The trial of Apuleius: accused of seducing a widow by magic

Among the most extraordinary documents on love magic in the ancient world is the record of a real trial. Around 158 or 159 AD, at Sabratha, in present-day Libya, the writer Apuleius of Madauros had to defend himself before the proconsul of Africa, Claudius Maximus, against the charge of having won a wealthy widow by magical arts. The speech he delivered, reworked for publication, has come down to us under the title Apology, or De magia.

A marriage that displeased the relatives

Apuleius, a Platonist philosopher and brilliant orator, had stopped at Oea, modern Tripoli, during a journey. There he met again a fellow student, Pontianus, who persuaded him to marry his own mother, Aemilia Pudentilla, a well-off widow some years older than him. The marriage took place, but the relatives of her first husband, worried about the inheritance, reacted with hostility.

Led by Sicinius Aemilianus, the woman's brother-in-law, the opponents accused Apuleius of having obtained Pudentilla's consent through potions and spells. This was no mere gossip: in Rome harmful magic fell within the scope of the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis, the law passed by Sulla in 81 BC against murderers and poisoners. A conviction could have had very serious consequences.

The charges and the replies

The Apology allows us to know the evidence brought by the prosecution. Apuleius had allegedly sought out particular fish, thought useful for secret rites; he had kept a mysterious object wrapped in a cloth in his house; he had made a boy fall into a trance during a rite; he owned a statuette that his enemies described as a macabre image. Every detail was presented as proof of occult practices.

The orator replies with irony and learning. He explains that he studied fish as a naturalist, following in Aristotle's footsteps, that the statuette was an image of Mercury, and that the objects he kept concerned religious initiations of which he could not speak. Above all, he quotes Pudentilla's letters and stresses that the woman had freely chosen to remarry, after years of widowhood, for entirely understandable reasons.

What the trial teaches us

We do not know the verdict, but the confident tone of the work and Apuleius's later career suggest that he was acquitted. The writer later became a leading figure in Carthage and composed the Metamorphoses, the novel also known as The Golden Ass, which contains the famous tale of Cupid and Psyche and numerous episodes of magic.

For historians the Apology is a precious source. It shows that an accusation of love magic could be used as a weapon in a family and property dispute, and that behind many stories of potions and seduction lay very concrete interests. It also reveals how fine was the line, in Roman society, between philosophy, scientific curiosity and the suspicion of witchcraft.

The trial at Sabratha thus turns the theme of love potions from a literary motif into a documented legal case. Through the words of a cultured and sarcastic defendant, we can observe how a second-century community imagined magic, how it feared it and how Roman law tried to regulate it, distinguishing between the learning of philosophers and practices deemed criminal.