Magic and science.
But it may be that the reason why Apuleius abstains in the Apology from suggesting any connection or confusion between magic and natural science is that the accusers have already laid far too much stress upon this point for his liking. He has been charged with the composition of a tooth-powder,[1078] with use of a mirror,[1079] with the purchase of a sea-hare, a poisonous mollusc, and two other fish appropriate from their obscene shapes and names for use as love-charms.[1080] He is said to have had a horrible wooden image or seal constructed secretly for use in his magic,[1081] to keep other instruments of his art mysteriously wrapped in a handkerchief in the house,[1082] and to have left in the vestibule of another house where he lodged “many feathers of birds” and much soot on the walls.[1083] All these charges make it evident that natural and artificial objects are, as in the Metamorphoses, considered essential or at least usual in performing magic. Moreover, so ready have the accusers shown themselves to interpret the interest of Apuleius in natural science as an evidence of the practice of magic by him, that he sarcastically remarks[1084] that he is glad that they were unaware that he had read Theophrastus On beasts that bite and sting and Nicander On the bites of wild beasts (usually called Theriaca),[1085] or they would have accused him of being a poisoner as well as a magician.
Medical and scientific knowledge of Apuleius.
Apuleius shows that he really is a student, if not an authority, in medicine and natural science. The gift of the tooth-powder and the falling of the woman in a fit were incidents of his occasional practice of medicine, and he also sees no harm in his seeking certain remedies from fish.[1086] He repeats Plato’s theory of disease from the Timaeus and cites Theophrastus’s admirable work On Epileptics.[1087] Mention of the mirror starts him off upon an optical disquisition in which he remarks upon theories of vision and reflection, upon liquid and solid, flat and convex and concave mirrors, and cites the Catoptrica of Archimedes.[1088] He also regards himself as an experimental zoologist and has conducted all his researches publicly.[1089] He procures fish in order to study them scientifically as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Lycon, and other pupils of Plato did.[1090] He has read innumerable books of this sort and sees no harm in testing by experience what has been written. Indeed he is himself writing in both Greek and Latin a work on Natural Questions in which he hopes to add what has been omitted in earlier books and to remedy some of their defects and to arrange all in a handier and more systematic fashion. He has passages from the section on fishes in this work read aloud in court.
He repeats familiar errors.
Throughout the Apology Apuleius occasionally airs his scientific attainments by specific statements and illustrations from the zoological and other scientific fields. Indeed the presence of such allusions is as noticeable in the Apology as was their absence from the Metamorphoses. But they go to show that his knowledge was greater than his discretion, since for the most part they repeat familiar errors of contemporary science. We are told—the story is also in Aristotle, Pliny, and Aelian—how the crocodile opens its jaws to have its teeth picked by a friendly bird,[1091] that the viper gnaws its way out of its mother’s womb,[1092] that fish are spontaneously generated from slime,[1093] and that burning the stone gagates will cause an epileptic to have a fit.[1094] On the other hand, the skin shed by a spotted lizard is a remedy for epilepsy, but you must snatch it up speedily or the lizard will turn and devour it, either from natural appetite or just because he knows that you want it.[1095] This tale, so characteristic of the virtues attributed to parts of animals and the human motives ascribed to the animals themselves, is taken by Apuleius from a treatise by Theophrastus entitled Jealous Animals.
Apparent ignorance of magic and occult virtue.
In defending what he terms his scientific investigations from the aspersion of magic Apuleius is at times either a trifle disingenuous and inclined to trade upon the ignorance of his judge and accusers, or else not as well informed himself as he might be in matters of natural science and of occult science. He contends that fish are not employed in magic arts, asks mockingly if fish alone possess some property hidden from other men and known to magicians, and affirms that if the accuser knows of any such he must be a magician rather than Apuleius.[1096] He insists that he did not make use of a sea-hare and describes the “fish” in question in detail,[1097] but this description, as is pointed out in Butler and Owen’s edition of the Apology,[1098] tends to convince us that it really was a sea-hare. In the case of the two fish with obscene names, he ridicules the arguing from similarity of names to similarity of powers in the things so designated, as if that were not what magicians and astrologers and believers in sympathy and antipathy were always doing. You might as well say, he declares, that a pebble is good for the stone and a crab for an ulcer,[1099] as if precisely these remedies for those diseases were not found in the Pseudo-Dioscorides and in Pliny’s Natural History.[1100]
Despite an assumption of knowledge.
It is hardly probable that in the passages just cited Apuleius was pretending to be ignorant of matters with which he was really acquainted, since as a rule he is eager to show off his knowledge even of magic itself. Thus the accusers affirmed that he had bewitched a boy by incantations in a secret place with an altar and a lamp; Apuleius criticizes their story by saying that they should have added that he employed the boy for purposes of divination, citing tales which he has read to this effect in Varro and many other authors.[1101] And he himself is ready to believe that the human soul, especially in one who is still young and innocent, may, if soothed and distracted by incantations and odors, forget the present, return to its divine and immortal nature, and predict the future. When he reads some technical Greek names from his treatise on fishes, he suspects that the accuser will protest that he is uttering magic names in some Egyptian or Babylonian rite.[1102] And as a matter of fact, when later he mentioned the names of a number of celebrated magicians,[1103] the accusers appear to have raised such a tumult that Apuleius deemed it prudent to assure the judge that he had simply read them in reputable books in public libraries, and that to know such names was one thing, to practice the magic art quite another matter.