It's a kind of magic: Exploring the manipulation of magic and philosophy in Apuleius' Apologia

Chernotsky, Kaylie

It's a kind of magic: Exploring the manipulation of magic and philosophy in Apuleius' Apologia

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Languages and Literatures

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

My thesis examines how Apuleius manipulates the concepts of magic and philosophy in his self-defence speech, the Apologia. Through careful analysis of the text, I show that Apuleius characterises magic and its practitioners in two distinct ways: according to the common or vulgar view, and according to the intellectual or Platonic view. Although the two conceptions appear to be similar and share the name ‘magic' (magia), they are different, crucially in terms of piety: vulgar magic coerces the gods, while intellectual magic worships the gods. The crowd's narrow understanding of magic leads to the common error that confuses magic and philosophy and leads to the accusation that philosophers practise magic as it is commonly understood. As part of his argument, Apuleius aims to teach the audience about the intellectual view to correct this error. I show that Apuleius identities three groups in his audience: the intellectuals (himself and Maximus), the ignorant (the prosecution), and the uneducated crowd. Apuleius is careful not to equivocate between the crowd and the accusers. I show that Apuleius brings the audience into his rhetorical frame, to correct a wide misunderstanding of philosophy, which he argues has led to this accusation against him. I first examine Apuleius' outline of the different interpretations of magic (Chapter One) and then show how he uses this double conception of magic in his defence through three case studies (Chapters Two, Three, and Four).