Attitude toward astrology.
Apuleius affirms that one of his accusers had consulted he knows not what Chaldeans how he might profitably marry off his daughter, and that they had prophesied truthfully that her first husband would die within a few months. “As for what she would inherit from him, they fixed that up, as they usually do, to suit the person consulting them.”[1104] But in this respect their prediction turned out to be quite incorrect. We are left in some doubt, however, whether their failure in the second case is not regarded as due merely to their knavery, and their first successful prediction to the rule of the stars. Elsewhere, however, Apuleius does state that belief in fate and in magic are incompatible, since there is no place left for the force of spells and incantations, if everything is ruled by fate.[1105] But in other extant works[1106] he speaks of the heavenly bodies as visible gods, and Laurentius Lydus attributes astrological treatises to him.[1107]
His theory of demons.
In one passage of the Apology Apuleius affirms his belief with Plato in the existence of certain intermediate beings or powers between gods and men, who govern all divinations and the miracles of the magicians.[1108] In the treatise on the god or demon of Socrates[1109] he repeats this thought and tells us more of these mediators or demons. Their native element is the air, which Apuleius thought extended as far as the moon,[1110] just as Aristotle[1111] tells of animals who live in fire and are extinguished with it, and just as the fifth element, that “divine and inviolable” ether, contains the divine bodies of the stars. With the superior gods the demons have immortality in common, but like mortals they are subject to passions and to feeling and capable of reason.[1112] But their bodies are very light and like clouds, a point peculiar to themselves.[1113] Since both Plutarch and Apuleius wrote essays on the demon of Socrates and both derived, or thought that they derived, their theories concerning demons from Plato, it is interesting to note some divergences between their accounts. Apuleius confines them to the atmosphere beneath the moon more exclusively than Plutarch does; unlike Plutarch he represents them as immortal, not merely long-lived; and he has more to say about the substance of their bodies and less concerning their relations with disembodied souls.
Apuleius in the middle ages.
Apuleius would have been a well-known name in the middle ages, if only indirectly through the use made by Augustine in The City of God[1114] of the Metamorphoses in describing magic and of the De deo Socratis in discussing demons.[1115] He also speaks of Apuleius in three of his letters,[1116] declaring that for all his magic arts he could win neither a throne nor judicial power. Augustine was not quite sure whether Apuleius had actually been transformed into an ass or not. A century earlier Lactantius[1117] spoke of the many marvels remembered of Apuleius. That manuscripts of the Metamorphoses, Apology and Florida were not numerous until after the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be inferred from the fact that all the extant manuscripts seem to be derived from a single one of the later eleventh century, written in a Lombard hand and perhaps from Monte Cassino.[1118] The article on Apuleius in Pauly and Wissowa states that the best manuscripts of his other works are an eleventh century codex at Brussels and a twelfth century manuscript at Munich,[1119] but does not mention a twelfth century manuscript of the De deo Socratis in the British Museum.[1120] Another indication that in the twelfth century there were manuscripts of Apuleius in England or at Chartres and Paris is that John of Salisbury borrows from the De dogmate Platonis in his De nugis curialium.[1121] In the earlier middle ages there was ascribed to Apuleius a work on herbs of which we shall treat later.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILOSTRATUS’S LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
Compared with Apuleius—Philostratus’s sources—Time and space covered—Philostratus’s audience—Object of the Life—Apollonius charged with magic—A confusion of terms—The Magi and magic—Apollonius and the Magi—Philostratus on wizards—Apollonius and wizards—Quacks and old-wives—The Brahmans—Marvels of the Brahmans—Magical methods of the Brahmans—Medicine of the Brahmans—Some signs of astrology—Interest in natural science—Natural law or special providence?—Cases of scepticism—Anecdotes of animals—Dragons of India—Occult virtues of gems—Absence of number mysticism—Mantike or the art of divination—Divining power of Apollonius—Dreams—Interpretation of omens—Animals and divination—Divination by fire—Other so-called predictions—Apollonius and the demons—Not all demons are evil—Philostratus’s faith in demons—The ghost of Achilles—Healing the sick and raising the dead—Other marvels—Golden wrynecks and the iunx—Why named iunx?—Apollonius in the middle ages.
Compared with Apuleius.
Some fifty years after the birth of Apuleius occurred that of Philostratus, whose career and interests were somewhat similar, although he came from the Aegean island of Lemnos instead of the neighborhood of Carthage and wrote in Greek rather than Latin. But like Apuleius he was a student of rhetoric and went first to Athens and then to Rome. The resemblance is perhaps closer between Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana, whose life Philostratus wrote and of whom we know more than of his biographer. Like Apuleius Apollonius had to defend himself in court against the accusation of magic, and Philostratus gives us what purports to be his apology on that occasion. Two centuries afterwards Augustine in one of his letters[1122] names Apollonius and Apuleius as examples of men who were addicted to the magic art and who, the pagans said, performed greater miracles than Christ did. A century before Augustine Lactantius states[1123] that a certain philosopher who had “vomited forth” three books “against the Christian religion and name” had compared the miracles of Apollonius favorably with those of Christ; Lactantius marvels that he did not mention Apuleius as well. Like Apuleius, Apollonius was a man of broad learning who traveled widely and sought initiation into mysteries and cults. Apuleius was a Platonist; Apollonius, a Pythagorean. We may also note a resemblance between the Metamorphoses and the Life of Apollonius. Both seem to elaborate earlier writings and both have much to say of transformations, wizards, demons, and the occult. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, however, must be taken more seriously than the Metamorphoses. If the African’s work is a rhetorical romance embodying a certain autobiographical element, a Milesian tale to which personal religious experiences are annexed, then the work by Philostratus is a rhetorical biography with a tinge of romance and a good deal of sermonizing.