Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Prologue of Apuleius' De Deo Socratis

The Prologue of Apuleius' De Deo Socratis THE PROLOGUE OF APULEIUS' DE DEO SOCRATIS* BY VINCENT HUNINK Apuleius' philosophical discourse De Deo Socratis (hence: Soc ) is preceded in the MSS by a long prologue, which has vexed classical scholars for centuries') The prologue is generally considered not to belong to the discourse, given its contents In addition, most scholars assume a subdivision of the prologue into five different fragments In this paper, I will re-examine the question, and argue for the unity of the prologue and discourse, as well as the inner unity of the prologue Discourse and prologue In Soc, Apuleius gives what may be called an introduction to ancient demonology He shows that there must exist intermediate beings between gods and man, and describes the place they occupy in the world, their main characteristics, as well as the various types of these 'demons' It is only at this point, near the end of the discourse, that the 'divine voice' of Socrates makes its appearance, as a concrete example of a demon The speech ends on a more * The research for this article was made possible by support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) I wish to express my thanks http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Mnemosyne Brill

The Prologue of Apuleius' De Deo Socratis

Mnemosyne , Volume 48 (3): 292 – Jan 1, 1995

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/the-prologue-of-apuleius-de-deo-socratis-60A4ksala0

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1995 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0026-7074
eISSN
1568-525X
DOI
10.1163/156852595X00194
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

THE PROLOGUE OF APULEIUS' DE DEO SOCRATIS* BY VINCENT HUNINK Apuleius' philosophical discourse De Deo Socratis (hence: Soc ) is preceded in the MSS by a long prologue, which has vexed classical scholars for centuries') The prologue is generally considered not to belong to the discourse, given its contents In addition, most scholars assume a subdivision of the prologue into five different fragments In this paper, I will re-examine the question, and argue for the unity of the prologue and discourse, as well as the inner unity of the prologue Discourse and prologue In Soc, Apuleius gives what may be called an introduction to ancient demonology He shows that there must exist intermediate beings between gods and man, and describes the place they occupy in the world, their main characteristics, as well as the various types of these 'demons' It is only at this point, near the end of the discourse, that the 'divine voice' of Socrates makes its appearance, as a concrete example of a demon The speech ends on a more * The research for this article was made possible by support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) I wish to express my thanks

Journal

MnemosyneBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1995

There are no references for this article.