who travelled far in search of
knowledge. He came to Athens in the time of Solon and created a great
impression by his wisdom.

_Meletides_ (or more properly Melitides) was an Athenian of proverbial
stupidity, whose name was synonymous for blockhead. Eustathius on
Odyss. x. 552, says that he could not count above five or distinguish
between his father and mother!

_Syphax_, king of the Massaesyli in W. Numidia, fought for the
Carthaginians during the second Punic war, and was finally defeated
and captured by Scipio in 203 B.C. After his fall _Masinissa_, King of
the Massyli, was left supreme in Numidia.

_duumvir._ The chief magistrates in a _colonia_ were styled _duumviri
iure dicundo_.

_the dignity of my position._ This is generally interpreted as meaning
that Apuleius himself had become _duumvir_. It is more likely,
considering his age and his continued absences from Madaura, that it
means merely the position acquired for him by his father's
distinguished office.

CHAPTER 25. _Magician is the Persian word for priest._ 'The name
_magi_ applied to all workers of miracles, strictly designates the
priests of Mazdeism, and well-attested tradition made certain Persians
the inventors of genuine magic, the magic which the Middle Ages styled
the black art. If they did not invent it, for it is as old as
humanity, they were at least the first to give magic a doctrinal basis
and to assign it a place in a well-defined theological system.... By
the Alexandrian period, books attributed to Zoroaster, Hostanes, and
Hystaspes were translated into Greek.' Cumont, Les Religions
Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain, p. 227. Cp. Pliny, N.H. xxx. 7.
_Plato_, Alcibiades i. 121 E.

_Zoroaster, son of Oromazes_, the founder of the ancient religion of
Persia (Mazdeism).

CHAPTER 26. _Plato._ The allusion is to Charmides, p. 157 A. Socrates
offers Charmides a charm to cure the headache. But the charm will do
more than cure the headache. 'I learnt it, when serving with the army,
of one of the physicians of the Thracian King Zamolxis. He was one of
those who are said to give immortality. This Thracian said to me ...
"Zamolxis, our king, who is also a god, says that as you ought not to
attempt to cure the eyes without the head or the head without the
eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the
soul," ... "For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human
nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and ove