Magic and the man—Stylistic reasons for regarding the _Metamorphoses_ as his first work—Biographical reasons—No mention of the _Metamorphoses_ in the _Apology_. II. _Magic in the Metamorphoses_ Powers claimed for magic—Its actual performances—Its limitations—The crimes of witches—Male magicians—Magic as an art and discipline—Materials employed—Incantations and rites—Quacks and charlatans—Various superstitions—Bits of science and religion—Magic in other Greek romances. III. _Magic in the Apology_ Form of the _Apologia_—Philosophy and magic—Magic defined—Good and bad magic—Magic and religion—Magic and science—Medical and scientific knowledge of Apuleius—He repeats familiar errors—Apparent ignorance of magic and occult virtue—Despite an assumption of knowledge—Attitude toward astronomy—His theory of demons—Apuleius in the middle ages. I. _His Life and Works_ [Sidenote: Magic and the man as reflected in his works.] One of the fullest and most vivid pictures of magic in the ancient Mediterranean world which has reached us is provided by the writings of Apuleius. He lived in the second century of our era and was not merely a rhetorician of great note in his day and the writer of a romance which has ever since fascinated men, but also a Platonic philosopher, an initiate into many religious cults and mysteries, and a student of natural science and medicine. To him has been ascribed the Latin version of _Asclepius_, a supposititious dialogue of Hermes Trismegistus. No author perhaps ever more readily and complacently talked of himself than Apuleius, yet it is no easy task to make out the precise facts of his life, partly because in his romance, _The Metamorphoses_, or _The Golden Ass_, he has hopelessly confused himself with the hero Lucius and introduced an autobiographical element of uncertain extent into what is in the main a work of fiction; partly because his _Apology_, or defense when tried on the charge of magic at Oea in Africa, is more in the nature of special pleading intended to refute and confound his accusers than of a frank confession or accurate history of his career. However, he appears to have been born at Madaura in North Africa, to have studied first at Carthage and then at Athens, to have visited Rome and wandered rather widely about the Mediterranean world, but to have spent more time altogether at Carthage than at any other one place. [Sidenote: Stylistic reasons for regarding the _Metamorphoses_ as his first work.]