Part 1 (2/2)
This is hardly the place for a disquisition upon African Latin. It is sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of Apuleius are its archaism and its extreme floridity. It has been a.s.serted that this strange style is of purely African growth,[4] and that it owes much of its oriental wealth of colour to the Semitic element that must still have formed so large a proportion of the population of Africa. But there seems little really to support this view; it is probable that, allowing for the personal factor, in this case exceptionally important, and the eccentricities to which Apuleius' erudition may have led him, we are confronted with no more than an exaggerated revival of the Asiatic style of oratory. No doubt the seed fell on good ground, but it is impossible to set one's finger on any definitely African element.[5]
[Footnote 4: For a vivacious exposition of this view cf. Monceaux, _Les Africains_. Paris, 1894.]
[Footnote 5: See the chapter on Apuleius in Norden's admirable work, _Die antike Kunstprosa_, Leipzig, 1898.]
The style presents grave difficulties to the translator. The English language will not carry the requisite amount of bombast; the a.s.sonances and the puns are generally incapable of reproduction. Even when this allowance has been made, it is in many cases impossible to give anything approximating to a translation in natural English. I can only trust that the English of this translation has not wholly lost the colour to which Apuleius owes so much of his charm. The sacrifice is not so great in these works as it must necessarily be in any English translation of the more exotic and more brilliant-hued _Metamorphoses_, better known as _The Golden a.s.s_. But in any case the cooler tints and sobriety of our native language must--even in hands less unskilled than mine--fail to do justice to the fantastic Latin of the original. The vivacity of French coupled with the richness and warmth of Italian would need to be combined to produce anything approaching a really good translation, even of the least fantastic works of Apuleius.
THE APOLOGIA
1. For my part, Maximus Claudius, and you, gentlemen who sit beside him on the bench, I regarded it as a foregone conclusion that Sicinius Aemilia.n.u.s would for sheer lack of any real ground for accusation cram his indictment with mere vulgar abuse; for the old rascal is notorious for his unscrupulous audacity, and, further, launched forth on his task of bringing me to trial in your court before he had given a thought to the line his prosecution should pursue. Now while the most innocent of men may be the victim of false accusation, only the criminal can have his guilt brought home to him. It is this thought that gives me special confidence, but I have further ground for self-congratulation in the fact that I have you for my judge on an occasion when it is my privilege to have the opportunity of clearing philosophy of the aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of proving my own innocence. Nevertheless these false charges are on the face of them serious enough, and the suddenness with which they have been improvised makes them the more difficult to refute. For you will remember that it is only four or five days since his advocates of malice prepense attacked me with slanderous accusations, and began to charge me with practice of the black art and with the murder of my step-son Pontia.n.u.s. I was at the moment totally unprepared for such a charge, and was occupied in defending an action brought by the brothers Granius against my wife, Pudentilla. I perceived that these charges were brought forward not so much in a serious spirit as to gratify my opponents' taste for wanton slander. I therefore straightway challenged them, not once only, but frequently and emphatically, to proceed with their accusation. The result was that Aemilia.n.u.s, perceiving that you, Maximus, not to speak of others, were strongly moved by what had occurred, and that his words had created a serious scandal, began to be alarmed and to seek for some safe refuge from the consequences of his rashness.
2. Therefore as soon as he was compelled to set his name to the indictment, he conveniently forgot Pontia.n.u.s, his own brother's son, of whose death he had been continually accusing me only a few days previously. He made absolutely no mention of the death of his young kinsman[6]; he abandoned this most serious charge, but--to avoid the appearance of having totally abandoned his mendacious accusations--he selected, as the sole support of his indictment, the charge of magic--a charge with which it is easy to create a prejudice against the accused, but which it is hard to prove. Even that he had not the courage to do openly in his own person, but a day later presented the indictment in the name of my step-son, Sicinius Pudens, a mere boy, adding that he appeared as his representative. This is a new method.
He attacks me through the agency of a third person, whose tender age he employs to s.h.i.+eld his unworthy self against a charge of false accusation. You, Maximus, with great acuteness saw through his designs and ordered him to renew his original accusation in person. In spite of his promise to comply, he cannot be induced to come to close quarters, but actually defies your authority and continues to skirmish at long range with his false accusations. He persistently s.h.i.+rks the perilous task of a direct attack, and perseveres in his a.s.sumption of the safe role of the accuser's legal representative. As a result, even before the case came into court, the real nature of the accusation became obvious to the meanest understanding. The man who invented the charge and was the first to utter it had not the courage to take the responsibility for it. Moreover the man in question is Sicinius Aemilia.n.u.s, who, if he had discovered any true charge against me, would scarcely have been so backward in accusing a stranger of so many serious crimes, seeing that he falsely a.s.serted his own uncle's will to be a forgery although he knew it to be genuine: indeed he maintained this a.s.sertion with such obstinate violence, that even after that distinguished senator, Lollius Urbicus, in accordance with the decision of the distinguished consulars, his a.s.sessors, had declared the will to be genuine and duly proven, he continued--such was his mad fury--in defiance of the award given by the voice of that most distinguished citizen, to a.s.sert with oaths that the will was a forgery. It was only with difficulty that Lollius Urbicus refrained from making him suffer for it.
[Footnote 6: I conjecture: _de morte cognati adolescentis subito tacens tanti criminis descriptione dest.i.tit, ne tamen omnino desistere calumnia magiam, &c._]
3. I rely, Maximus, on your sense of justice and on my own innocence, but I hope that in this trial also we shall hear the voice of Lollius raised impulsively in my defence; for Aemilia.n.u.s is deliberately accusing a man whom he knows to be innocent, a course which comes the more easy to him, since, as I have told you, he has already been convicted of lying in a most important case, heard before the Prefect of the city. Just as a good man studiously avoids the repet.i.tion of a sin once committed, so men of depraved character repeat their past offence with increased confidence, and, I may add, the more often they do so, the more openly they display their impudence. For honour is like a garment; the older it gets, the more carelessly it is worn. I think it my duty, therefore, in the interest of my own honour, to refute all my opponent's slanders before I come to the actual indictment itself. For I am pleading not merely my own cause, but that of philosophy as well, philosophy, whose grandeur is such that she resents even the slightest slur cast upon her perfection as though it were the most serious accusation. Knowing this, Aemilia.n.u.s' advocates, only a short time ago, poured forth with all their usual loquacity a flood of drivelling accusations, many of which were specially invented for the purpose of blackening my character, while the remainder were such general charges as the uninstructed are in the habit of levelling at philosophers. It is true that we may regard these accusations as mere interested vapourings, bought at a price and uttered to prove their shamelessness worthy of its hire. It is a recognized practice on the part of professional accusers to let out the venom of their tongues to another's hurt; nevertheless, if only in my own interest, I must briefly refute these slanders, lest I, whose most earnest endeavour it is to avoid incurring the slightest spot or blemish to my fair fame, should seem, by pa.s.sing over some of their more ridiculous charges, to have tacitly admitted their truth, rather than to have treated them with silent contempt. For a man who has any sense of honour or self-respect must needs--such at least is my opinion--feel annoyed when he is thus abused, however falsely. Even those whose conscience reproaches them with some crime, are strongly moved to anger, when men speak ill of them, although they have been accustomed to such ill report ever since they became evildoers. And even though others say naught of their crimes, they are conscious enough that such charges may at any time deservedly be brought against them. It is therefore doubly vexatious to the good and innocent man when charges are undeservedly brought against him which he might with justice bring against others. For his ears are unused and strange to ill report, and he is so accustomed to hear himself praised that insult is more than he can bear. If, however, I seem to be anxious to rebut charges which are merely frivolous and foolish, the blame must be laid at the door of those, to whom such accusations, in spite of their triviality, can only bring disgrace. I am not to blame. Ridiculous as these charges may be, their refutation cannot but do me honour.
4. To begin then, only a short while ago, at the commencement of the indictment, you heard them say, 'He, whom we accuse in your court, is a philosopher of the most elegant appearance and a master of eloquence not merely in Latin but also in Greek!' What a d.a.m.ning insinuation!
Unless I am mistaken, those were the very words with which Tannonius Pudens, whom no one could accuse of being a master of eloquence, began the indictment. I wish that these serious reproaches of beauty and eloquence had been true. It would have been easy to answer in the words, with which Homer makes Paris reply to Hector:--
[Greek: ou toi apoblet' esti theon erikudea dora hossa ken autoi dosin, hekon d' ouk an tis heloito].--
which I may interpret thus: 'The most glorious gifts of the G.o.ds are in no wise to be despised; but the things which they are wont to give are withheld from many that would gladly possess them.' Such would have been my reply. I should have added that philosophers are not forbidden to possess a handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take the name of 'philosopher', was the handsomest man of his day. Zeno also, the ancient philosopher of Velia, who was the first to discover that most ingenious device of refuting hypotheses by the method of self-inconsistency, that same Zeno was--so Plato a.s.serts--by far the most striking in appearance of all the men of his generation. It is further recorded of many other philosophers that they were comely of countenance and added fresh charm to their personal beauty by their beauty of character. But such a defence is, as I have already said, far from me. Not only has nature given me but a commonplace appearance, but continued literary labour has swept away such charm as my person ever possessed, has reduced me to a lean habit of body, sucked away all the freshness of life, destroyed my complexion and impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which they with unblus.h.i.+ng mendacity declare I have allowed to grow long as an enhancement to my personal attractions, you can judge of its elegance and beauty. As you see, it is tangled, twisted and unkempt like a lump of tow, s.h.a.ggy and irregular in length, so knotted and matted that the tangle is past the art of man to unravel. This is due not to mere carelessness in the tiring of my hair, but to the fact that I never so much as comb or part it. I think this is a sufficient refutation of the accusations concerning my hair which they hurl against me as though it were a capital charge.
5. As to my eloquence--if only eloquence were mine--it would be small matter either for wonder or envy if I, who from my earliest years to the present moment have devoted myself with all my powers to the sole study of literature and for this spurned all other pleasures, had sought to win eloquence to be mine with toil such as few or none have ever expended, ceasing neither night nor day, to the neglect and impairment of my bodily health. But my opponents need fear nothing from my eloquence. If I have made any real advance therein, it is my aspirations rather than my attainments on which I must base my claim.
Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius Caecilius be true, that innocence is eloquence itself, to that extent I may lay claim to eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on that a.s.sumption what living man could be more eloquent than myself? I have never even harboured in my thoughts anything to which I should fear to give utterance. Nay, my eloquence is consummate, for I have ever held all sin in abomination; I have the highest oratory at my command, for I have uttered no word, I have done no deed, of which I need fear to discourse in public. I will begin therefore to discourse of those verses of mine, which they have produced as though they were something of which I ought to be ashamed. You must have noticed the laughter with which I showed my annoyance at the absurd and illiterate manner in which they recited them.
6. They began by reading one of my _jeux d'esprit_, a brief letter in verse, addressed to a certain Calpurnia.n.u.s on the subject of a tooth-powder. When Calpurnia.n.u.s produced my letter as evidence against me, his desire to do me a hurt blinded him to the fact that if anything in the letter could be urged as a reproach against me, he shared in that reproach. For the verses testify to the fact that he had asked me to send him the wherewithal to clean his teeth:
_Good morrow! friend Calpurnia.n.u.s, take The salutation these swift verses make.
Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call, A powder rare to cleanse thy teeth withal.
This delicate dust of Arab spices fine With ivory sheen shall make thy mouth to s.h.i.+ne, Shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away The relics of the feast of yesterday.
So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen, If laughter show thy teeth their lips between._
I ask you, what is there in these verses that is disgusting in point either of matter or of manner? What is there that a philosopher should be ashamed to own? Unless indeed I am to blame for sending a powder made of Arabian spices to Calpurnia.n.u.s, for whom it would be more suitable that he should
_Polish his teeth and ruddy gums_,
as Catullus says, after the filthy fas.h.i.+on in vogue among the Iberians.
7. I saw a short while back that some of you could scarcely restrain your laughter, when our orator treated these views of mine on the cleansing of the teeth as a matter for savage denunciation, and condemned my administration of a tooth-powder with fiercer indignation than has ever been shown in condemning the administration of a poison.
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