The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura

by Apuleius

I did 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.

11. Which of us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously of such things in a law-court? 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.

12. I say nothing of those lofty and divine Platonic doctrines, 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 persons 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;