Apuleius are its archaism and its extreme floridity. It has been
asserted that this strange style is of purely African growth,[4] and
that it owes much of its oriental wealth of colour to the Semitic
element that must still have formed so large a proportion of the
population of Africa. But there seems little really to support this
view; it is probable that, allowing for the personal factor, in this
case exceptionally important, and the eccentricities to which
Apuleius' erudition may have led him, we are confronted with no more
than an exaggerated revival of the Asiatic style of oratory. No doubt
the seed fell on good ground, but it is impossible to set one's finger
on any definitely African element.[5]

[Footnote 4: For a vivacious exposition of this view cf. Monceaux,
_Les Africains_. Paris, 1894.]

[Footnote 5: See the chapter on Apuleius in Norden's admirable work,
_Die antike Kunstprosa_, Leipzig, 1898.]

The style presents grave difficulties to the translator. The English
language will not carry the requisite amount of bombast; the
assonances and the puns are generally incapable of reproduction. Even
when this allowance has been made, it is in many cases impossible to
give anything approximating to a translation in natural English. I
can only trust that the English of this translation has not wholly
lost the colour to which Apuleius owes so much of his charm. The
sacrifice is not so great in these works as it must necessarily be in
any English translation of the more exotic and more brilliant-hued
_Metamorphoses_, better known as _The Golden Ass_. But in any case the
cooler tints and sobriety of our native language must--even in hands
less unskilled than mine--fail to do justice to the fantastic Latin of
the original. The vivacity of French coupled with the richness and
warmth of Italian would need to be combined to produce anything
approaching a really good translation, even of the least fantastic
works of Apuleius.

THE APOLOGIA

1. For my part, Maximus Claudius, 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