The _Apologia_ has every appearance of being preserved just as it was delivered and perhaps as it was taken down by short-hand writers; it does not seem to have undergone the subsequent revision to which Cicero subjected some of his orations. It must have been hastily composed, since Apuleius states that it has been only five or six days since the charges were suddenly brought against him, while he was occupied in defending another lawsuit brought against his wife.[1060] There also are numerous apparently extempore passages in the oration, notably those where Apuleius alludes to the effect which his statements produce, now upon his accusers, now upon the proconsul sitting in judgment. From the _Florida_ we know that Apuleius was accustomed to improvise.[1061] Moreover, in the _Apology_ certain statements are made by Apuleius which might be turned against him with damaging effect and which he probably would have omitted, had he had the leisure to go over his speech carefully before the trial. For instance, in denying the charge that he had caused to be made for himself secretly out of the finest wood a horrible magic figure in the form of a ghost or skeleton, he declares that it is only a little image of Mercury made openly by a well-known artisan of the town.[1062] But he has earlier stated that “Mercury, carrier of incantations,” is one of the deities invoked in magic rites;[1063] and in another passage[1064] has recounted how the outcome of the Mithridatic war was investigated at Tralles by magic, and how a boy, gazing at an image of Mercury in water, had predicted the future in one hundred and sixty verses. But this is not all. In a third passage[1065] he actually quotes Pythagoras to the effect that Mercury ought not to be carved out of every kind of wood. [Sidenote: Philosophy and magic.] If in the _Metamorphoses_ the practice of magic is imputed chiefly to old-wives, in the _Apology_ a main concern of Apuleius is to defend philosophers in general[1066] and himself in particular from “the calumny of magic.”[1067] Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Ostanes, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato have been so suspected, and it consoles Apuleius in his own trial to reflect that he is but sharing the undeserved fate of “so many and such great men.”[1068] In this connection he states that those philosophers who have taken an especial interest in theology, “who investigate the providence of the universe too curiously and celebrate the gods too enthusiastically,” are the ones to be suspected of magic; while those who devote themselves to natural science pure and simple are more liable to be called irreligious atheists. [Sidenote: Magic defined.]