Then those mysterious "somethings" which Apuleius keeps {230} wrapped up in a napkin? "I have been initiated in many of the mysteries of Greece. Certain symbols and memorials of these, given to me by the priests, I sedulously preserve. I say nothing unusual, nothing unknown. To take one instance, those among you who are _mystae_ of Father Liber [Bacchus] know what it is you keep laid away at home, and worship in secret, far from all profane eyes. Now, I, as I said, from enthusiasm for truth and duty toward the gods, I have learnt many sacred mysteries, very many holy rites, and divers ceremonies"--the audience will remember he said as much three years ago in his now very famous speech about AEsculapius--"then could it seem strange to anyone, who has any thought of religion, that a man, admitted to so many divine mysteries, should keep certain emblems of those holy things at home, and wrap them in linen, the purest covering for things divine?" Some men--the prosecutor among them--count it mirth to mock things divine; no, he goes to no temple, has never prayed, will not even put his hand to his lips when he passes a shrine,--why! he has not so much as an anointed stone or a garlanded bough on his farm.[80] One last flourish may deserve quotation. If you can prove, says Apuleius, any material advantage accruing to me from my marriage, "then write me down the great Carmendas or Damigeron or _his_ ... Moses or Jannes or Apollobeches or Dardanus himself, or anyone else from Zoroaster and Ostanes downwards who has been famous among magicians."[81] Several of these names occur in other authors,[82] but the corruption is more interesting. Has some comparative fallen out, or does _his_ conceal another name? Is it _ihs_, in fact,--a reference to Jesus analogous to the suggestion of Celsus that he too was a magician? The philosophical works of Apuleius need not detain us, but a little space may be spared to his book _On the God of Socrates_, where he sets forth in a clear and vivid way that doctrine of daemonic beings, which lies at the heart of ancient {231} religion, pre-eminently in this period, from Plutarch onwards. His presentment is substantially the same as Plutarch's, but crisper altogether, and set forth in the brilliant rhetoric, to which the Greek did not aspire, and from which the African could not escape, nor indeed wished to escape.