LI. In his reply to the third article of accusation, he loaded his accusers with ignominy, and filled them with confusion. The fact was, that the sentence of the letter of Prudentila, which they exhibited against him, when detached from the context of it, had the meaning which they alledged it to have, but when united to the other parts, and restored to the place from whence it was taken, it had a quite different signification. I shall insert the part of the letter from whence they extracted the sentence. Prudentila, after expostulating with her son Pontianus, and complaining that both he and his brother, incited to it by their relations, had embroiled themselves in a vindictive dispute with Apuleius, speaks thus to him: _I having determined to marry, for the reasons I have recited to you, you yourself persuaded me to take Apuleius for a husband, preferable to any other man; and you being also a great admirer of his accomplishments, made him familiarly acquainted with me, for the purpose of bringing about the match; but now that you are stimulated to it by some vindictive and perverse persons, you insist, that Apuleius has suddenly turned magician, and has enchanted me._ It is clear, that this is a manifest irony, and contains a lively reproof of their calumny; but the accusers exhibited no more than these last words of the letter: _Apuleius has suddenly turned magician, and has enchanted me._ Apuleius requested, that the whole letter might be read; and when that was done, the infamous cheat appeared in its proper colours. LII. These reports of the magic of Apuleius, which did not exceed mere suspicions, and suspicions that were likewise ill founded, and which when they were first raised, were dissipated and driven away by his own masterly justification and defence of himself, revived after his death, and were augmented to such a degree, that at the period in which Christianity began to predominate, they came to be established almost every where by general consent, and by the voice of common fame. This appears from Lactantius, who in his refutation of the Pagan Hierocles, that was governor of Alexandria, and who, in a treatise he wrote to defeat the arguments of the Christians, which, in support of their faith, they founded on the miracles of Christ, insisted, that Apollonius Thyaneus, by the help of his magic, had done equal or greater things; upon which, Lactantius observes, that he wonders he had not joined to the miracles of Apollonius, those which were said to have been done by Apuleius: _Voluit ostendere Appollonium, vel paria, vel etiam majora fecisse. Mirùm quod Apuleium prætermissit, cujus solent, et multa, et mira memorari._ So that in those days, it appears that many miracles were said to have been done by Apuleius, and that he had the fame of being a great magician, and one that could vie, or stand in competition with Apollonius.