In one passage of the _Apology_ Apuleius affirms his belief with Plato in the existence of certain intermediate beings or powers between gods and men, who govern all divinations and the miracles of the magicians.[1108] In the treatise on the god or demon of Socrates[1109] he repeats this thought and tells us more of these mediators or demons. Their native element is the air, which Apuleius thought extended as far as the moon,[1110] just as Aristotle[1111] tells of animals who live in fire and are extinguished with it, and just as the fifth element, that “divine and inviolable” ether, contains the divine bodies of the stars. With the superior gods the demons have immortality in common, but like mortals they are subject to passions and to feeling and capable of reason.[1112] But their bodies are very light and like clouds, a point peculiar to themselves.[1113] Since both Plutarch and Apuleius wrote essays on the demon of Socrates and both derived, or thought that they derived, their theories concerning demons from Plato, it is interesting to note some divergences between their accounts. Apuleius confines them to the atmosphere beneath the moon more exclusively than Plutarch does; unlike Plutarch he represents them as immortal, not merely long-lived; and he has more to say about the substance of their bodies and less concerning their relations with disembodied souls. [Sidenote: Apuleius in the middle ages.] Apuleius would have been a well-known name in the middle ages, if only indirectly through the use made by Augustine in _The City of God_[1114] of the _Metamorphoses_ in describing magic and of the _De deo Socratis_ in discussing demons.[1115] He also speaks of Apuleius in three of his letters,[1116] declaring that for all his magic arts he could win neither a throne nor judicial power. Augustine was not quite sure whether Apuleius had actually been transformed into an ass or not. A century earlier Lactantius[1117] spoke of the many marvels remembered of Apuleius. That manuscripts of the _Metamorphoses_, _Apology_ and _Florida_ were not numerous until after the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be inferred from the fact that all the extant manuscripts seem to be derived from a single one of the later eleventh century, written in a Lombard hand and perhaps from Monte Cassino.[1118] The article on Apuleius in Pauly and Wissowa states that the best manuscripts of his other works are an eleventh century codex at Brussels and a twelfth century manuscript at Munich,[1119] but does not mention a twelfth century manuscript of the _De deo Socratis_ in the British Museum.[1120] Another indication that in the twelfth century there were manuscripts of Apuleius in England or at Chartres and Paris is that John of Salisbury borrows from the _De dogmate Platonis_ in his _De nugis curialium_.[1121] In the earlier middle ages there was ascribed to Apuleius a work on herbs of which we shall treat later. CHAPTER VIII