The Magic Pilgrimage of Apuleius

Abstract

THE second century after Christ was, in eyes of Gibbon, happiest period of human race, a judgment which those who lived in that felicitous age would have greeted with approval but no surprise. Aelius Aristides, for example, has bequeathed us a similar verdict, although less tersely put. Here is a paraphrase from his eulogy of Rome,whose empire, then at its highest point of development, was to him coterminous with civilization: Had Hesiod been as consummate a poet as Homer and gifted with prophetic power, he would have written differently concerning Ages of Mankind: he would' have placed Golden Age not first but last, identifying it with these perfect days of Roman rule, and reserving his pity for those who lived in earlier times.2 Golden prosperity, magnificent public buildings, philanthropy, culture, and peace-these were gifts of Rome to her provinces in Age of Antonines. Think of North Africa, where writer Apuleius was born. For three hundred years it had been under Roman rule. Great irrigation schemes had made its deserts blossom like rose, its fine cities gleamed with temples and monuments, its schools could provide a tutor for a Roman Emperor,' and its busy courts inspired poet Juvenal to call it the nursery of lawyers.4 Much of this was owed to civilizing influence of Rome. Need we wonder that panegyrists could not find superlatives massive enough to express their adoration of imperial city? Yet this smiling empire began to decline, according to Gibbon, at death of Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 180. The seeds of its disruption must have been stirring in days of his immediate predecessors. I am not at present concerned with signs of failure in matters military or political, but rather with a psychological symptom of decay that marked intellectual environment in which Apuleius worked. This symptom is a restlessness most easily to be observed perhaps in demonic energy of Emperor Hadrian, whose mobility in space was as remarkable as his curiosity in thought. Such restlessness accounts for two phenomena of second century which cast their reflections upon writing of Apuleius. The first is