by Christopher Francese
All Latin texts of the Apologia derive ultimately from a single eleventh century manuscript now in Florence (known as F, see below), along with variants preserved in some later manuscripts derived from F, and many corrections and emendations suggested by scholars over the years. The text given here is based on that of Vincent Hunink (Apuleius of Madauros: Pro se de magia [Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997]), which is itself derived from the Teubner edition of Rudolf Helm (Apulei Platonici Madaurensis opera quae supersunt. Vol. II fasc. I. Pro se de magia liber (Apologia) [Leipzig: Teubner: 1972]), whose text and apparatus we also consulted. In cases of doubt we had frequent recourse to the Loeb edition by Christopher P. Jones's (Apuleius: Apologia, Florida, De deo Socratis [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017]), which not seldom differs from Hunink. Hunink is reluctant to accept emendations of F that seem reasonable to other editors, such as Jones and Helm. A list of cases in which we departed from Hunink is included below. In almost all these cases we adopt the reading of Jones. We modernized and regularized Latin orthography without comment, as does Jones and, to much lesser extent, Hunink. We also generally do not include bracketed words and letters which Hunink prints but, like most other editors, believes to be interpolations. Our goal was readability, rather than an exact transcription of what is found in F.
Those interested in specific textual issues should consult the apparatus in Helm, and the commentaries of Hunink and Butler and Owen.
On the manuscripts and textual history of the work, see:
C.P. Jones Apuleius: Apologia, Florida, De deo Socratis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. xxi-xxiii, with further bibliography pp. xxix-xxx.
H.E. Butler and A.S. Owen, Apulei apologia sive pro se de magia liber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), pp. xxix-xliv, based on personal inspection of the manuscripts by Butler.
Juan Martos, Apuleyo de Madauros: Apología o discurso sobre la magia en defensa propria; Floridas; Prólogo de el dios de Sócrates (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2015), pp. XLIX-LIII, with a stemma codicum at p. CIII.
Digital images of the two most significant manuscripts are available online.
F (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 68.2, 11th century) can be inspected at the Biblissima Portal and at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Digital repository. The Apologia begins at 126v.
φ (Codex Laurentianus Mediceus 29.2), which is a copy taken from F, can be inspected at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Digital Repository.
Concerning F, Leonardo Costantini writes:
Classicists owe a great debt of gratitude to the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. This center allowed the survival of works such as Seneca’s Dialogues, Hyginus’s Fabulae, the early tenth-century archetype of which came from the Beneventan area, Varro’s De Lingua Latina, Frontinus’s De Aquis, Tacitus’s Annals 11–16 and Histories 1–5, as well as Apuleius’s literary works (Apologia, Metamorphoses, and Florida). Our earliest and most authoritative MS for the latter is commonly referred to with the siglum F. It was produced in the Cassinese scriptorium under the abbotship of Desiderius (1058–1087) and is now preserved at the Laurentian Library (Plut. 68.2), in Florence, where it was brought by Zanobi da Strada after his stay in Monte Cassino in 1355–1357. The authority of F is undisputed by all editors. The most thorough and, in my view, reliable codicological examination of this witness and its textual features to date is still Helm (Apulei Platonici Madaurensis opera quae supersunt, vol. 1, 2nd edition, 1959, pp. xxxiv–lvii). (Leonardo Costantini, Apuleius Madaurensis. Metamorphoses, Book III. Text, Introduction, Translation, and Commentary [Leiden: Brill, 2021], p. 299).