Lucius Apuleius Marcellus

Apuleius, usually known in modern scholarship as Apuleius of Madauros or Apuleius Madaurensis, was born around 124 CE at Madauros, a Roman colony in Numidia, today M’Daourouch in Algeria. He presents himself as a man of North African origin, and later sources consistently connect him with Madauros, a city also remembered as an important centre of education in Roman Africa.

He received an elite education and studied philosophy, especially Platonism, at Athens, before travelling widely through the Mediterranean world. His career combined literary activity, public speaking and philosophical teaching, and his surviving works include the Metamorphoses or Golden Ass, the Apologia, the Florida, and philosophical treatises such as De deo Socratis.

A key episode in his life is known from the Apologia, the speech in which he defended himself against accusations of magic after marrying the wealthy widow Pudentilla at Oea, near modern Tripoli. The trial, usually dated to the late 150s CE, is one of the main sources for reconstructing his biography and social milieu.

The date of Apuleius’ death remains unknown. Modern scholars generally place his activity between c. 124 CE and the later second century CE, and although the place of his death is also uncertain, Carthage is often considered the most likely possibility due to his later intellectual activity there.

Apuleius and the Mithraic Mysteries

In 1989, the Roman archaeologist and topographer Filippo Coarelli advanced the daring hypothesis that the proprietor of the Casa di Apuleio at Ostia was the same person as Apuleius of Madauros, the author of the (to us) well-known novel, the Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses). This identification, if true, is more than a mere prosopographical curiosity.

The Casa di Apuleio (I.viii.5) is contiguous with, and has access to, the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres (’Sette Sfere’, II. viii.6). These two structures, in turn, are integrated into the design of a larger, pre-existing complex, the area of the ’Four Temples’ (Quattro Tempietti’, II.viii.2). The Ostian householder, then, seems to have been deeply involved in the religious life of his community, in particular with one of the mystery cults. So, of course, both in his own right and in the persona of his hero Lucius, was Apuleius the author.

The mysteries of the Golden Ass were those of Isis, while the mysteries celebrated in the complex of the Casa di Apuleio were those of Mithras. It is one of the enigmas of the novel that Mithras is the name chosen by Apuleius for the mystagogue and priest who first inducts Lucius into the mysteries of Isis. If Apuleius the novelist was indeed the Ostian householder and patron of the Mithraists of Sette Sfere, it would cast an interesting light not only on the author and his work but also on Mithraism in the local context.

—Beck, 2000

Apulée met en scène dans ses Métamorphoses (livre XI, tome I, pages 1068-1069, Hildebrand) un prêtre d’Isis du nom de Mithres. Conclure de là, comme le fait M. Fabri (page 16), à un rapport entre les mystères isiaques et mithriaques, est bien téméraire. Des prêtres de cultes divers, des épicuriens et même des chrétiens se sont appelés Mithres. (Voyez les noms propres dérivés de Mithra.)

—Cumont, 1899

See also:
—Coarelli (1989)