61

I am accused, based on a letter of Pudentilla, of having secretly had a small, skeleton-like statuette made to worship and use for black magic. But there is no secret. The craftsman Cornelius Saturninus made a statuette of Mercury for me out of ebony supplied by the noble woman Capitolina.

(1)

Inde: "Then...," indicating a fresh stage in the discussion (OLD inde 5). This is a correction for the manuscripts' unde. 

etiam: in addition to the other charges.

sigillī: a statuette, diminutive > LS signum II.C.

(2)

quod: sigillum.

occultā fabricā lignō exquīsītissimō: ablatives of material in apposition to one another: "made from an occult material, a most exquisite wood." 

comparāsse: "purchased," LS comparo II.A.

sit: subject is sigillum; subjunctive in a concessive cum clause.

sceletī fōrmā: "with the shape of a skeleton" = "due to its skeletal appearance," explaining the adjectives turpe et horribile. The Greek σκελετός is first Latinized here.

impendiō: adv. "greatly," "very much."

colere ... nuncupāre: continuing the indirect statement after aiunt. The subject of both infinitives is still mē; the direct object quod (sigillum).

βασιλέα: "king."

(3)

ōrdine: "in order," "sequentially."

eōrum vestīgia persequor: Apuleius is "hot on the track" and finding the clues left behind by the prosecutors as they conspired to bring false charges against him.

apprehendēns: "taking up (for discussion)," OLD apprehendo 3. 

omnem calumniae textum retexō: "I am unravelling the entire fabric of their false charge," switching the metaphor. Quintilian (Institutiones 9.4.13) uses textus as a fourth declension noun meaning "the fabric made by a joining words together, the body of a passage."

(4)

Occulta fuisse fabricātio sigillī quod dīcitis quī potest: order: quī potest fabricātio sigillī fuisse occulta, quod dīcitis. Apuleius's order foregrounds the key word Occulta.

quī: "how."

quod dīcitis: "(a thing) which you are claiming" = "as you claim."

cuius ... artificem: "the creator of which (statuette)."

adeō ... nōn ignōrāstis: "you are so not unaware of," "you are so familiar with," "is so obvious to you," setting up the result clause ut ... dēnūntiāveritis.

eī: artificī.

praestō adesset: supply ut in an indirect command dependent upon dēnūntāveritis: "that he should be present and available (at court)."

dēnūntiāveritis: "you have sent an official summons."

(5)

inter suōs: either "among his own people," his friends, indicating their shared opinion, or "among his fellow craftsmen," indicating his preeminence. See OLD inter 4.

paulō ante: "a little earlier."

tibi ... dīligenter scīscitantī: "for you, as you were questioning him diligently."

gestae reī: "of the affair as it happened."

percēnsuit: "ran through," "listed off."

(6)

mē: "that I...," indirect statement representing the contents of Cornelius Saturninus's testimony. The verb is petī(vi)sse.

apud eum: "at his shop," "among his wares."

geōmetricās fōrmās: these were perhaps models used for the teaching of geometry, such as Plato implies were used in Republic 510 C (Butler).

invītātum eius artificiō: "enticed by his skill," LS invito II.B.

ēlabōrāsset: the pluperfect tense is hard to explain. Normal sequence of tenses would seem to require ēlabōrāret, parallel to exculperet below. 

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The pluperf. subj. had a constant tendency to encroach on the province of the imperfect subjunctive. This tendency is shown before the second century: it appears several times in the Bell. Afr. and the Bell. Hisp. (see Sittl, pp. 133, 134; Brock, p. 193). It began apparently with debuisset, potuisset, and voluisset used freely for the imperfect. The latter tense ultimately went out of use, except in Sardinia (Butler).

Butler defends the use of the pluperfect here as an expression of that tense's "constant tendency to encroach on the province of the imperfect subjunctive." But this is the first time we've seen this in this text, especially with a word that doesn't really match with the type of stative-slanted words that Butler brings up as the first instances of this phenomenon (debuisset, potuisset, voluisset), and it is also used in the first of two indirect commands based on petīsse: ut ... ēlabōrā(vi)sset ... et ... exculperet. The shift from the pluperfect to the imperfect tense between these two coordinated indirect commands seems purposeful. The use of the pluperfect here places the action prior to the subsequent imperfect, as if standing in the place of a future perfect tense: Apuleius wants Saturninus to first make the mechanica, then (once the mechanica will have been made) to make the sigillum (Asp).

petīsse: petīvisse, "asked (him to)," introducing the indirect commands, ut ... ēlabōrā(vi)sset ... et ... exculperet.

simul: supply mē petīsse: Apuleius left two commissions during the same visit.

cuiuscumque vellet deī: "of whatever god he wanted." 

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The special statuette is made to look harmless in three ways: allegedly it was ordered along with some other things, it did not have to represent a specific god, and it did not have to made of a specific type of wood. Scholars tend to take this for granted; e. g. TATUM 1979, 130, who comments on Apuleius' "indiscriminate" piety ("faith comes first, then the object of that faith"). However, Apuleius' words, notably the second element, are hardly credible: would a religious enthusiast like Apuleius really leave the choice of the god to the sculptor? The remark seems rather intended to mask the significant choice of Mercury; see 61.8 (Hunink)

supplicāssem: supplicāvissem, a relative clause of purpose, "which I could have worshipped in my usual way," if these pesky accusers hadn't made it part of their case and stirred up all this drama around it.

(7)

buxeam: supply imāginem vel sim.

temptāsse: continuing the indirect statement comprising Cornelius Saturninus's testimony; this time the subject is the sculptor himself.

dum ... agō: dum regularly takes the historical present: "while I was busy," LS ago II.D.1.b, AG 556.

rūrī: locative.

Sicinium Pontianum: a new subject in the indirect statement comprising Cornelius Saturninus' testimony. The verb is attulisse.

quī mihi factum volēbat: supply esse: "who was wanting it (the statuette) (to be) made for me."

hebenī: genitive of material. Ebony, the rare, precious, and very long-lasting heartwood imported from India and Africa. The famous Artemis statue in the temple of Ephesus was made of it (Pliny, Natural History 16.213). 

impetrātōs ... ā muliere honestissimā Capitōlīnā: "obtained from the most honorable woman Capitolina."

utī faceret adhortātum: supply esse, "encouraged him (Cornelius Saturninus) to make (the statuette)." utī = ut.

id mūnus ... fore: "that this gift would be...." The indirect statement here shifts from the words of Cornelius Saturninus' testimony to the reported speech from Sicinius Pontianus explaining why he wants the craftsman to change the material for the statuette from boxwood to ebony.

cum prīmīs: "especially," construe with grātum.

fore: futūrum esse.

(8)

Secundum ea:  "in accordance with these (instructions)," i.e., the instructions just given by Sicinius Pontianus.

sē fēcisse: continuing the indirect statement; Cornelius Saturninus is again the subject, and the statuette the direct object.

proinde ut loculī suppetēbant: "as best he could with the boxes available" (Jones), OLD proinde 2.

compāctā crassitūdine: having taken the box apart, the sculptor must have glued the small boards together into a massive block, which he could then carve out and model (Hunink). Ablative of description, either "of thick-set density" describing the ebony wood, which is much denser than boxwood, or "of compact thickness," i.e., the statuette of Mercury is thin (and thus can be interpreted as skeleton-esque) because it has been made out of the slabs of wood that once made up boxes.

Mercuriolum ... potuisse: the last indirect statement of this chapter. A mini-Mercury (statuette of Mercury) was able....

expedīrī: "to be set free," from the material, a striking image for a sculptor's art.