing less
seemly for a freeborn man with the education of a gentleman than an
unwashen mouth. For man's mouth is in position exalted, to the eye
conspicuous, in use eloquent. True, in wild beasts and cattle the
mouth is placed low and looks downward to the feet, is in close proximity
to their food and to the path thq tread, and is hardly ever conspicuous
save when its owner is dead or infuriated with a desire to bite. But
there is no part of man that sooner catches the eye when he is silent,
or more often when he speaks. 

Part 8

I should be obliged, therefore, if my critic Aemilianus would answer
me and tell me whether he is ever in the habit of washing his feet,
or, if he admits that he is in the habit of so doing, whether he is
prepared to argue that a man should pay more attention to the cleanliness
of his feet than to that of his teeth. Certainly, if like you, Aemilianus,
he never opens his mouth save to utter slander and abuse, I should
advise him to pay no attention to the state of his mouth nor to attempt
to remove the stains from his teeth with oriental powders: he would
be better employed in rubbing them with charcoal from some funeral
pyre. Least of all should he wash them with common water; rather let
his guilty tongue, the chosen servant of lies and bitter words, rot
in the filth and ordure that it loves! Is it reasonable, wretch, that
your tongue should be fresh and clean, when your voice is foul and
loathsome, or that, like the viper, you should employ snow-white teeth
for the emission of dark, deadly poison? On the other hand it is only
right that, just as we wash a vessel that is to hold good liquor,
he who knows that his words will be at once useful and agreeable should
cleanse his mouth as a prelude to speech. 

But why should I speak further of man? Even the crocodile, the monster
of the Nile -- so they tell me -- opens his jaws in all innocence,
that his teeth may be cleaned. For his mouth being large, tongueless,
and continually open in the water, multitudes of leeches become entangled
in his teeth: these, when the crocodile emerges from the river and
opens his mouth, are removed by a friendly waterbird, which is allowed
to insert its beak without any risk to itself. 

Part 9

But enough of this! I now come to certain other of my verses, which
according to them are amatory; but so vilely and coarsely did they
read them as to leave no impression save one of disgust. Now what
has it to do with the malpractices of the black art, if I write poems
in praise of the boys of my friend Scribonius Laetus? Does the mere
fact of my being a poet make me a wizard? Who ever heard any orator
produce such likely ground for suspicion, such apt conjectures, such
close-reasoned argument? `Apuleius has written verses!' If they are
bad, that is something against him as a poet, but not as a philosopher.
If they are good, why do you accuse him? `But they were frivolous
verses of an erotic character.' So that is the charge you bring against
me? and it was a mere slip of the tongue when you indicted me for
practising the black art? 

And yet many others have written such verse, although you may be ignorant
of the fact. Among the Greeks, for instance, there was a certain Teian,
there was a Lacedaemonian, a Cean, and countless others; there was
even a woman, a Lesbian, who wrote with such grace and such passion
that the sweetness of her song makes us forgive the impropriety of
her words; among our own poets there were Aedituus, Porcius, and Catulus,
with countless others. `But they were not philosophers.' Will you
then deny that Solon was a serious man and a philosopher? Yet he is
the author of that most wanton verse: 

Longing for your thighs and your sweet mouth. 

What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one
line? I will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of
Zeno the founder of Stoicism, and many other similar instances. Let
me recite my own verses afresh, that my opponents may realize that
I am not ashamed of them: 

Critias my treasure is and you, 
light of my life, Charinus, too 
hold in my love-tormented heart 
your own inalienable part. 
Ah! Doubt not! With redoubled spite 
though fire on fire consume me quite, 
the flames ye kindle, boys divine, 
I can endure, so ye be mine. 
Only to each may I be dear 
as your own selves are, and as near; 
grant only this and you shall be 
dear as mine own two eyes to be. 

Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being
the most intemperate in expression. 

I lay these garlands, Critias sweet, 
and this my song before thy feet; 
song to thyself I dedicate, 
wreaths to the Angel of thy fate. 
The song I send to hymn the praise 
of this, the best of all glad days, 
whereon the circling seasons bring 
the glory of thy fourteenth spring; 
the garlands, that thy brows may shine 
with splendour worthy spring's and thine, 
that thou in boyhood's golden hours 
mayst deck the flower of life with flowers. 
Wherefore for these bright blooms of spring 
thy springtide sweet surrendering, 
the tribute of my love repay 
and all my gifts with thine outweigh. 
Surpass the twined garland's grace 
with arms entwined in soft embrace; 
the crimson of the rose eclipse 
with kisses from thy rosy lips. 
Or if thou wilt, be this my meed 
and breathe thy soul into the reed; ˇ! 
then shall my songs be shamed and mute 
before the music of thy flute. 

Part 10

This, Maximus, is what they throw in my teeth, as though it were the
work of an infamous rake: verses about garlands and serenades.

You must have noticed also that in this connexion they further attack
me for calling these boys Charinus and Critias, which are not their
true names. On this principle they may as well accuse Caius Catullus
for calling Clodia Lesbia, Ticidas for substituting the name Perilla
for that of Metella, Propertius for concealing the name Hostia beneath
the pseudonym of Cynthia, and Tibullus for singing of Delia in his
verse, when it was Plania who ruled his heart. For my part I should
rather blame Caius Lucilius, even allowing him all the license of
a satiric poet, for prostituting to the public gaze the boys Gentius
and Macedo, whose real names he mentions in his verse without any
attempt at concealment. How much more reserved is Mantua's poet, who,
when like myself he praised the slave-boy of his friend Pollio in
one of his light pastoral poems, shrinks from mentioning real nnames
and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis. 

But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the Virgilean
shepherds and cowherds, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor
and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus,
Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, denies that
such verses are worthy of a philosopher who is a follower of Plato.
Will you persist in this attitude, Aemilianus, if I can show that
my verses were modelled upon Plato? For the only verses of Plato now
extant are love-elegies, the reason, I imagine, being that he burned
all his other poems because they were inferior in charm and finish.
Learn then the verses written by Plato in honour of the boy Aster,
though I doubt if at your age it is possible for you to become a man
of learning. 

Thou wert the morning star among the living 
ere thy fair light had fled; -- 
now having died, thou art as Hesperus giving 
new light unto the dead. 

There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis
and Phaedrus: 

I lid but breathe the words `Alexis fair', 
and all men gazed on him with wondering eyes, 
my soul, why point to questing beasts their prize? 
'Twas thus we lost our Phaedrus; ah! Beware! 

Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line
addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse: 

Dion, with love thou hast distraught my soul. 

Part 11

Which of us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously
of such things in a lawcourt? Or you who are slanderous enough to
include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in
verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read
Catullus, who replies thus to those who wish him ill: 

A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed. 
But for his verses there is no such need. 

The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet
Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:

Thy verse was wanton, but thy soul was chaste, 

words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of somewhat
too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral life.
I remember that I have read not a few poems by the divine Hadrian
himself which were of the same type. Come now, Aemilianus, I dare
you to say that that was ill done which was done by an emperor and
censor, the divine Hadrian, and once done was recorded for subsequent
generations. 

But, apart from that, do you imagine that Maximus will censure anything
that has Plato for its model, Plato whose verses, which I have just
read, are all the purer for being frank, all the more modest for being
outspoken? For in these matters and the like, dissimulation and concealment
is the mark of the sinner, open acknowledgement and publication a
sign that the writer is but exercising his wit. For nature has bestowed
on innocence a voice wherewith to speak, but to guilt she has given
silence to veil its sin. 

Part 12

I say nothing of those lofty and divine Platonic doctrina, that are
familiar to but few of the elect and wholly unknown to all the uninitiate,
such for instance as that which teaches us that Venus is not one goddess,
but two, each being strong in her own type of love and several types
of lovers. The one is the goddess of the common herd, who is fired
by base and vulgar passion and commands not only the hearts of men,
but cattle and wild beasts also, to give themselves over to the gratification
of their desires: she strikes down these creatures with fierce intolerable
force and fetters their servile bodies in the embraces of lust. The
other is a celestial power endued with lofty and generous passion:
she cares for none save men, and of them but few; she neither stings
nor lures her followers to foul deeds. Her love is neither wanton
nor voluptuous, but serious and unadorned, and wins her lovers to
the pursuit of virtue by revealing to them how fair a thing is nobility
of soul. Or, if ever she commends beautiful bodies to their admiration,
she puts a bar upon all indecorous conduct. For the only claim that
physical beauty has upon the admiration is that it reminds those whose
souls have soared above things human to things divine, of that beauty
which once they beheld in all its truth and purity enthroned among
the gods in heaven. Wherefore let us admit that Afranius shows his
usual beauty of expression when he says: `Only the sage can love,
only desire is known to others'; although if you would know the real
truth, Aemilianus, or if you are capable of ever comprehending such
high matters, the sage does not love, but only remembers.

Part 13

I would therefore beg you to pardon the philosopher Plato for his
amatory verse, and relieve me of the necessity of offending against
the precepts put by Ennius into the mouth of Neoptolemus by philosophizing
at undue length; on the other hand if you refuse to pardon Plato,
I am quite ready to suffer blame on this count in his company.

I must express my deep gratitude to you, Maximus, for listening with
such close attention to these side issues, which are necessary to
my defence inasmuch as I am paying back my accusers in their own coin.
Your kindness emboldens me to make this further request, that you
will listen to all that I have to say by way of prelude to my answer
to the main charge with the same courtesy and attention that you have
hitherto shown. 

For next I have to deal with that long oration, austere as any censor's,
which Pudens delivered on the subject of my mirror. He nearly exploded,
so violently did he declaim against the horrid nature of my offence.
`The philosopher owns a mirror, the philosopher actually possesses
a mirror.' Grant that I possess it: if I denied it, you might really
think that your accusation had gone home: still it is by no means
a necessary inference that I am in the habit of adorning myself before
a mirror. Why! suppose I possessed a theatrical wardrobe, would you
venture to argue from that that I am in the frequent habit of wearing
the trailing robes of tragedy, the saffron cloak of the mimic dance,
or the patchwork suit of the harlequinade? I think not. On the contrary
there are plenty of things of which I enjoy the use without the possession.

But if possession is no proof of use nor non-possession of non-use,
and if you complain of the fact that I look into the mirror rather
than that I possess it, you must go on to show when and in whose presence
I have ever looked into it; for as things stand, you make it a greater
crime for a philosopher to look upon a mirror than for the uninitiated
to gaze upon the mystic emblems of Ceres. 

Part 14

Come now, let me admit that I háve looked into it. Is it a crime to
be acquainted with one's own likeness and to carry it with one wherever
one goes ready to hand within the compass of a small mirror, instead
of keeping it hidden away in some one place? Are you ignorant of the
fact that there is nothing more pleasing for a man to look upon than
his own image? At any rate I know that fathers love those sons most
who most resemble themselves, and that public statues are decreed
as a reward for merit that the original may gladden his heart by looking
on them. What else is the significance of statues and portraits produced
by the various arts? You will scarcely maintain the paradox that what
is worthy of admiration when produced by art is blameworthy when produced
by nature; for nature has an even greater facility and truth than
art. 

Long labour is expended over all the portraits wrought by the hand
of man, yet they never attain to such truth as is revealed by a mirror.
Clay is lacking in life, marble in colour, painting in solidity, and
all three in motion, which is the most convincing element in a likeness:
whereas in a mirror the reflection of the image is marvellous, for
it is not only like its original, but moves and follows every nod
of the man to whom it belongs; its age always corresponds to that
of those who look into the mirror, from their earliest childhood to
their expiring age: it puts on all the changes brought by the advance
of years, shares all the varying habits of the body, and imitates
the shifting expressions of joy and sorrow that may be seen on the
face of one and the same man. For all we mould in clay or cast in
bronze or carve in stone or tint with encaustic pigments or colour
with paint, in a word, every attempt at artistic representation by
the hand of man after a brief lapse of time loses in truth and becomes
motionless and impassive like the face of a corpse. So far superior
to all pictorial art in respect of truthful representation is that
craftsmanly smoothness and productive splendour of the mirror.

Part 15

Two alternatives then are before us. We must either follow the precept
of the Lacedaemonian Agesilaus, who had no confidence in his personal
appeannce and refused to allow his portrait to be painted or carved;
or we must accept the universal custom of the rest of mankind which
welcomes portraiture both in sculpture and painting. In the latter
case, is there any reason for preferring to see one's portrait moulded
in marble rather than reflected in silver, in a painting rather than
in a mirror? 

Or do you regard it as disgraceful to pay continual attention to one's
own appearance? Is not Socrates said actually to have urged his followers
frequently to consider their image in a glass, that so those of them
that prided themselves on their appearance might above all else take
care that they did no dishonour to the splendour of their body by
the blackness of their hearts; while those who regarded themselves
as less than handsome in personal appearance might take especial pains
to conceal the meanness of their body by the glory of their virtue?
You see; the wisest man of his day actually went so far as to use
the mirror as an instrument of moral discipline. Again, who is ignorant
of the fact that Demosthenes, the greatest master of the art of speaking,
always practised pleading before a mirror as though before a professor
of rhetoric? When that supreme orator had drained deep draughts of
eloquence in the study of Plato the philosopher, and had learned all
that could be learned of argumentation from the dialectician Eubulides,
last of all he betook himself to a mirror to learn perfection of delivery.
Which do you think should pay greatest attention to the decorousness
of his appearance in the delivery of a speech? The orator when he
wrangles with his opponent or the philosopher when he rebukes the
vices of mankind? The man who harangues for a brief space before an
audience of jurymen drawn by the chance of the lot, or he who is continually
discoursing with all mankind for audience? The man who is quarrelling
over the boundaries of lands, or he whose theme is the boundaries
of good and evil? 

Moreover there are other reasons why a philosopher should look into
a mirror. He is not always concerned with the contemplation of his
own likeness, he contemplates also the causes which produce that likeness.
Is Epicurus right when he asserts that images proceed forth from us,
as it were a kind of slough that continually streams from our bodies?
These images when they strike anything smooth and solid are reflected
by the shock and reversed in such wise as to give back an image turned
to face its original. Or should we accept the view maintained by other
philosophers that rays are emitted from our body? According to Plato
these rays are filtered forth from the centre of our eyes and mingle
and blend with the light of the world without us; according to Archytas
they issue forth from us without any external support; according to
the Stoics these rays are called into action by the tension of the
air: all agree that, when these emanations strike any dense, smooth,
and shining surface, they return to the surface from which they proceeded
in such manner that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of
reflection, and as a result that which they approach and touch without
the mirror is imaged within the mirror. 

Part 16

What do you think? Should not philosophers make all these problems
subjects of research and inquiry and in solitary study look into mirrors
of every kind, liquid and solid? There is also over and above these
questions further matter for discussion. For instance, why is it that
in flat mirrors all images and objects reflected are shown in almost
precisely their original dimensions, whereas in convex and spherical
mirrors everything is seen smaller, in concave mirrors on the other
hand larger than nature? Why again and under what circumstances are
left and right reversed? When does one and the same mirror seem now
to withdraw the image into its depths, now to extrude it forth to
view? Why do concave mirrors when held at right angles to the rays
of the sun kindle tinder set opposite them? What is the cause of the
prismatic colours of the rainbow, or of the appearance in heaven of
two rival images of the sun, with sundry other phenomena treated in
a monumental volume by Archimedes of Syracuse, a man who showed extraordinary
and unique subtlety in all branches of geometry, but was perhaps particularly
remarkable for his frequent and attentive inspection of mirrors.

If you had only read this book, Aemilianus, and, instead of devoting
yourself to the study of your fields and their dull clods, had studied
the mathematician's slate and blackboard, believe me, although your
face is hideous enough for a tragic mask of Thyestes, you would assuredly,
in your desire for the acquisition of knowledge, look into the glass
and sometimes leave your plough to marvel at the numberless furrows
with which wrinkles have scored your face. 

But I should not be surprised if you prefer me to speak of your ugly
deformity of a face and to be silent about your morals, which are
infinitely more repulsive than your features. I will say nothing of
them. In the first place I am not naturally of a quarrelsome disposition,
and secondly I am glad to say that until quite recently you might
have been white or black for all I knew. Even now my knowledge of
you is inadequate. The reason for this is that your rustic occupations
have kept you in obscurity, while I have been occupied by my studies,
and so the shadow cast about you by your insignificance has shielded
your character from scrutiny, while I for my part take no interest
in others' ill deeds, but have always thought it more important to
conceal my own faults than to track out those of others. As a result
you have the advantage of one who, while he is himself shrouded in
darkness, surveys another who chances to have taken his stand in the
full light of day. You from your darkness can with ease form an opinion
as to what I am doing in my not undistinguished position before all
the world; but your position is so abject, so obscure, and so withdrawn
from the light of publicity that you are by no means so conspicuous.

Part 17

I neither know nor care to know whether you have slaves to till your
fields or whether you do so by interchange of service with your neighbours.
But you know that at Oea I gave three slaves their freedom on the
same day, and your advocate has cast it in my teeth together with
other actions of mine of which you have given him information. And
yet but a few minutes earlier he had declared that I came to Oea accompanied
by no more than one slave. I challenge you to tell me how I could
have made one slave into three free men. But perhaps this is one of
my feats of magic. Has lying made you blind, or shall I rather say
that from force of habit you are incapable of speaking the truth?
`Apuleius,' you say, `came to Oea with one slave,' and then only a
very few words later you blurt out, `Apuleius on one and the same
day at Oea gave three slaves their freedom.' Not even the assertion
that I had come with three slaves and had given them all their freedom
would have been credible: but suppose I had done so, what reason do
you have for regarding three slaves as a mark of my poverty, rather
than for considering three freed men as a proof of my wealth?

You don't know, really, Aemilianus, you don't know how to accuse a
philosopher: you reproach me for the scantiness of my household, whereas
it would really have been my duty to have laid claim, however falsely,
to such poverty. It would have redounded to my credit, for I know
that not only philosophers of whom I boast myself a follower, but
also generals of the Roman people have gloried in the small number
of their slaves. Have your advocates really never read that Marcus
Antonius, a man who had filled the office of consul, had but eight
slaves in his house? That that very Carbo who obtained supreme control
of Rome had fewer by one? That Manius Curius, famous beyond all men
for the crowns of victory that he had won, Manius Curius who thrice
led the triumphal procession through the same gate of Rome, had but
two servants to attend him in camp, so that in good truth that same
man who triumphed over the Sabines, the Samnites, and Pyrrhus had
fewer slaves than triumphs? Marcus Cato did not wait for others to
tell it of him, but himself records the fact in one of his speeches
that when he set out as consul for Spain he took but three slaves
from the city with him. When, however, he came to stay at a state
residence, the number seemed insufficient, and he ordered two slaves
to be bought in the market to wait on him at table, so that he took
five in all to Spain. 

Had Pudens come across these facts in his reading, he would, I think,
either have omitted this particular slander or would have preferred
to reproach me on the ground that three slaves were too large rather
than too small an establishment for a philosopher. 

Part 18

Pudens actually reproached me with being poor, a charge which is welcome
to a philosopher and one that he may glory in. For poverty has long
been the handmaid of philosophy; frugal and sober, she is content
with little, greedy for naught save honour, a stable possession in
the face of wealth, her mien is free from care, and her adornment
simple; her counsels are beneficent, she puffs no man up with pride,
she corrupts no man with passions beyond his control, she maddens
no man with the lust for power, she neither desires nor can indulge
in the pleasures of feasting and of sex. These sins and their like
are usually the nurslings of wealth. Count over all the greatest crimes
recorded in the history of mankind, you will find no poor man among
their guilty authors. On the other hand, it is rare to find wealthy
men among the great figures of history. All those at whom we marvel
for their great deeds were the nurslings of poverty from their very
cradles, poverty that founded all cities in the days of old, poverty
mother of all arts, witless of all sin, bestower of all glory, crowned
with all honour among all the peoples of the world. Take the history
of Greece: the justice of poverty is seen in Aristides, her benignity
in Phocion, her force in Epaminondas, her wisdom in Socrates, her
eloquence in Homer. It was this same poverty that established the
empire of the Roman people in its first beginnings, and even to this
day Rome offers up thanksgivings for it to the immortal gods with
libations poured from a wooden ladle and offerings borne in an earthen
platter. If the judges sitting to try this case were Caius Fabricius,
Gnaeus Scipio, Manius Curius, whose daughters on account of their
poverty were given dowries from the public treasury and so went to
their husbands bringing with them the honour of their houses and the
wealth of the state; if Publicola, who drove out the Kings, or Agrippa,
the healer of the people's strife, men whose funerals were on account
of their poverty enriched by the gift of a few farthings per man from
the whole Roman people; if Atilius Regulus, whose lands on account
of his own poverty were cultivated at the public expense; if, in a
word, all the heroes of the old Roman stock, consuls and censors and
triumphant generals, were given a brief renewal of life and sent back
to earth to give hearing to this case, would you dare in the presence
of so many poor consuls to reproach a philosopher with poverty?

Part 19

Perhaps Claudius Maximus seems to you to be a suitable person before
whom to deride poverty, because he himself is in enjoyment of great
wealth and enormous opulence? You are wrong, Aemilianus, you are wholly
mistaken in your estimate of his character, if you take the bounty
of his fortune rather than the sternness of his philosophy as the
standard for your judgement and fail to realize that one, who holds
so austere a creed and has so long endured military service, is more
likely to befriend a moderate fortune with all its limitations than
opulence with all its luxury, and holds that fortunes, like tunics,
should be comfortable, not long. For even a Fortune, if cannot be
carried but must be dragged, will entangle and trip the feet as badly
as a cloak that hangs down in front. In everything that we employ
for the needs of daily life, whatever exceeds the mean is superfluous
and a burden rather than a help. So it is that excessive riches, like
steering oars of too great weight and bulk, serve to sink the ship
rather than to guide it; for their bulk is unprofitable and their
superfluity a curse. 

I have noticed that of the wealthy themselves those win most praise
who live quietly and in moderate comfort, concealing their actual
resources, administering their great possessions without ostentation
or pride and showing like poor folk under the disguise of their moderation.
Now, if even the rich to some extent affect the outward form and semblance
of poverty to give evidence of their moderation, why should we of
slenderer means be ashamed of being poor not in appearance only but
in reality? 

Part 20

I might even engage with you in controversy over the word poverty,
urging that no man is poor who rejects the superfluous and has at
his command all the necessities of life, which nature has ordained
should be exceedingly small. For he who desires least will possess
most, inasmuch as he who wants but little will have all he wants.
The measure of wealth ought therefore not to be the possession of
lands and investments, but the very soul of man. For if avarice make
him continually in need of some fresh acquisition and insatiable in
his lust for gain, not even mountains of gold will bring him satisfaction,
but he will always be begging for more that he may increase what he
already possesses. That is the genuine admission of poverty. For every
desire for fresh acquisition springs from the consciousness of want,
and it matters little how large your possessions are if they are too
small for you. Philus had a far smaller household than Laelius, Laelius
than Scipio, Scipio than Crassus the Rich, and yet not even Crassus
had as much as he wanted; and so, though he surpassed all others in
wealth, he was himself surpassed by his own avarice and seemed rich
to all save himself. On the other hand, the philosophers of whom I
have spoken wanted nothing beyond what was at their disposal, and,
thanks to the harmong existing between their desires and their resources,
they were deservedly rich and happy. For poverty consists in the need
for fresh acquisition, wealth in the satisfaction springing from the
absence of needs. For the badge of penury is desire, the badge of
wealth contempt. 

Therefore, Aemilianus, if you wish me to be regarded as poor, you
must first prove that I am avaricious. But if my soul lacks nothing,
I care little how much of the goods of this world be lacking to me;
for it is no honour to possess them and no reproach to lack them.

Part 21

But let us suppose it to be otherwise. Suppose that I am poor, because
fortune has grudged me riches, because my guardian, as often happens,
misappropriated my inheritance, some enemy robbed me, or my father
left me nothing. Is it just to reproach a man for that which is regarded
as no reproach to the animal kingdom, to the eagle, to the bull, to
the lion? lf the horse is strong in the possession of his peculiar
excellences, if he is pleasant to ride and swift in his paces, no
one rebukes him for the poverty of his food. Must you then reproach
me, not for any scandalous word or deed, but simply because I live
in a small house, possess an unusually small number of slaves, subsist
on unusually light diet, wear unusually light clothing, and make unusually
small purchaches of food? 

Yet however scanty my service, food, and raiment may seem to you,
I on the contrary regard them as ample and even excessive. Indeed
I am desirous of still further reducing them, since the leas I have
to distract me the happier I shall be. For the soul, like the body,
goes lightly clad when in good health; weakness wraps itself up, and
it is a sure sign of infirmity to have many wants. We live, just as
we swim, all the better for being but lightly burdened. For in this
stormy life as on the stormy ocean heavy things sink us and light
things buoy us up. It is in this respect, I find, that the gods more
especially surpass men, namely that they lack nothing: wherefore he
of mankind whose needs are smallest is most like unto the gods.

Part 22

I therefore regarded it as a compliment when to insult me you asserted
that my whole household consisted of a wallet and a staff. Would that
my spirit were made of such stern stuff as to permit me to dispense
with all this furniture and worthily to carry that equipment for which
Crates sacrificed all his wealth! Crates, I tell you, though I doubt
if you will believe me, Aemilianus, was a man of great wealth and
honour among the nobility of Thebes; but for love of this habit, which
you cast in my face as a crime, he gave his large and luxurious household
to his fellow citizens, resigned his troops of slaves for solitude,
so contemned the countless trees of his rich orchards as to be content
with one staff, exchanged his elegant villas for one small wallet,
which, when he had fully appreciated its utility, he even praised
in song by diverting from their original meaning certain lines of
Homer in which he extols the island of Crete. I will quote the first
lines, that you may not think this a mere invention of mine designed
to meet the needs of my own case: 

There is a twon named Wallet in the midst 
of smoke that's dark as wine. 

The lines which follow are so wonderful, that had you read them you
would envy me my wallet even more than you envy me my marriage with
Pudentilla. 

You reproach philosophers for their staff and wallet. You might as
well reproach cavalry for their trappings, infantry for their shields,
standard-bearers for their banners, triumphant generals for their
chariots drawn by four white horses and their cloaks embroidered with
palmleaves. The staff and wallet are not, it is true, carried by the
Platonic philosophers, but are the badges of the Cynic school. To
Diogenes and Antisthenes they were what the crown is to the king,
the cloak of purple to the general, the cowl to the priest, the trumpet
to the augur. Indeed the Cynic Diogenes, when he disputed with Alexander
the Great, as to which of the two was the true king, boasted of his
staff as the true sceptre. The unconquered Hercules himself, since
you despise my instances as drawn from mere mendicancy, Hercules that
roamed the whole world, exterminated monsters, and conquered races,
god though he was, had but a skin for raiment and a staff for company
in the days when he wandered through the earth. And yet but a brief
while afterwards he was admitted to heaven as a reward for his virtue.

Part 23

But if you despise these examples and challenge me, not to plead my
case, but to enter into a discussion of the amount of my fortune,
to put an end to your ignorance on this point, if it exists, I acknowledge
that my father left my brother and myself a little under 2,000,000
sesterces -- a sum on which my lengthy travels, continual studies,
and frequent generosity have made considerable inroads. For I have
often assisted my friends and have shown substantial gratitude to
many of my instructors, on more than one occasion going so far as
to provide dowries for their daughters. Nay, I should not have hesitated
to expend every farthing of my patrimony, if so I might acquire what
is far better by contempt for my patrimony. But as for you, Aemilianus,
and ignorant boors of your kidney, in your case the fortune makes
the man. You are like barren and blasted trees that produce no fruit,
but are valued only for the timber that their trunks contain.

But I beg you, Aemilianus, in future to abstain from reviling any
one for their poverty, since you yourself used, after waiting for
some seasonable shower to soften the ground, to expend three days
in ploughing single-handed, with the aid of one wretched ass, that
miserable farm at Zarath, which was all your father left you. It is
only recently that fortune has smiled on you in the shape of wholly
undeserved inheritances which have fallen to you by the frequent deaths
of relatives, deaths to which, far more than to your hideous face,
you owe your nickname of Charon. 

Part 24

As to my birthplace, you assert that my writings prove it to lie right
on the marches of Numidia and Gaetulia, for I publicly described myself
as half Numidian, half Gaetulian in a discourse delivered in the presence
of that most distinguished citizen Lollianus Avitus. I do not see
that I have any more reason to be ashamed of that than had the elder
Cyrus for being of mixed descent, half Mede, half Persian. A man's
birthplace is of no importance, it is his character that matters.
We must consider not in what part of the world, but with what purpose
he set out to live his life. Sellers of wine and cabbages are permitted
to enhance the value of their wares by advertising the excellence
of the soil whence they spring, as for instance with the wine of Thasos
and the cabbages of Phlius. For those products of the soil are wonderfully
improved in flavour by the fertility of the district which produces
them, the moistness of the climate, the mildness of the winds, the
warmth of the sun, and the richness of the soil. But in the case of
man, the soul enters the tenement of the body from without. What,
then, can such circumstances as these add to or take away from his
virtues or his vices? Has there ever been a time or place in which
a race has not produced a variety of intellects, although some races
seem stupider and some wiser than others? The Scythians are the stupidest
of men, and yet the wise Anacharsis was a Scyth. The Athenians are
shrewd, and yet the Athenian Meletides was a fool. 

I say this not because I am ashamed of my country, since even in the
time of Syphax we were a township. When he was conquered we were transferred
by the gift of the Roman people to the dominion of King Masinissa,
and finally as the result of a settlement of veteran soldiers, our
second founders, we have become a colony of the highest distinction.
In this same colony my father attained to the post of duumvir and
became the foremost citizen of the place, after filling all the municipal
offices of honour. I myself, immediately after my first entry into
the municipal senate, succeeded to my father's position in the community,
and, as I hope, am in no ways a degenerate successor, but receive
like honour and esteem for my maintenance of the dignity of my position.
Why do I mention this? That you, Aemilianus, may be less angry with
me in future and may more readily pardon me for having been negligent
enough not to select your `Attic' Zarath for my birthplace.

Part 25

Are you not ashamed to produce such accusations with such violence
before such a judge, to bring forward frivolous and self-contradictory
accusations, and then in the same breath to blame me on both charges
at once? Is it not a sheer contradiction to object to my wallet and
staff on the ground of austerity, to my poems and mirror on the ground
of undue levity; to accuse me of parsimony for having only one slave,
and of extravagance in having three; to denounce me for my Greek eloquence
and my barbarian birth? Awake from your slumber and remember that
you are speaking before Claudius Maximus, a man of stern character,
burdened with the business of the whole province. Cease, I say, to
bring forward these empty slanders. Prove your indictment, prove that
I am guilty of ghastly crimes, detestable sorceries, and black art-magic.
Why is it that the strength of your speech lies in mere noise, while
it is weak and flabby in point of facts? 

I will now deal with the actual charge of magic. You spared no violence
in fanning the flame of hatred against me. But you have disappointed
all men's expectations by your old wives' fables, and the fire kindled
by your accusations has burned itself away. I ask you, Maximus, have
you ever seen fire spring up among the stubble, crackling sharply,
blazing wide and spreading fast, but soon exhausting its flimsy fuel,
dying fast away, leaving not a wrack behind? So they have kindled
their accusation with abuse and fanned it with words, but it lacks
the fuel of facts and, your verdict once given, is destined to leave
not a wrack of calumny behind. The whole of Aemilianus' calumnious
accusation was centred in the charge of magic. I should therefore
like to ask his most learned advocates how, precisely, they would
define a magician. 

If what I read in a large number of authors is true, namely, that
magician is the Persian word for priest, what is there criminal in
being a priest and having due knowledge, science, and skill in all
ceremonial law, sacrificial duties, and the binding rules of religion,
at least if magic consists in that which Plato sets forth in his description
of the methods employed by the Persians in the education of their
young princes? I remember the very words of that divine philosopher.
Let me recall them to your memory, Maximus: 

When the boy has reached the age of fourteen he is handed over to
the care of men known as the Royal Masters. They are four in number,
and are chosen as being the best of the elders of Persia, one the
wisest, another the justest, a third the most temperate, a fourth
the bravest. And one of these teaches the boy the magic of Zoroaster
the son of Oromazes; and this magic is no other than the worship of
the gods. He also teaches him the arts of kingship. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION 2

Part 26 

Do you hear, you who so rashly accuse the art of magic? It is an
art acceptable to the immortal gods, full of all knowledge of worship
and of prayer, full of piety and wisdom in things divine, full of
honour and glory since the day when Zoroaster and Oromazes established
it, high-priestess of the powers of heaven. Nay, it is one of the
first elements of princely instruction, nor do they lightly admit
any chance person to be a magician, any more than they would admit
him to be a king. Plato -- if I may quote him again -- in another
passage dealing with a certain Zalmoxis, a Thracian and also a master
of this art has written that magical charms are merely beautiful words.
If that is so, why should I be forbidden to learn the fair words of
Zalmoxis or the priestly lore. of Zoroaster? 

But if these accusers of mine, after the fashion of the common herd,
define a magician as one who by communion of speech with the immortal
gods has power to do all the marvels that he will, through a strange
power of incantation, I really wonder that they are not afraid to
attack one whom they acknowledge to be so powerful. For it is impossible
to guard against such a mysterious and divine power. Against other
dangers we may take adequate precautions. He who summons a murderer
before the judge comes into court with an escort of friends; he who
denounces a poisoner is unusually careful as to what he eats; he who
accuses a thief sets a guard over his possessions. But for the man
who exposes a magician, credited with such awful powers, to the danger
of a capital sentence, how can escort or precaution or watchmen save
him from unforeseen and inevitable disaster? Nothing can save him,
and therefore the man who believes in the truth of such a charge as
this is certainly the last person in the world who should bring such
an accusation. 

Part 27

But it is a common and general error of the uninitiated to bring the
following accusations against philosophers. Some of them think that
those who explore the origins and elements of material things are
irreligious, and assert that they deny the existence of the gods.
Take, for instance, the cases of Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus,
and Epicurus, and other natural philosophers. Others call those magicians
who bestow unusual care on the investigation of the workings of providence
and unusual devotion on their worship of the gods, as though, forsooth,
they knew how to perform everything that they know actually to be
performed. So Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Ostanes were regarded
as magicians, while a similar suspicion attached to the `purifications'
of Empedocles, the `demon' of Socrates and the `good' of Plato. I
congratulate myself therefore on being admitted to such distinguished
company. 

I fear, however, Maximus, that you may regard the empty, ridiculous
and childish fictions which my opponents have advanced in support
of their case as serious charges merely because they have been put
forward. `Why,' says my accuser, `have you sought out particular kinds
of fish?' Why should not a philosopher be permitted to do for the
satisfaction of his desire for knowledge what the gourmand is permitted
to do for the satisfaction of his gluttony? `What,' he asks, `induced
a free woman to marry you after thirteen years of widowhood?' As if
it were not more remarkable that she should have remained a widow
so long. `Why, before she married you, did she express certain opinions
in a letter?' As if anyone should give the reasons for another person's
private opinions. `But,' he goes on, `although she was your senior
in years, she did not despise your youth.' Surely this simply serves
to show that there was no need of magic to induce a woman to marry
a man, or a widow to wed a bachelor some years her junior. There are
more charges equally frivolous. `Apuleius,' he persists, `keeps a
mysterious object in his house which he worships with veneration.'
As if it were not a worse offence to have nothing to worship at all.
`A boy fell to the ground in Apuleius' presence.' What if a young
man or even an old man had fallen in my presence through a sudden
stroke of disease or merely owing to the slipperiness of the ground?
Do you really think to prove your charge of magic by such arguments
as these: the fall of a wretched boy, my marriage to my wife, my purchases
of fish? 

Part 28

I should run but small risk if I were to content myself with what
I have already said and begin my peroration. But since as a result
of the length at which my accusers spoke, the water-clock still allows
me plenty of time, let us, if there is no objection, consider the
charges in detail. I will deny none of them, be they true or false.
I will assume their truth, that this great crowd, which has gathered
from all directions to hear this case, may clearly understand not
only that no true incrimination can be brought against philosophers,
but that not even any false charge can be fabricated against them,
which -- such is their confidence in their innocence -- they will
not be prepared to admit and to defend, even though it be in their
power to deny it. 

I will therefore begin by refuting their arguments, and will prove
that they have nothing to do with magic. Next I will show that even
on the assumption of my being the most consummate magician, I have
never given cause or occasion for conviction of any evil practice.
I will also deal with the lies with which they have endeavoured to
arouse hostility against me, with their misquotation and misinterpretation
of my wife's letters, and with my marriage with Pudentilla, whom,
as I will proceed to prove, I married for love and not for money.
This marriage of ours caused frightful annoyance and distress to Aemilianus.
Hence springs all the anger, frenzy, and raving madness that he has
shown in the conduct of this accusation. 

If I succeed in making all these points abundantly clear and obvious,
I shall then appeal to you, Claudius Maximus, and to all here present
to bear me out, that the boy Sicinius Pudens, my step-son, through
whom and with whose consent his uncle now accuses me, was quite recently
stolen from my charge after the death of Pontianus his brother, who
was as much his superior in character as in years, and that he was
fiercely embittered against myself and his mother through no fault
of mine: that he abandoned his study of the liberal arts and cast
off all restraint, and -- thanks to the education afforded him by
this villanous accusation -- is more likely to resemble his uncle
Aemilianus than his brother Pontianus. 

Part 29

I will now, as I promised, take Aemilianus' ravings one by one, beginning
with that charge which you must have noticed was given the place of
honour in the accuser's speech, as his most effective method of exciting
suspicion against me as a sorcerer, the charge that I had sought to
purchase certain kinds of fish from some fishermen. Which of these
two points is of the slightest value as affording suspicion of sorcery?
That fishermen sought to procure me the fish ? Would you have me entrust
such a task to gold-embroiderers or carpenters, and, to avoid your
calumnies, make them change their trades so that the carpenter would
net me the fish, and the fisherman take his place and hew his timber?
Or did you infer that the fish were wanted for evil purposes because
I paid to get them? I presume, if I had wanted them for a dinner-party,
I should have got them for nothing. Why do not you go farther and
accuse me on many similar grounds ? I have often bought wine and vegetables,
fruit and bread. The principles laid down by you would involve the
starvation of all purveyors of dainties. Who will ever venture to
purchase food from them, if it be decided that all provisions for
which money is given are wanted not for food but for sorcery?

But if there is nothing in all this that can give rise to suspicion,
neither the payment of the fishermen to ply their usual trade, to
wit, the capture of fish -- I may point out that the prosecution never
produced any of these fishermen, who are, as a matter of fact, wholly
creatures of their imagination -- nor the purchase of a common article
of sale -- the prosecution have never stated the amount paid, for
fear that if they mentioned a small sum, it would be regarded as trivial,
or if they mentioned a large sum it would fail to win belief, -- if,
I say, there is no cause for suspicion on any of these grounds, I
would ask Aemilianus to tell me what, failing these, induced them
to accuse me of magic. 

Part 30

`You seek to purchase fish,' he says. I will not deny it. But, I ask
you, is any one who does that a magician? No more, in my opinion,
than if I should seek to purchase hares or boar's flesh or fatted
capons. Or is there something mysterious in fish and fish alone, hidden
from all save sorcerers only? If you know what it is, clearly you
are a magician. If you do not know, you must confess that you are
bringing an accusation of the nature of which you are entirely ignorant.
To think that you should be so ignorant not only of all literature,
but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent charges that
will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for the kindling
of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or indeed anything
else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to bring forward
in support of your lie the legend that Venus was born from the sea?

I beg you to listen to me, Tannonius Pudens, that you may learn the
extent of the ignorance which you have shown by accepting the possession
of a fish as a proof of sorcery. If you had read your Vergil, you
would certainly have known that very different things are sought for
this purpose. He, as far as I recollect, mentions soft garlands and
rich herbs and male incense and threads of diverse hues, and, in addition
to these, brittle laurel, clay to be hardened, and wax to be melted
in the fire. There are also the objects mentioned by him in a more
serious poem. 

Rank herbs are sought, with milky venom dark 
by brazen sickles under moonlight mown; 
sought also is that wondrous talisman, 
torn from the forehead of the foal at birth 
ere yet its dam could snatch it. 

But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments
to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to
be cut from scaly backs; not to be plucked from the fields of earth,
but to be drawn up from the deep fields of ocean; not to be mowed
with sickles, but to be caught on hooks. Finally, when he is speaking
of the black art, Vergil mentions poison, you produce an entree; he
mentions herbs and young shoots, you talk of scales and bones; he
crops the meadow, you search the waves. 

I would also have quoted for your benefit similar passages from Theocritus
with many others from Homer and Orpheus, from the comic and tragic
poets and from the historians, had I not noticed ere now that you
were unable to read Pudentilla's letter which was written in Greek.
I will, therefore, do no more than cite one Latin poet. Those who
have read Laevius will recognize the lines. 

Love-charms the warlocks seek through all the world: 
The `lover's knot' they try, the magic wheel, 
ribbons and nails and roots and herbs and shoots, 
the two-tailed lizard that draws on to love, 
and eke the charm tbat gods the whinnying mare. 

Part 31

You would have made out a far more plausible case by pretending that
I made use of such things instead of fish, if only you had possessed
the slightest erudition. For the belief in the use of these things
is so widespread that you might have been believed. But of what use
are fish save to be cooked and eaten at meals? In magic they seem
to me to be absolutely useless. I will tell you why I think so.

Many hold Pythagoras to have been a pupil of Zoroaster, and, like
him, to have been skilled in magic. And yet it is recorded that once
near Metapontum, on the shores of Italy, his home, which his influence
had converted into a second Greece, he noticed certain fishermen draw
up their net. He offered to buy whatever it might contain, and after
depositing the price ordered all the fish caught in meshes of the
net to be relea~ed and thrown back into the sea. He would assuredly
never have allowed them to slip from his possession had he known them
to possess any valuable magical properties. For being a man of abnormal
learning, and a great admirer of the men of old, he remembered that
Homer, a poet of manifold or, rather I should say, absolute knowledge
of all that may be known, spoke of the power of all the drugs that
earth produces, but made no mention of the sea, when speasing of a
certain witch, he wrote the line: 

All drugs, that wide earth nourishes, she knew. 

Similarly in another passage he says: 

Earth the grain-giver 
yields up to her its store of drugs, whereo 
many be healing, mingled in the cup, 
and many baneful. 

But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses
his magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl,
nor Circe her cup, nor Venus her girdle, with any charm drawn from
the sea or its inhabitants. You alone within the memory of man have
been found to sweep as it were by some convulsion of nature all the
powers of herbs and roots and young shoots and small pebbles from
their hilltops into the sea, and there confine them in the entrails
of fish. And so whereas sorcerers at their rites used to call on Mercury
the giver of oracles, Venus that lures the soul, the moon that knows
the mystery of the night, and Trivia the mistress of the shades, you
will transfer Neptune, with Salacia and Portumnus and all the company
of Nereids from the cold tides of the sea to the burning tides of
love. 

Part 32

I have given my reasons for refusing to believe that magicians and
fish have anything to do with one another. But now, if it please you,
we will assume with Aemilianus that fish are useful for making magical
charms as well as for their usual purposes. But does that prove that
whoever acquires fish is ipso facto a magician? On those lines it
might be urged that whoever acquires a sloop is a pirate, whoever
acquires a crowbar a burglar, whoever acquires a sword an assassin.
You will say that there is nothing in the world, however harmless,
that may not be put to some bad use, nothing so cheerful that it may
not be given a gloomy meaning. And yet we do not on that account put
a bad interpretation on everything, though, for instance, you should
hold that incense, cassia, myrrh, and similar other scents are purchased
solely for the purpose of funerals; whereas they are also used for
sacrifice and medicine. 

But on the lines of your argument you must believe that even the comrades
of Menelaus were magicians; for they, according to the great poet,
averted starvation at the isle of Pharos by their use of curved fish-hooks.
Nay, you will class in the same category of sorcerers seamews, dolphins,
and the lobster; gourmands also, who sink whole fortunes in the sums
they pay to fishermen; and fishermen themselves, who by their art
capture all manner of fish. 

`But what do you want fish for?' you insist. I feel myself under no
necessity to tell you, and refuse to do so. But I challenge you to
prove unsupported that I bought them for the purpose you assert; as
though I had bought hellebore or hemlock or opium or any other of
those drugs, the moderate use of which is salutary, although they
are deadly when given with other substances or in too large quantities.
Who would endure it if you made this a ground for accusing me of being
a poisoner, merely because those drugs are capable of killing a man?

Part 33

However, let us see what these fish were, fish so necessary for my
possession and so hard to find, that they were well worth the price
I paid for their acquisition. They have mentioned no more than three.
To one they gave a false name; as regards the other two they lied.
The name was false, for they asserted that the fish was a sea-hare,
whereas it was quite another fish, which Themison, my servant, who
knows something of medicine as you heard from his own lips, bought
of his own suggestion for me to inspect. For, as a matter of fact,
he has not as yet ever come across a sea-hare. But I admit that I
search for other kinds of fish as well, and have commissioned not
only fishermen but private friends to search for all the rarest kinds
of fish, begging them either to describe the appearance of the fish
or to send it me, if possible, alive, or, failing that, dead. Why
I do so I will soon make clear. 

My accusers lied -- and very cunning they thought themselves -- when
they closed their false accusation by pretending that I had sought
for two sea-beasts known by gross names. That fellow Tannonius wished
to indicate the nature of the obscenity, but failed, matchless pleader
that he is, owing to his inability to speak. After long hesitation
he indicated the name of one of them by means of some clumsy and disgusting
circumlocution. The other he found impossible to describe with decency,
and evaded the difficulty by turning to my works and quoting a certain
passage from them in which I described the attitude of a statue of
Venus. 

Part 34

He also with that lofty puritanism which characterizes him, reproached
me for not being ashamed to describe foul things in noble language.
I might justly retort on him that, though he openly professes the
study of eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance
to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently,
when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he
begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied. Come now! Suppose
I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase
which was of such service to you, what words would you have found
to frame a charge, which is as suited to your stupidity as to your
powers of speech? I ask you, is there anything more idiotic than the
inference that, because the names of two things resemble each other,
the things themselves are identical? 

Or did you think it a particularly clever invention on your part to
pretend that I had sought out these two fish for the purpose of using
them as magical charms? Remember that it is as absurd an argument
to say that these sea-creatures with gross names were sought for gross
purposes, as to say that the sea-comb is sought for the adornment
of the hair, the fish named sea-hawk to catch birds, the fish named
the little boar for the hunting of boars, or the sea-skull to raise
the dead. My reply to these lying fabrications, which are as stupid
as they are absurd, is that I have never attempted to acquire these
playthings of the sea, these tiny trifles of the shore, either gratis
or for money. 

Part 35

Further, I reply that you were quite ignorant of the nature of the
objects which you pretended that I sought to acquire. For these worthless
fish you mention can be found on any shore in heaps and multitudes,
and are cast up on dry land by the merest ripple without any need
for human agency. Why do you not say that at the same time I commissioned
large numbers of fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-shells,
rough shells, smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the
tentacles of cuttlefish, shingle, straws, cordage, not to mention
worm-eaten oyster-shells, moss, and seaweed, and all the flotsam of
the sea that the winds drive, or the salt wave casts up, or the storm
sweeps back, or the calm leaves high and dry all along our shores?
For their names are no less suitable than those I mentioned above
for the purpose of awakening suspicions. 

You have said that certain objects drawn from the sea have a certain
value for gross purposes on account of the similarity of their names.
On this analogy why should not a stone be good for diseases of the
bladder, a shell for the making of a will, a crab for a cancer, seaweed
for an ague? Really, Claudius Maximus, in listening to these appallingly
long-winded accusations to their very close you have shown a patience
that is excessive and a kindness which is too long-suffering. For
my part when they uttered these charges of theirs, as though they
were serious and cogent, while I laughed at their stupidity, I marvelled
at your patience. 

Part 36

However, since he takes so much interest in my affairs, I will now
tell Aemilianus why I have examined so many fishes already and why
I am unwilling to remain in ignorance of some I have not yet seen.
Although he is in the decline of life and suffering from senile decay,
let him, if he will, acquire ome learning even at the eleventh hour.
Let him read the words of the philosophers of old, that now at any
rate he may learn that I am not the first ichthyologist, but follow
in the steps of authors, centuries my seniors, such as Aristotle,
Theophrastus, Eudemus, Lycon, and the other successors of Plato, who
have left many books on the generation, life, parts and differences
of animals. 

It is a good thing, Maximus, that this case is being tried before
a scholar like yourself, who have read Aristotle's numerous volumes
`on the generation, the anatomy, the history of animals', together
with his numberless `Problems' and works by others of his school,
treating of various subjects of this kind. If it is an honour and
glory to them that they should have put on record the results of their
careful researches, why should it be disgraceful to me to attempt
the like task, especially since I shall attempt to write on those
subjects both in Greek and Latin and in a more concise and systematic
manner, and shall strive either to make good omissions or remedy mistakes
in all these authors? 

I beg of you, if you think it worth while, to permit the reading of
extracts from my `magic' works, that Aemilianus may learn that my
sedulous researches and inquiries have a wider range than he thinks.
Bring a volume of my Greek works -- some of my friends who are interested
in questions of natural history may perhaps have them with them in
court -- take by preference one of those dealing with problems of
natural philosophy, and from among those that volume in particular
which treats of the race of fish. While he is looking for the book,
I will tell you a story which has some relevance to this case.

Part 37

The poet Sophocles, the rival and survivor of Euripides--for he lived
to extreme old age -- on being accused by his own son of insanity
on the ground that the advance of age had destroyed his wits, is said
to have produced that matchless tragedy, his Oedipus Coloneus, on
which he happened to be engaged at the time, and to have read it aloud
to the jury without adding another word in his defence, except that
he bade them without hesitation to condemn him as insane if an old
man's poetry displeased them. At that point -- so I have read -- the
jury rose to their feet as one man to show their admiration of so
great a poet, and praised him marvellously both for the shrewdness
of his argument and for the eloquence of his tragic verse. And indeed
they were not far off unanimously condemning the accuser as the madman
instead. 

Have you found the book? Thank you. Let us try now whether what I
write may serve me in good stead in a law-court. Read a few lines
at the beginning, then some details concerning the fish. And do you
while he reads stop the water-clock. 

Part 38

You hear, Maximus. You have doubtless frequently read the like in
the wor}s of ancient philosophers. Remember too that these volumes
of mine describe fishes only, distinguishing those that spring from
the union of the sexes from those which are spontaneously generated
from the mud, discussing how often and at what periods of the year
the males and females of each species come together, setting forth
the distinction established by nature between those of them who are
viviparous and those who are oviparous -- for thus I translate the
Greek phrases zôiotoka and ôiotoka -- together with the
causes of this distinction and the organic differences by which it
is characterized, in a word -- for I would not weary you by discussing
all the different methods of generation in animals -- treating of
the distinguishing marks of species, their various manners of life,
the difference of their members and ages, with many other points necessary
for the man of science but out of place in a law-court. 

I will ask that a few of my Latin writings dealing with the same science
may be read, in which you will notice some rare pieces of knowledge
and names but little known to the Romans; indeed they have never been
produced before today, but yet thanks to my toil and study they have
been so translated from the Greek, that in spite of their strangeness
they are none the less of Latin mintage. Do you deny this, Aemilianus?
If so, let your advocates tell me in what Latin author they have ever
before read such words as those which I will cause to be recited to
you. I will mention only aquatic animals, nor will I make any reference
to other animals save in connexion with the characteristics which
distinguish them from aquatic creatures. Listen then to what I say.
You will cry out at me saying that I am giving you a list of magic
names such as are used in Egyptian or Babylonian rites. Selacheia,
malacheia, malakostraka, chondrakantha, ostrakoderma, karcharodonta,
amphibia, lepidôta, pholidôta, dermoptera, steganopoda,
monèrè, sunagelastika -- I might continue the list,
but it is not worth wasting time over such trifles, and I need time
to deal with other charges. Meanwhile read out my translation into
Latin of the few names I have just given you. 

Part 39

What do you think? Is it disgraceful for a philosopher who is no rude
and unlearned person of the reckless Cynic type, but who remembers
that he is a disciple of Plato, is it disgraceful for such an one
to know and care for such learning or to be ignorant and indifferent?
To know how far such things reveal the workings of providence, or
to swallow all the tales his father and mother told him of the immortal
gods? 

Quintus Ennius wrote a poem on dainties: he there enumerates countless
species of fish, which of course he had carefully studied. I remember
a few lines and will recite them: 

Clipea's sea-weasels are of all the best, 
for `mice' the place is Aenus; oysters rough 
in greatest plenty from Abydos come. 
The sea-comb's found at Mitylene and 
Ambracian Charadrus, and I praise 
Brundisian sargus: take him, if he's big. 
Know that Tarentum's small sea-boar is prime; 
the sword-fish at Surrentum thou shouldst buy; 
Blue fish at Cumae. What! Have I passed by 
Scarus? The brain of Jove is not less sweet. 
You catch them large and good off Nestor's home. 
Have I passed by the black-tail and the `thrush', 
the sea-merle and the shadow of the sea? 
Best to Corcyra go for cuttle-fish, 
for the acarne and the fat sea-skull 
the purple-fish, the little murex too, 
mice of the sea and the sea-urchin sweet. 

He glorified many fish in other verses, stating where each was to
be found and whether they were best fried or stewed, and yet he is
not blamed for it by the learned. Spare then to blame me, who describe
things known to few under elegant and appropriate names both in Greek
and Latin. 

Part 40

Enough of this! I call your attention to another point. What if I
take such interest and possess such skill in medicine as to search
for certain remedies in fish? For assuredly as nature with impartial
munificence has distributed and implanted many remedies throughout
all other created things, so also similar remedies are to be found
in fish. Now, do you think it more the business of a magician than
of a doctor, or indeed of a philosopher, to know and seek out remedies?
For the philosopher will use them not to win money for his purse,
but to give assistance to his fellow men. The doctors of old indeed
knew how to cure wounds by magic song, as Homer, the most reliable
of all the writers of antiquity, tells us, making the blood of Ulysses
to be stayed by a chant as it gushed forth from a wound. Now nothing
that is done to save life can be matter for accusation. 

`But,' says my adversary, `for what purpose save evil did you dissect
the fish brought you by your servant Themison?' As if I had not told
you just now that I write treatises on the organs of all kind of animals,
describing the place, number and purpose of their various parts, diligently
investigating Aristotle's works on anatomy and adding to them where
necessary. I am, therefore, greatly surprised that you are only aware
of my having inspected one small fish, although I have actually inspected
a very large number under all circumstances wherever I might find
them, and have, moreover, made no secret of my researches, but conducted
them openly before all the world, so that the merest stranger may,
if it please him, stand by and observe me. In this I follow the instruction
of my masters, who assert that a free man of free spirit should as
far as possible wear his thoughts upon his face. Indeed I actually
showed this small fish, which you call a sea-hare, to many who stood
by. 

I do not yet know what name to call it without closer research, since
in spite of its rarity and most remarkable characteristics I do not
find it described by any of the ancient philosophers. This fish is,
as far as my knowledge extends, unique in one respect, for it contains
twelve bones resembling the knuckle-bones of a sucking-pig, linked
together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless.
Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable
phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone
of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would
assuredly have mentioned the fact. 

Part 41

`You dissected a fish,' he says. Who can call this a crime in a philosopher
which would be no crime in a butcher or cook? `You dissected a fish.'
Perhaps you object to the fact that it was raw. You would not regard
it as criminal if I had explored its stomach and cut up its delicate
liver after it was cooked, as you teach the boy Sicinius Pudens to
do with his own fish at meals. And yet it is a greater crime for a
philosopher to eat fish than to inspect them. Are augurs to be allowed
to explore the livers of victims and may not a philosopher look at
them too, a philosopher who knows that he can draw omens from every
animal, that he is the high-priest of every god? Do you bring that
as a reproach against me which is one of the reasons for the admiration
with which Maximus and myself regard Aristotle? Unless you drive his
works from the libraries and snatch them from the hands of students
you cannot accuse me. But enough! I have said almost more on this
subject than I ought. 

See, too, how they contradict themselves. They say that I sought my
wife in marriage with the help of the black art and charms drawn from
the sea at the very time when they acknowledge me to have been in
the midmost mountains of Gaetulia, where, I suppose, Deucalion's deluge
has made it possible to find fish! I am, however, glad that they do
not know that I have read Theophrastus' `On beasts that bite and sting'
and Nicander `On the bites of wild animals'; otherwise they would
have accused me of poisoning as well! As a matter of fact I have acquired
a knowledge of these subjects thanks to my reading of Aristotle and
my desire to emulate him. I owe something also to the advice of my
master Plato, who rays that those who make such investigations as
these `pursue a delightful form of amusement which they will never
regret.' 

Part 42

Since I have sufficiently cleared up this business of the fish, listen
to another of their inventions equally stupid, but much more extravagant
and far more wicked. They themselves knew that their argument about
the fish was futile and bound to fail. They realized, moreover, its
strange absurdity (for who ever heard of fish being scaled and boned
for dark purposes of magic?), they realized that it would be better
for their fictions to deal with things of more common report, which
have ere now been believed. And so they devised the following fiction
which does at least fall within the limits of popular credence and
rumour. They asserted that I had taken a boy apart to a secret place
with a small altar and a lantern and only a few accomplices as witnesses,
and there so bewitched him with a magical incantation that he fell
in the very spot where I pronounced the charm, and on being awakened
was found to be out of his wits. They did not dare to go any further
with the lie. To complete their story they should have added that
the boy uttered many prophecies. 

For this we know is the prize of magical incantations, namely divination
and prophecy. And this miracle in the case of boys is confirmed not
only by vulgar opinion but by the authority of learned men. I remember
reading various relations of the kind in the philosopher Varro, a
writer of the highest learning and erudition, but there was the following
story in particular. Inquiry was being made at Tralles by means of
magic into the probable issue of the Mithridatic war, and a boy who
was gazing at an image of Mercury reflected in a bowl of water foretold
the future in a hundred and sixty lines of verse. He records also
that Fabius, having lost five hundred denarii, came to consult Nigidius;
the latter by means of incantations inspired certain boys so that
they were able to indicate to him where a pot containing a certain
portion of the money had been hidden in the ground, and how the remainder
had been dispersed, one denarius having found its way into the possession
of Marcus Cato the philosopher. This coin Cato acknowledged he had
received from a certain lackey as a contribution to the treasury of
Apollo. 

Part 43

I have read this and the like concerning boys and art-magic in several
authors, but I am in doubt whether to admit the truth of such stories
or no, although I believe Plato when he asserts that there are certain
divine powers holding a position and possessing a character midway
between gods and men, and that all divination and the miracles of
magicians are controlled by them. Moreover it is my own personal opinion
that the human soul, especially when it is young and unsophisticated,
may by the allurement of music or the soothing influence of sweet
smells be lulled into slumber and banished into oblivion of its surroundings
so that, as all consciousness of the body fades from the memory, it
returns and is reduced to its primal nature, which is in truth immortal
and divine; and thus, as it were in a kind of slumber, it may predict
the future. 

But howsoever these things may be, if any faith is to be put in them,
the prophetic boy must, as far as I can understand, be fair and unblemished
in body, shrewd of wit and ready of speech, so that a worthy and fair
shrine may be provided for the divine indwelling power (if indeed
such a power does enter into the boy's body) or that the boy's mind
when wakened may quickly apply itself to its inherent powers of divination,
find them ready to its use and reproduce their promptings undulled
and unimpaired by any loss of memory. For, as Pythagoras said, not
every kind of wood is fit to be carved into the likeness of Mercury.

If that be so, tell me who was that healthy, unblemished, intelligent,
handsome boy whom I deemed worthy of initiation into such mysteries
by the power of my spells. As a matter of fact, Thallus, whom you
nentioned, needs a doctor rather than a magician. For the poor wretch
is such a victim to epilepsy that he frequently has fits twice or
thrice in one day without the need for any incantations, and exhausts
all his limbs with his convulsions. His face is ulcerous, his head
bruised in front and behind, his eyes are dull, his nostrils distended,
his feet stumbling. He may claim to be the greatest of magicians in
whose presence Thallus has remained for any considerable time upon
his feet. For he is continually lying down, either a seizure or mere
weariness causing him to collapse. 

Part 44

Yet you say that it is my incantations that have overwhelmed him,
simply because he has once chanced to have a fit in my presence. Many
of his fellow servants, whose appearance as witnesses you have demanded,
are present in court. They all can tell you why it is they spit upon
Thallus, and why no one ventures to eat from the same dish with him
or to drink from the same cup. But why do I speak of these slaves?
You yourselves have eyes. Deny then, if you dare, that Thallus used
to have fits of epilepsy long before I came to Oea, or that has frequently
been shown to doctors. Do his fellow slaves, who are at your service,
deny this? 

I will confess myself guilty of everything, if he has not long since
been sent away into the country, far from the sight of all of them,
to a distant farm, for fear he should infect the rest of the household.
They cannot deny this to be the fact. For the same reason it is impossible
for us to produce him here today. The whole of this accusation has
been reckless and sudden, and it was only the day before yesterday
that Aemilianus demanded that we should produce fifteen slaves before
you. The fourteen living in the town are present today. Thallus only
is absent owing to the fact that he has been banished to a place some
hundred miles distant. However, we have sent a man to bring him here
in a carriage. 

I ask you, Maximus, to question these fourteen slaves whom we have
produced as to where the boy Thallus is and what is the state of his
health; I ask you to question my accuser's slaves. They will not deny
that this boy is of revolting appearance, that his body is rotten
through and through with disease, that he is liable to fits, and is
a barbarian and a clodhopper. This is indeed a handsome boy whom you
have selected as one who might fairly be produced at the offering
of sacrifice, whom one might touch upon the head and clothe in a fair
white cloak in expectation of some prophetic reply from his lips!
I only wish he were present. I would have entrusted him to your tender
mercies, Aemilianus, and would be ready to hold him myself that you
might question him. Here in open court before the judges he would
have rolled his wild eyes upon you, he would have foamed at the mouth,
spat in your face, drawn in his hands convulsively, shaken his head
and fallen at last in a fit into your arms. 

Part 45

Here are fourteen slaves whom you bade me produce in court. Why do
you refuse to question them? You want one epileptic boy who, you know
as well as I, has long been absent from Oea. What clearer evidence
of the falseness of your accusations could be desired? Fourteen slaves
are present, as you required; you ignore them. One young boy is absent:
you concentrate your attack on him. What is it that you want? Suppose
Thallus were present. Do you want to prove that he had a fit in my
presence? Why, I myself admit it. You say that this was the result
of incantation. I answer that the boy knows nothing about it, and
that I can prove that it was not so. Even you will not deny that Thallus
was epileptic. Why then attribute his fall to magic rather than disease?
Was there anything improbable in his suffering that fate in my presence,
which he has often suffered on other occasions in the presence of
a number of persons? 

Nay, even supposing I had thought it a great achievement to cast an
epileptic into a fit, why should I use charms when, as I am told by
writers on natural history, the burning of the stone named gagates
is an equally sure and easy proof of the disease? For its scent is
commonly used as a test of the soundness or infirmity of slaves even
in the slave-market. Again, the spinning of a potter's wheel will
easily infect a man suffering from this disease with its own giddiness.
For the sight of its rotations weakens his already feeble mind, and
the potter is far more effective than the magician for casting epileptics
into convulsions. 

You had no reason for demanding that I should produce these slaves;
I have good reason for asking you to name those who witnessed that
guilty ritual when I cast the moribund Thallus into one of his fits.
The only witness you mention is that worthless boy, Sicinius Pudens,
in whose name you accuse me. He says that he was present. His extreme
youth is no reason why we should reject his sworn evidence, but the
fact that he is one of my accusers does detract from his credibility.
It would have been easier for you, Aemilianus, and your evidence would
have carried much more weight, had you said that you were present
at the rite and had been mad ever since, instead of entrusting the
whole business to the evidence of boys as though it were a mere joke.
A boy had a fit, a boy saw him. Was it also some boy that bewitched
him? 

Part 46

At this point Tannonius Pudens, like the old hand he is, saw that
this lie also was falling flat and was doomed to failure by the frowns
and murmurs of the audience, and so, in order to check the suspicions
of some of them by kindling fresh expectations, he said that he would
produce other boys as well whom I had similarly bewitched. He thus
passed to another line of accusation. 

I might ignore it, but I will go out of my way to challenge it as
I have done with all the rest. I want those boys to be produced. I
hear they have been bribed by the promise of their liberty to perjure
themselves. But I say no more. Only produce them. I demand and insist,
Tannonius Pudens, that you should fulfil your promise. Bring forward
those boys in whose evidence you put your trust; produce them, name
them. You may use the time allotted to my speech for the purpose.
Speak, I say, Tannonius. Why are you silent? Why do you hesitate?
Why look round? If he does not remember what he has said, or has forgotten
his witnesses' names, do you at any rate, Aemilianus, come forward
and tell us what instructions you gave your advocate, and produce
those boys. Why do you turn pale? Why are you silent? Is this the
way to bring an accusation? Is this the way to indict a man on so
serious a charge? Is it not rather an insult to so distinguished a
citizen as Claudius Maximus, and a false and slanderous persecution
of myself? 

However, if your representative has made a slip in his speech, and
there are no such boys to produce, at any rate make some use of the
fourteen whom I have brought into court. If you refuse, why did you
demand the appearance of such a housefull? 

Part 47

You have demanded fifteen slaves to support an accusation of magic;
how many would you be demanding if it were a charge of violence? The
inference is that fifteen slaves know something, and that something
is still a mystery. Or is it nothing mysterious and yet something
connected with magic? You must admit one of these two alternatives:
either the proceeding to which I admitted so many witnesses had nothing
improper about it, or, if it had, it should not have been witnessed
by so many. Now this magic of which you accuse me is, I am told, a
crime in the eyes of the law, and was forbidden in remote antiquity
by the Twelve Tables because in some incredible manner crops had been
charmed away from one field to another. It is then as mysterious an
art as it is loathly and horrible; it needs as a rule night-watches
and concealing darkness, solitude absolute and murmured incantations,
to hear which few free men are admitted, not to speak of slaves. And
yet you will have it that there were fifteen slaves present on this
occasion. Was it a marriage? Or any other crowded ceremony? Or a seasonable
banquet? Fifteen slaves take part in a magic rite as though they had
been created quindecimvirs for the performance of sacrifice! Is it
likely that I should have permitted so large a number to be present
on such an occasion, if they were too many to be accomplices? Fifteen
free men form a borough, fifteen slaves a household, fifteen fettered
serfs a chain-gang. Did I need such a crowd to help me by holding
the lustral victims during the lengthy rite? No! the only victims
you mentioned were hens! Were they to count the grains of incense?
Or to knock Thallus down? 

Part 48

You assert also that by promising to heal her I inveigled to my house
a free woman who suffered from the same disease as Thallus; that she,
too, fell senseless as a result of my incantations. It appears to
me that you are accusing a wrestler, not a magician, since you say
that all who visited me had a fall. And yet Themison, who is a physician
and who brought the woman for my inspection, denied, when you asked
him, Maximus, that I had done anything to the woman other than ask
her whether she heard noises in her ears, and if so, which ear suffered
most. He added that she departed immediately after telling me that
her right ear was most troubled in that way. 

At this point, Maximus, although I have for the present been careful
to abstain from praising you, lest I should seem to have flattered
you with an eye to winning my case, yet I cannot help praising you
for the astuteness of your questions. After they had spent much time
in discussing these points and asserting that I had bewitched the
woman, and after the doctor who was present on that occasion had denied
that I had done so, you, with shrewdness more than human, asked them
what profit I derived from my incantations They replied, `The woman
had a fit.' `What then?' you asked, `Did she die?' `No,' they said.
`What is your point then? How did the fact of her having a fit profit
Apuleius?' 

That third question showed brilliant penetration and persistence.
You knew that it was necessary to submit all facts to stringent examination
of their causes, that often facts are admitted while motives remain
to seek, and that the representatives of litigants are called pleaders
of causes, because they set forth the causes of each particular act.
To deny a fact is easy and needs no advocate, but it is far more arduous
and difficult a task to demonstrate the rightness or wrongness of
a given action. It is waste of time, therefore, to inquire whether
a thing was done, when, even if it were done, no evil motive can be
alleged. Under such circumstances, if no criminal motive is forthcoming,
a good judge releases the accused from all further vexatious inquiry.

So now, since they have not proved that I either bewitched the woman
or caused her to have a fit, I for my part will not deny that I examined
her at the request of a physician; and I will tell you, Maximus, why
I asked her if she had noises in her ears. I will do this not so much
to clear myself of the charge which you, Maximus, have already decided
to involve neither blame nor guilt, as to impart to you something
worthy of your hearing and interesting to one of your erudition. I
will tell you in as few words as possible. I have only to call your
attention to certain facts. To instruct you would be presumption.

Part 49

The philosopher Plato, in his glorious work, the Timaeus, sets forth
with more than mortal eloquence the constitution of the whole universe.
After discoursing with great insight on the three powers that make
up man's soul, and showing with the utmost clearness the divine purpose
that shaped our various members, he treats of the causes of all diseases
under three heads. The first cause lies in the elements of the body,
when the actual qualities of those elements, moisture and cold and
their two opposites, fail to harmonize. That comes to pass when one
of these clements assumes undue proportions or moves from its proper
place. The second cause of disease lies in the vitiation of those
components of the body which, though formed out of the simple elements,
have coalesced in such a manner as to have a specific character of
their own, such as blood, entrails, bone, marrow, and the various
substances made from the blending of each of these. Thirdly, the concretion
in the body of various juices, turbid vapours, and dense humours is
the last provocative of sickness. 

Part 50

Of these causes that which contributes most to epilepsy, the disease
of which I set out to speak, is a condition when the flesh is so melted
by the noxious influence of fire as to form a thick and foaming humour.
This generates a vapour, and the heat of the air thus compressed within
the body causes a white and eruptive ferment. If this ferment succeeds
in escaping from the body, it is dispersed in a manner that is repulsive
rather than dangerous. For it causes an eczema to break out upon the
surface of the skin of the breast and mottles it with all kinds of
blotches. But the person to whom this happens is never again attacked
with epilepsy, and so he rids himself of a most sore disease of the
spirit at the price of a slight disfigurement of the body.

But if, on the other hand, this dangerous corruption be contained
within the body and mingle with the black bile, and so run fiercely
through every vein, and then working its way upwards to the head flood
the brain with its destructive stream, it straightway weakens that
royal part of man's spirit which is endowed with the power of reason
and is enthroned in the head of man, that is its citadel and palace.
For it overwhelms and throws into confusion those channels of divinity
and paths of wisdom. During sleep it makes less havoc, but when men
are full of meat and wine it makes its presence somewhat unpleasantly
felt by a choking sensation, the herald of epilepsy. But if it reaches
such strength as to attack the heads of men when they are wide awake,
then their minds grow dull with a sudden cloud of stupefaction and
they fall to the ground, their bodies swooning as in death, their
spirit fainting within them. Men of our race have styled it not only
the `Great sickness ' and the `Comitial sickness', but also the `Divine
sickness', in this resembling the Greeks, who call it hiera nosos,
the holy sickness. The name is just; for this sickness does outrage
to the rational part of the soul, which is by far the most holy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION 3

Part 51 

You recognize, Maximus, the theory of Plato, as far as I have been
able to give it a lucid explanation in the time at my disposal. I
put my trust in him when he says that the cause of epilepsy is the
overflowing of this pestilential humour into the head. My inquiry
therefore was, I think, reasonable when I asked the woman whether
her head felt heavy, her neck numb, her temples throbbing, her ears
full of noises. The fact that she acknowledged these noises to be
more frequent in her right ear was proof that the disease had gone
home. For the right-hand organs of the body are the strongest, and
therefore their infection with the disease leaves small hope of recovery.
Indeed Aristotle has left it on record in his Problems that whenever
in the case of epileptics the disease begins on the right side, their
cure is very difficult. It would be tedious were I to repeat the opinion
of Theophrastus also on the subject of epilepsy. For he has left a
most excellent treatise on convulsions. He asserts, however, in another
book on the subject of animals ill-disposed towards mankind, that
the skins of newts -- which like other reptiles they shed at fixed
intervals for the renewal of their youth -- form a remedy for fits.
But unless you snatch up the skin as soon as it be shed, they straightway
turn upon it and devour it, whether from a malign foreknowledge of
its value to men or from a natural taste for it. 

I have mentioned these things, I have been careful to quote the arguments
of renowned philosophers, and to mention the books where they are
to be found, and have avoided any reference to the works of physicians
or poets, that my adversaries may cease to wonder that philosophers
have learnt the causes of remedies and diseases in the natural course
of their researches. 

Well then, since this woman was brought to be examined by me in the
hope that she might be cured, and since it is clear both from the
evidence of the physician who brought her and from the arguments I
have just set forth that such a course was perfectly right, my opponents
must needs assert that it is the part of a magician and evildoer to
heal disease, or, if they do not dare to say that, must confess that
their accusations in regard to this epileptic boy and woman are false,
absurd, and indeed epileptic. 

Part 52

Yes, Aemilianus, if you would hear the truth, you are the real sufferer
from the falling sickness, so often have your false accusations failed
and cast you helpless to the ground. Bodily collapse is no worse than
intellectual, and it is as important to keep one's head as to keep
one's feet, while it is as unpleasant to be loathed by this distinguished
gathering as to be spat upon in one's own chamber. But you perhaps
think yourself sane because you are not confined within doors, but
follow the promptings of your madness whithersoever it lead you: and
yet compare your frenzy with that of Thallus; you will find that there
is but little to choose between you, save that Thallus confines his
frenzy to himself, while you direct yours against others; Thallus
distorts his eyes, you distort the truth; Thallus contracts his hands
convulsively, you not less convulsively contract with your advocates;
Thallus dashes himself against the pavement, you dash yourself against
the judgement-seat. In a word, whatever he does, he does in his sickness
erring unconsciously; but you, wretch, commit your crimes with full
knowledge and with your eyes open, such is the vehemence of the disease
that inspires your actions. You bring false accusations as though
they were true; you charge men with doing what has never been done;
though a man's innocence be clear to you as daylight, you denounce
him as though he were guilty. 

Part 53

Nay, further, though I had almost forgotten to mention it, there are
certain things of which you confess your ignorance, and which nevertheless
you make material for accusation as though you knew all about them.
You assert that I kept something mysterious wrapped up in a handkerchief
among the household gods in the house of Pontianus. You confess your
ignorance as to what may have been the nature or appearance of this
object; you further admit that no one ever saw it, and yet you assert
that it was some instrument of magic. You are not to be congratulated
on this method of procedure. Your accusation reveals no shrewdness,
and has not even the merit of impudence. Do not think so for a moment.
No! It shows naught save the ill-starred madness of an embittered
spirit and the pitiable fury of cantankerous old age. 

The words you used in the presence of so grave and perspicacious a
judge amounted to something very like this. `Apuleius kept certain
things wrapped in a cloth among the household gods in the house of
Pontianus. Since I do not know what they were, I therefore argue that
they were magical. I beg you to believe what I say, because I am talking
of that of which I know nothing.' What a wonderful argument, in itself
an obvious refutation of the charge. `It must have been this, because
I do not know what it was.' You are the only person hitherto discovered
who knows that which he does not know. You so far surpass all others
in folly, that whereas philosophers of the most keen and penetrating
intellect assert that we should not trust even the objects that we
see, you make statements about things which you have never seen or
heard. 

If Pontianus still lived and you were to ask him what the cloth contained,
he would reply that he did not know. There is the freedman who still
has charge of the keys of the place; he is one of your witnesses,
but he says that he has never examined these objects, although, as
the servant responsible for the books kept there, he opened and shut
the doors almost daily, continually entered the room, not seldom in
my company but more often alone, and saw the cloth lying on the table
unprotected by seal or cord. Quite natural, was it not? Magical objects
were concealed in the cloth, and for that reason I took little care
for its safe custody, but left it about anyhow for any one to examine
and inspect, if he liked, or even to carry it away! I entrusted it
to the custody of others, I left it to others to dispose of at their
pleasure! 

What credence do you expect us to give you after this? Are we to believe
that you, on whom I have never set eyes save in this court, know that
of which Pontianus, who actually lived under the same roof, was ignorant?
Or shall we believe that you, who have never so much as approached
the room where they were placed, have seen what the freedman never
saw, although he had every opportunity to inspect them during the
sedulous performance of his duties? 

Suppose that what you never saw was such as you say. Yet, you fool,
if this very day you had succeeded in getting that handkerchief into
your hands, I should deny the magical nature of whatever you might
produce from it. 

Part 54

I give you full leave; invent what you like, rack your memory and
your imagination to discover something that might conceivably seem
to be of a magical nature. Even then, should you succeed in so doing,
I should argue the point with you. I should say that the object in
question had been substituted by you for the original, or that it
had been given as a remedy, or that it was a sacred emblem that had
been placed in my keeping, or that a vision had bidden me to carry
it thus. There are a thousand other ways in which I might refute you
with perfect truth and without giving any explanation which is abnormal
or lies outside the limits of common observation. You are now demanding
that a circumstance, which, even if it were proved up to the hilt,
would not prejudice me in the eyes of a good judge, should be fatal
to me when, as it is, it rests on vague suspicion, uncertainty, and
ignorance. 

You will perhaps, as is your wont, say, `What, then, was it that you
wrapped in a linen cloth and were so careful to deposit with the household
gods?' Really, Aemilianus! Is this the way you accuse your victims?
You produce no definite evidence yourself, but ask the accused for
explanations of everything.' `Why do you search for fish?' `Why did
you examine a sick woman?' `What had you hidden in your handkerchief?'
Did you come here to accuse me or to ask me questions? If to accuse
me, prove your charges yourself; if to ask questions, do not anticipate
the truth by expressing opinions on that concerning which your ignorance
compels you to inquire. 

If this precedent is followed, if there is no necessity for the accuser
to prove anything, but on the contrary he is given every facility
for asking questions of the accused, there is not a man in all the
world but will be indicted on some charge or other. In fact, everything
that he has ever done will be used as a handle against any man who
is charged with sorcery. Have you written a petition on the thigh
of some statue? You are a sorcerer! Else why did you write it? Have
you breathed silent prayers to heaven in some temple? You are a sorcerer!
Else tell us what you asked for? Or take the contrary line. You uttered
no prayer in some temple! You are a sorcerer! Else why did you not
ask the gods for something? The same argument will be used if you
have made some votive dedication, or offered sacrifice, or carried
sprigs of some sacred plant. The day will fail me if I attempt to
go through all the different circumstances of which, on these lines,
the false accuser will demand an explanation. Above all, whatever
object he has kept concealed or stored under lock and key at home
will be asserted by the same argument to be of a magical nature, or
will be dragged from its cupboard into the light of the law-court
before the seat of judgement. 

Part 55

I might discourse at greater length on the nature and importance of
such accusations, on the wide range for slander that this path opens
for Aemilianus, on the floods of perspiration that this one poor handkerchief
will cause his innocent victims. But I will follow the course I have
already pursued. I will acknowledge what there is no necessity for
me to acknowledge, and will answer Aemilianus' questions. You ask,
Aemilianus, what I had in that handkerchief. 

Although I might deny that I had deposited any handkerchief of mine
in Pontianus' library, or even admitting that it was true enough that
I did so deposit it, I might still deny that there was anything wrapped
up in it. If I should take this line, you have no evidence or argument
whereby to refute me, for there is no one who has ever handled it,
and only one freedman, according to your own assertion, who has ever
seen it. Still, as far as I am concerned I will admit the cloth to
have been full to bursting. Imagine yourself, please, to be on the
brink of a great discovery, like the comrades of Ulysses who thought
they had found a treasure when they stole the bag that contained all
the winds. Would you like me to tell you what I had wrapped up in
a handkerchief and entrusted to the care of Pontianus' household gods?
You shall have your will. 

I have been initiated into various of the Greek mysteries, and preserve
with the utmost care certain emblems and mementoes of my initiation
with which the priests presented me. There is nothing abnormal or
unheard of in this. Those of you here present who have been initiated
into the mysteries of father Liber alone, know what you keep hidden
at home, safe from all profane touch and the object of your silent
veneration. But I, as I have said, moved by my religious fervour and
my desire to know the truth, have learned mysteries of many a kind,
rites in great number, and diverse ceremonies. This is no invention
on the spur of the moment; nearly three years since, in a public discourse
on the greatness of Aesculapius delivered by me during the first days
of my residence at Oea, I made the same boast and recounted the number
of the mysteries I knew. That discourse was thronged, has been read
far and wide, is in all men's hands, and has won the affections of
the pious inhabitants of Oea not so much through any eloquence of
mine as because it treats of Aesculapius. 

Will anyone, who chances to remember it, repeat the beginning of that
particular passage in my discourse? You hear, Maximus, how many voices
supply the words. I will order this same passage to be read aloud,
since by the courteous expression of your face you show that you will
not be displeased to hear it. 

Part 56

Can anyone, who has the least remembrance of the nature of religious
rites, be surprised that one who has been initiated into so many holy
mysteries should preserve at home certain talismans associated with
these ceremonies, and should wrap them in a linen cloth, the purest
of coverings for holy things? For wool, produced by the most stolid
of creatures and stripped from the sheep's back, the followers of
Orpheus and Pythagoras are for that very reason forbidden to wear
as being unholy and unclean. But flax, the purest of all growths and
among the best of all the fruits of the earth, is used by the holy
priests of Egypt, not only for clothing and raiment, but as a veil
for sacred things. 

And yet I know that some persons, among them that fellow Aemilianus,
think it a good jest to mock at things divine. For I learn from certain
men of Oea who know him, that to this day he has never prayed to any
god or frequented any temple, while if he chances to pass any shrine,
he regards it as a crime to raise his hand to his lips in token of
reverence. He has never given firstfruits of crops or vines or flocks
to any of the gods of the farmer, who feed him and clothe him; his
farm holds no shrine, no holy place, nor grove. But why do I speak
of groves or shrines? Those who have been on his property say they
never saw there one stone where offering of oil has been made, one
bough where wreaths have been hung. As a result, two nicknames have
been given him: he is called Charon, as I have said, on account of
his truculence of spirit and of countenance, but he is also -- and
this is the name he prefers -- called Mezentius, because he despises
the gods. I therefore find it the easier to understand that he should
regard my list of initiations in the light of a jest. It is even possible
that, thanks to his rejection of things divine, he may be unable to
induce himself to believe that it is true that I guard so reverently
so many emblems and relics of mysterious rites. 

But what Mezentius may think of me, I do not care a straw; to others
I make this announcement clearly and unshrinkingly: if any of you
that are here present had any part with me in these same solemn ceremonies,
give a sign and you shall hear what it is I keep thus. For no thought
of personal safety shall induce me to reveal to the uninitiated the
secrets that I have received and sworn to conceal. 

Part 57

I have, I think, Maximus, said enough to satisfy the most prejudiced
of men and, as far as the handkerchief is concerned, have cleared
myself of every speck of guilt. I shall run no risk in passing from
the suspicions of Aemilianus to the evidence of Crassus, which my
accusers read out next as if it were of the utmost importance.

You heard them read from a written deposition, the evidence of a gorging
brute, a hopeless glutton, named Junius Crassus, that I performed
certain nocturnal rites at his house in company with my friend Appius
Quintianus, who had taken lodgings there. This, mark you, Crassus
says that he discovered (in spite of the fact that he was as far away
as Alexandria at the time!) from finding the feathers of birds and
traces of the smoke of a torch. I suppose that while he was enjoying
a round of festivities at Alexandria -- for Crassus is one who is
ready even to encroach upon the daylight with his gluttonies -- I
suppose, I say, that there from his reeking-tavern he espied, with
eye keen as any fowler's, feathers of birds wafted towards him from
his house, and saw the smoke of his home rising far off from his ancestral
rooftree. If he saw this with his eyes, he saw even further than Ulysses
prayed and yearned to see. For Ulysses spent years in gazing vainly
from the shore to see the smoke rising from his home, while Crassus
during a few months' absence from home succeeded, without the least
difficulty, in seeing this same smoke as he sat in a wine-shop! If,
on the other hand, it was his nose that discerned the smoke, he surpasses
hounds and vultures in the keenness of his sense of smell. For what
hound, what vulture hovering in the Alexandrian sky, could sniff out
anything so far distant as Oea? Crassus is, I admit, a gourmand of
the first order, and an expert in all the varied flavours of kitchen-smoke,
but in view of his love of drinking, his only real title to fame,
it would have been easier to reach him at Alexandria for the fumes
of his wine rather than the fumes of his chimney. 

Part 58

Even he saw that this would pass belief. For he is said to have sold
this evidence before eight in the morning while he was still fasting
from food and drink! And so he wrote that he had made his discovery
in the following manner. On his return from Alexandria he went straight
to his house, which Quintianus had by this time left. There in the
entrance-hall he came across a large quantity of birds' feathers:
the walls, moreover, were blackened with soot. He asked the reason
of this from the slave whom he had left at Oea, and the latter informed
him of the nocturnal rites carried out by myself and Quintianus.

What an ingenious lie! What a probable invention! That I, had I wished
to do anything of the sort, should have done it there rather than
in my own house! That Quintianus, who is supporting me here today,
and whom I mention with the greatest respect and honour for the close
love that binds him to me, for his deep erudition and consummate eloquence,
that this same Quintianus, supposing him to have dined off some birds
or, as they assert, killed them for magical purposes, should have
had no slave to sweep up the feathers and throw them out of doors!
Or further that the smoke should have been strong enough to blacken
the walls and that Quintianus should have suffered such defacement
of his bedroom for as long as he lived there! Nonsense, Aemilianus!
There is no probability in the story, unless indeed Crassus on his
return went not to the bedroom, but after his fashion made straight
for the kitchen. 

And what made his slave suspect that the walls had been blackened
by night in particular? Was it the colour of the smoke? Does night
smoke differ from day smoke in being darker? And why did so suspicious
and conscientious a slave allow Quintianus to leave the house before
having it cleaned? Why did those feathers lie like lead and await
the arrival of Crassus for so long? Let not Crassus accuse his slave.
It is much more likely that he himself fabricated this mendacious
nonsense about feathers and soot, being unable even in his evidence
to divorce himself further from his kitchen. 

Part 59

And why did you read out this evidence from a written deposition?
Where in the world is Crassus? Has he returned to Alexandria out of
disgust at the state of his house? Is he washing his walls? Or, as
is more likely, is the glutton feeling ill after his debauch? I myself
saw him yesterday here at Sabrata belching in your face, Aemilianus,
in the most conspicuous manner in the middle of the market-place.
Pray, Maximus, ask your slaves whose duty it is to keep you informed
of people's names -- although, I admit, Crassus is better known to
the keepers of taverns -- yet ask them, I say, whether they have ever
seen Junius Crassus, a citizen of Oea, in this place. They will answer
`yes'. Let Aemilianus then produce this most admirable young man on
whose testimony he relies. 

You notice the time of day. I tell you that Crassus has long since
been snoring in a drunken slumber or has taken a second bathe and
is now evaporating the sweat of intoxication at the bath that he may
be equal to a fresh drinking bout after supper. He presents himself
in writing only. That is the way he speaks to you, Maximus. Even he
is not so dead to sense of shame as to be able to lie to your face
without a blush. But there is perhaps another reason for his absence.
He may have been unable to abstain from drunkenness sufficiently long
to keep sober against this moment. 

Or it may be that Aemilianus took good care not to subject him to
your severe and searching gaze, lest you should damn the brute with
his close-shaven cheeks and his disgusting appearance by a mere glance
at his face, when you saw a young man with his features stripped of
the beard and hair that should adorn them, his eyes heavy with wine,
his lids swollen, his <...> grin, his slobbering lips, his harsh
voice, his trembling hands, his breath reeking of the cook-shop. He
has long since devoured his fortune; nothing is left him of his patrimony
save a house that serves him for the sale of his false witness, and
never did he make a more remunerative contract than he has done with
regard to this evidence he offers today. For he sold Aemilianus his
drunken fictions for 3,000 sesterces, as every one at Oea is aware.

Part 60

We all knew of this before it actually took place. I might have prevented
the transaction by denouncing it, but I knew that so foolish a lie
would be prejudicial to Aemilianus, who wasted his money to secure
it, rather than to myself, who treated it with the contempt it deserved.
I wished not only that Aemilianus should lose his money, but that
Crassus should have his reputation ruined by his disgraceful perjury.
It was but the day before yesterday that the transaction took place
in the most open manner at the house of Rufinus, of whom I shall soon
have something to say. Rufinus and Calpurnianus acted as middlemen
and entreated him to comply to their wishes. The former carried out
the task with all the more readiness because he was certain that his
wife, at whose misconduct he knowingly connives, would be sure to
recover from Crassus a large proportion of his fee for perjury.

I noticed that you also, Maximus, as soon as this written evidence
was produced, suspected with your usual acuteness that they had formed
a league and conspiracy against me; and I saw from your face that
the whole affair excited your disgust. Finally my accusers, in spite
of their being paragons of audacity and monsters of shamelessness,
noticed that Crassus' evidence smelled after faex and did not dare
to read it out in full or to build anything upon it. I have mentioned
these facts not because I am afraid of these dreadful feathers and
stains of soot -- least of all with you to judge me -- but that Crassus
might meet with due punishment for having sold mere smoke to a helpless
rustic like Aemilianus. 

Part 61

And after all this, they have also come up, on reading Pudentilla's
letters, concerning the manufacture of a seal. This seal, they assert,
I had fashioned of the rarest wood by some secret process for purposes
of the black art. They add that, although it is loathly and horrible
to look upon, being in the form of a skeleton, I yet give it especial
honour and call it in the Greek tongue, basileus, my king. I think
I am right in saying that I am following the various stages of their
accusation in due order and reconstructing the whole fabric of their
slander detail by detail. 

Now how can the manufacture of this seal have been secret, as you
assert, when you are sufficiently well acquainted with the maker to
have summoned him to appear in court? Here is Cornelius Saturninus,
the artist, a man whose skill is famous among his townsfolk and whose
character is above reproach. A little while back, in answer, Maximus,
to your careful cross-examination, he explained the whole sequence
of events in the most convincing and truthful manner. He said that
I visited his shop and, after looking at many geometrical patterns
all carved out of boxwood in the most cunning and ingenious manner,
was so much attracted by his skill that I asked him to make me certain
mechanical devices and also begged him to make me the image of some
god to which I might pray after my custom. The particular god and
the precise material I left to his choice, my only stipulation being
that it should be made of wood. He therefore first attempted to work
in boxwood. Meanwhile, during my absence in the country, Sicinius
Pontianus, my step-son, wishing it to be made for me, procured some
ebony tablets from that excellent lady Capitolina and brought them
to his shop, exhorting him to make what I had ordered out of this
rarer and more durable material: such a gift, he said, would be most
gratifying to me. Our artist did as Pontianus suggested, as far as
the size of the ebony tablets permitted. By careful dove-tailing of
minute portions of the tablets he succeeded in making a small figure
of Mercury. 

Part 62

You heard all the evidence just as I repeat it. Moreover, it receives
exact confirmation from the answers given to you in cross-examination
by Capitolina's son, a youth of the most excellent character, who
is here in court today. He said that Pontianu