The Trials of Apuleius: An Ironic Legal History

Abstract

This article is an exercise in what might be termed ‘ironic’ legal history. The first part explores the idea of ‘ironic’ history, which aligns the insights of literary ‘ironism’ with those of micro and ‘anecdotal’ history and ‘new’ historicism. It will focus more particularly on the work of Richard Rorty, Carlo Ginzburg and Stephen Greenblatt. The second part of the article will present a ‘case-study’ in ironic legal history; revisiting the second-century trial of the Roman orator and writer Apuleius. Apuleius wrote two notably different accounts of the same experience, one pretending to fact, the other to fiction. To read these accounts is to engage in an exercise in ironic legal history.