eBook library online: Apologia. Florida. De Deo

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