for three years at the time of the trial. This
distressing family quarrel must have caused some bitterness of
feeling, and Augustine (_Ep._ 138. 19) mentions a quarrel with the
inhabitants of Oea on the question of the erection of a statue in his
honour. These facts may not improbably have led him to seek residence
elsewhere. Be this as it may, when we next hear of him he is in
Carthage, enjoying the highest renown as philosopher, poet, and
rhetorician. It was during this residence at Carthage that he
delivered the flamboyant orations of which fragments have been
preserved to us in the _Florida_. A few of these excerpts can be
dated. The seventeenth is written during the proconsulate of Scipio
Orfitus in 163-164 A.D. The ninth contains a panegyric of the
proconsul Severianus, who must have held office some time during the
joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, 161-169 A.D. (see
note, p. 236). The sixteenth refers to Aemilianus Strabo, who was
consul in 156 A.D. and had not yet become proconsul of Africa. As the
interval between holding the consulate and the proconsulate was from
ten to thirteen years, this fragment may be dated, if not before 166,
at any rate before 169 A.D.

Apuleius won more than mere applause. Carthage decreed a statue in his
honour (_Florida_ 16), and conferred on him the chief-priesthood of
the province. This office entitled its holder to the first place in
the provincial council, and was the highest honour that the province
could bestow (_Florida_ 16). Civil office he never held (Augustine,
_Ep._ 138. 19), perhaps never sought. His genius, it may be said with
confidence, was far from fitting him for judicial or administrative
functions. If we may trust Apollinaris Sidonius (_Ep._ II. 10. 5),
Pudentilla showed herself a model wife by the passionate interest she
took in her husband's work. 'Pudentilla was for Apuleius what Marcia
was for Hortensius, Terentia for Cicero, Calpurnia for Piso,
Rusticiana for Symmachus: these noble women held the lamp while their
husbands read and meditated!' It is even possible that she bore him a
son, as the second book of the _de Platone_ is dedicated to 'my son
Faustinus'. Of his death we know nothing. Testimony as to his
appearance is conflicting. His accusers (_Apol._ 4) charge him with
being a 'handsome philosopher'. He replies that his body is worn by
the fatigues of study and his hair as tangled as a lump of tow!

His works were astonishingly numero