14 Facts About Apuleius

1.

Apuleius was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician.

2.

Apuleius was born in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day M'Daourouch, Algeria.

3.

Apuleius studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries.

4.

Apuleius declaimed and then distributed his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near Oea.

5.

Apuleius's father was a municipal magistrate who bequeathed at his death the sum of nearly two million sesterces to his two sons.

6.

Apuleius studied with a master at Carthage and later at Athens, where he studied Platonist philosophy among other subjects.

7.

Apuleius subsequently went to Rome to study Latin rhetoric and, most likely, to speak in the law courts for a time before returning to his native North Africa.

8.

Apuleius travelled extensively in Asia Minor and Egypt, studying philosophy and religion, burning up his inheritance while doing so.

9.

Apuleius was an initiate in several Greco-Roman mysteries, including the Dionysian Mysteries.

10.

The accusation itself seems to have been ridiculous, and the spirited and triumphant defence spoken by Apuleius is still extant.

11.

Apuleius accused an extravagant personal enemy of turning his house into a brothel and prostituting his own wife.

12.

Apuleius occasionally gave speeches in public to great reception; he had the charge of exhibiting gladiatorial shows and wild beast events in the province, and statues were erected in his honour by the senate of Carthage and of other senates.

13.

The date, place and circumstances of Apuleius' death are not known.

14.

Apuleius wrote works of poetry and fiction, as well as technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic, and he translated Plato's Phaedo.