Besides the _Metamorphoses_ and _Apologia_, with which we shall be chiefly concerned, four other works are extant which are regarded as genuine, _The God of Socrates_, _The Dogma of Plato_, _Florida_, and _On the Universe_. The order in which these works were written is uncertain, but it seems almost sure that the _Metamorphoses_ was the first. In it Apuleius not only more or less identifies himself with the hero Lucius, who is represented as quite a young man, he also apologizes for his Latin and speaks of the difficulty with which he had acquired that language at Rome. But in the _Florida_[999] we find him repeating a hymn and a dialogue in both Latin and Greek, or, after delivering half an address in Greek, finishing it in Latin, or boasting that he writes poems, satires, riddles, histories, scientific treatises, orations, and philosophical dialogues with equal facility in either language.[1000] Instead now of craving pardon if he offends by his rude, exotic, and forensic speech, he feels that his reputation for literary refinement and elegance has become such that his audience will not pardon him a solitary solecism or a single syllable pronounced with a barbarous accent.[1001] It therefore looks as if the _Metamorphoses_ was his first published effort in Latin and as if his peculiar style had proved so popular that he did not find it necessary to apologize for it again. In the _Apology_ he seems supremely confident of his rhetorical powers in the Latin language, and even the accusers describe him as a philosopher of great eloquence both in Greek and Latin.[1002] Three years before in the same town his first public discourse had been greeted with shouts of “Insigniter,” and many in the audience at the time of his trial can still repeat a passage from it on the greatness of Aesculapius.[1003] In the _Apology_, too, he displays a more extensive learning than in the _Metamorphoses_ and has written already poems and scientific treatises as well as orations. Indeed, practically all the doctrines set forth in his other philosophical works may be found in brief in the _Apology_. [Sidenote: Biographical reasons.]