Apuleius of Madaura in Africa, who lived in the time of the Antonines,
appears to have been more remarkable as an author, than for any thing
that occurs in the history of his life. St. Augustine and Lactantius
however have coupled him with Apollonius of Tyana, as one of those who
for their pretended miracles were brought into competition with the
author of the Christian religion. But this seems to have arisen from
their misapprehension respecting his principal work, the Golden Ass,
which is a romance detailing certain wonderful transformations, and
which they appear to have thought was intended as an actual history of
the life of the author.
The work however deserves to be cited in this place, as giving a
curious representation of the ideas which were then prevalent on the
subjects of magic and witchcraft. The author in the course of his
narrative says: "When the day began to dawn, I chanced to awake, and
became desirous to know and see some marvellous and strange things,
remembering that I was now in the midst of Thessaly, where, by the
common report of the world, sorceries and enchantments are most
frequent. I viewed the situation of the place in which I was; nor was
there any thing I saw, that I believed to be the same thing which it
appeared. Insomuch that the very stones in the street I thought were
men bewitched and turned into that figure, and the birds I heard
chirping, the trees without the walls, and the running waters, were
changed from human creatures into the appearances they wore. I
persuaded myself that the statues and buildings could move, that the
oxen and other brute beasts could speak and tell strange tidings, and
that I should see and hear oracles from heaven, conveyed on the beams
of the sun."