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AN EMENDATION TO APULEIUS, APOLOGIA 47.1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2018
Extract
The most authoritative testimony for the text of Apuleius’ defence-speech known as Apologia or Pro Se De Magia is a Cassinese MS indicated with the siglum F (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 68.2), written under the abbotship of Desiderius (1058–1087) in a mature Beneventan script, which also preserves the text of the Metamorphoses and the Florida. The text that F preserves is unsurprisingly not flawless, and in this note I argue for the presence of a corruption affecting aut in Apol. 47.1. For the sake of clarity, I provide the passage from Apol. 46.6 to 47.2 below.
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References
1 On the title of this work, cf. Schindel, U., ‘Der Titel von Apuleius’ Verteidigungsrede’, StudMed 39 (1998), 865–88Google Scholar.
2 Editors of the Apologia acknowledge the stemmatic importance of F: cf. Helm, R., Apulei Platonici Madaurensis Florida (Leipzig, 1910, 19592), xxxiv–xliGoogle Scholar; Butler, H.E. and Owen, A.S., Apulei Apologia siue Pro se de magia liber (Oxford, 1914), xxix–xxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Vallette, P., Apulée. Apologie, Florides (Paris, 1924), xxxi–xxxviiGoogle Scholar; Marshall, P.K., ‘Apuleius. Apologia, Metamorphoses, Florida’, in Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 15–16Google Scholar; Hunink, V., Apuleius of Madauros Pro Se De Magia (Apologia), 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1997), 1.28Google Scholar; Martos, J., Apuleyo de Madauros. Apología o discurso sobre la magia en defensa propia. Floridas. [Prólogo de El dios de Sócrates] (Madrid, 2015), liGoogle Scholar.
3 Piccioni, F., ‘Il De magia di Apuleio. Un testimone trascurato: il codice assisiate 706’, in Linguaggi del potere, poteri del linguaggio (Alessandria, 2010), 365–75Google Scholar suggests that the Assisi fragments of the Apologia (Assisi, Fondo Biblioteca Comunale no. 706, siglum C) are an apograph of F; cf. also Piccioni, F., ‘Sul De magia di Apuleio. Alcune proposte di constitutio textus’, in Vestigia notitiai. Scritti in memoria di Michelangelo Giusta (Alessandria, 2012), 445–54Google Scholar, where the validity of some readings is discussed in view of a forthcoming edition of the Apologia by Piccioni. However, Pepe, L., ‘Un nuovo codice di Apuleio del sec. XI’, GIF 4 (1951), 214–25Google Scholar and Pecere, O., ‘Qualche riflessione sulla tradizione di Apuleio a Montecassino’, in Cavallo, G., Le strade del testo (Bari, 1987), 102Google Scholar—reprinted in Pecere, O., Stramaglia, A., Studi apuleiani (Cassino, 2003), 42–3Google Scholar—argue that C is independent from F, since the former is thought to be earlier on the grounds of palaeographical evidence, about which cf. Lowe's assessment in Robertson, D.S., ‘The Assisi fragments of the Apologia of Apuleius’, CQ 6 (1956), 68–80, at 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 In case the hypothesis of Pepe (n. 3) and Pecere (n. 3) were correct, the corruption aut might have originated in a common ancestor of F and C, given that the latter also reads aut cur in fol.7v, line 4.
5 Butler, H.E., The Apologia and the Florida of Apuleius of Madaura (Oxford, 1909), 84Google Scholar is quite free and avoids translating aut: ‘If you refuse, why did you demand the appearance of such a houseful’.
6 Hunink, V. in Harrison, S.J. (ed.), Apuleius. Rhetorical Works (Oxford, 2001), 71Google Scholar translates: ‘Or why else did you summon so large a staff.’ This mirrors the French translation by P. Vallette (n. 2), 57 and the Italian translation by Marchesi, C., Apuleio. Della magia (Milan, 1955, repr. 2011), 65Google Scholar, which underplays the meaning of the whole passage for the reasons discussed above.
7 The German translation by J. Hammerstaedt in Apuleius: De Magia. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und mit interpretierenden Essays versehen von Jürgen Hammerstaedt, Peter Habermehl, Francesca Lamberti, Adolf M. Ritter und Peter Schenk (Darmstadt, 2002), 138, and the Spanish translation by Martos (n. 2), 83 render the preserved reading aut with ‘or’ (i.e. ‘oder’ and ‘o’ respectively). Because of this interpretation, Martos (n. 2), 83 rearranges the canonical subdivision into paragraphs and puts aut cur sisti postulabas tantam familiam? at the end of Apol. 46.6, instead of leaving it at the beginning of Apol. 47.1.
8 Harrison, S.J., Apuleius. A Latin Sophist (Oxford, 2000), 70Google Scholar; Harrison focusses on the Ciceronian style of Apol. 46.3–6 and does not emphasize the fact that Apuleius employs a similar strategy at Apol. 45.1–3.
9 In the following part of Apol. 45 Apuleius inserts a digression on the idea that epileptics could have a fit by smelling burning jet, or by seeing the wheel of a potter while spinning (45.4–5). Then he underscores Aemilianus’ mala fides, since the only deposition corroborating the accusers’ argument is that given by Sicinius Pudens, on whose behalf Apuleius was tried (45.6–8).
10 It could be observed that the syntagm aut cur recurs in Apol. 54.7, but in that passage aut is used to introduce a series of disjunctive sequences, differing from 47.1 where the connotation of the sentence is contrastive.
11 Cf. 45.6; 45.8; 47.5 for the ceremony described as sacrum.
12 In 47.1–6 Apuleius speaks of fifteen slaves, including Thallus, in order to make their number appear even bigger. For other references to these fourteen witnesses, cf. Apol. 44.6; 44.7; 45.1; 46.6.
13 Cf. 47.2; 47.5–6.
14 Cf. Apol. 78.4; Met. 1.24.9; 2.24.5; 6.15.3; Mun. 17. For Apuleius’ predilection for using at at the beginning of a sentence in general, cf. Keulen, W.H., Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book I (Groningen, 2007), 63Google Scholar on the opening of Met. 1.1.1, and Graverini, L., Le Metamorfosi di Apuleio: letteratura e identità (Pisa, 2007), 2–11Google Scholar.
15 I translate these passages as follows: Apol. 40.5: ‘but why on earth, if not for an evil reason, did you tear apart the fish?’; 25.2: ‘but did you not bring self-contradicting arguments against me?’.
16 The whole charge concerns the magical seduction of Pudentilla by means of sea creatures resembling human genitals; this indictment is rebutted at 29–41.
17 Cf. 25.2: peram et baculum ob auctoritatem, carmina et speculum ob hilaritatem, unum seruum ut deparci, tris libertos ut profusi, praeterea eloquentiam Graecam, patriam barbaram? (‘the bag and the staff to accuse me of austerity; some poems and a mirror as evidence of my frivolity; the possession of one slave to claim that I am miserly; the manumission of three slaves as evidence of my squandering; and even my Greek eloquence and my foreign origins?’). For further remarks on Apuleius’ manipulations in this passage, cf. Hunink (n. 2), 2.85–6; and especially Harrison (n. 8), 62.
18 E.g. Apol. 3.3: quanto obsole[n]tior; 26.6: omnia quae uelit incredibili[a]; 35.3: per plurim[is]os piscatoris quaesisse; 38.2: subent[ant], mares suriant; 55.10: p[l]ublice; 63.2: e[n]uidens; 68.4: filio[s] suo[s] Sicinio; 75.4: uxorem no[n]ta[m] conlusio; 84.6: nulla[m] impertita; 102.9: form[orm]atum. Cf. the discussion in Helm (n. 2), xlviii–il, li–lii. For general remarks on the influence of contiguous letters, cf. Havet, L., Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (Paris, 1911), 135–6Google Scholar.
19 Hunink, V., Apuleius of Madauros. Florida (Amsterdam, 2001), 34 and 118Google Scholar defends the reading uir in place of F's ut which is found in later MSS and early editions.
20 mihi is abbreviated mi in F fol. 137v, col. 1, line 16, thus making the influence of the contiguous scelus istud on aut even stronger.
21 The characteristic abbreviation for m in Beneventan script was the so-called ‘m-stroke’ or ‘3-shaped sign’, as it has been defined by Lowe, E.A., The Beneventan Script. A History of the South Italian Minuscule, 2 vols. (Rome, 1980 2), 171–3Google Scholar and Newton, F., The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 (Cambridge, 1999), 168Google Scholar respectively.
22 Cf. Lowe (n. 21), 133–4 and Newton (n. 21), 144, 146.