Apuleius' Florida : A Commentary (review)

Apuleius was one of the earliest classical Latin authors to appear in print (1469), occupying fifth place in a chronological listing of editiones principes. His Golden Ass was the subject of one of the earliest Renaissance commentaries on a classical Latin author, that of Filippo Beroaldo (1500). There are now modern commentaries on all the non-philosophical parts of the Apuleian corpus: the so-called "Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius" on the Golden Ass and Vincent Hunink's commentaries on the Apology (1997) and the Florida (2001); on the heels of the last of these follows the book under review. Commentaries themselves have lately attracted attention.¹ These recently published volumes trace the genesis and evolution of commentaries on classical, biblical, and scientific works from classical antiquity to the present. What all commentaries have in common is that the author or the work that is the subject of the commentary is an authority (Most 1999: 8). For Beroaldo, Apuleius was a stylistic and moral authority (Beroaldo 1500: 1 and 280). Lee has chosen to focus "above all on Apuleius' artistic and aesthetic use of the Latin language" (vii). He sees the Florida as "the clearest view . . . of the linguistic effects he [i.e., Apuleius] prefers," although this opinion is not consistent with his view expressed on the previous page that occasion dictates style (18–19).

The introduction (1–35) does a very good job of treating the components of the traditional accessus ad auctores: the life and times of the author and the nature of the work. Lee favors the title Florida as indicative of the process of excerption rather than of the properties (florid) of the excerpts. The section of the introduction on "The text of the Florida" (30–35) is especially helpful. He has examined the principal manuscripts and is able, therefore, periodically to explain the cause of various troublesome readings. He provides a lucid account of the division of the Florida into four books in the manuscript tradition, a division that is suppressed by modern editors because it does not conform to the separate fragments. He notes that the four-book division is retained in sixteenth-century Florentine editions of the Apuleian corpus; to his list of these editions should be added Quae in toto opere continentur: L. Apuleii . . . Metamorphoseon, sive de Asino aureo libri XI. Floridorum libri IIII. De deo Socratis libellus. Apologiae libri II. Trismegisti dialogus. De Mundo sive de cosmigrophia liber I. Omnes . . . diligentissime recogniti ac castigati [a Bernardo Philomathes, Pisano] (Florentiae: per haeredes Philippi Iuntae [Filippo Giunto, 1522]). The introductory section on Floridian intertexts (26–30) effectively deals with the complexity of the issue.

In the commentary itself each fragment is headed by an introductory "Notes on Fragment . . . ," where Lee outlines the critical issues and positions the fragment in the appropriate literary and rhetorical traditions. On fragment 2, for example, Lee highlights themes derived from Middle Platonism and underscores Apuleius' linking of rhetoric and philosophy. "Notes on Fragment 10" lucidly places the short fragment in the context of Middle Platonist physics.

Very few deficiencies detract from the value of Lee's commentary. The note on Florida 5.2 (funerepus) should probably include a reference to Filippo Beroaldo's Annotationes Centum (1488) 74, Nos pro "funere plus" emendavimus "funepeus"; and to Politian's Lamia (1492), where the phrase funerepus periclitatur shows that he had read the Florida (the recto of the third unnumbered folio). Lee has ignored or disregarded a few items of relevant scholarship.² There are a few infelicities of language, including: "e.g. . . . etc." (13), "center around" (13), "due to" for "because of" (68), "alternate" for "alternative" (64) and the frequent use of "cf." for "see." I noticed only a few typographical errors: "if" for "of" (18), "mih" for "mihi" (145).