Although Apuleius’ opera philosophica have seen only marginal benefits from his broader literary fortunes, they have of late begun to receive renewed appreciation (R. Fletcher's Apuleius’ Platonism [2014]; C. Moreschini's Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism [2015]). M.'s new OCT of the philosophical works offers a fitting conclusion to Apuleius’ transformation over the last 35 years from a peripheral North African author into a central, canonical figure. Simultaneously, however, M.'s text presages a very welcome new beginning for Apuleius studies, an opportunity for a fresh look at the whole corpus. For M.'s is the first ever OCT of Apuleius’ philosophica and a new edition of works largely underappreciated for the last century. Her text will thus open many new avenues of research hitherto closed off to scholars due to lack of easy access to a critical edition.

The volume is well organised and thorough, and M.'s editorial reasoning, as presented in her (stylistically Apuleian) praefatio, is clear and accessible. Her ordering of the works follows the precedent of P. Thomas’ and C. Moreschini's Teubners (1908 and 1991), according to which she includes the ‘false preface’ of Soc. – a brief passage transmitted with the philosophica, but likely from the Florida. Moreover, M. follows suit in not drawing a stemma; rather, she sets out a conspectus siglorum of the three main families of the manuscript tradition (contra Moreschini's two). Her primary modus operandi is elucidated on p. xviii: restituere non dubitavi has lectiones ab omnibus vel a fidelioribus codicibus traditas. As such, she aims to find the ‘true’ text obscured by the credulity long granted to ‘lesser witnesses’ (deterioribus codicibus), especially those of classis δ (Leidensis), which Moreschini and J. Beaujeu deemed valuable for its later witnesses’ (CH) corrections. Where corruptions have crept into her reconstructed archetype, M. prefers to use the witness of ancient testimonia. She deploys conjecture sparingly as a tool of last resort. Thus, as an editor, M. is meticulous and conservative. Most often, her careful approach ends in elegant solutions to long-vexed problems with minimal intervention. An example of this occurs in her reading of the first line of Plat. 2.7:

dividentes (from most manuscripts) requires editorial intervention. Thus, F. van Oudendorp adopted the reading of M.'s ‘lesser witnesses’ (dividentem CH) and posited a lost se, rendering the participle with virtutem (‘dividing itself equally’). Moreover, scientiamque has long puzzled readers: Moreschini called it ‘incomprensibile’, Beaujeu ‘grammaticalement bizarre’. M. solves the first issue by reading dividens (modifying the subject [Plato]) and proposing that the syllable -te- slipped in as a lectio duplex (from aequaliter). The second issue is addressed by M.'s simple transposition of -que to causam, thus making the ut-clause final following causa (OLD 7b). This new reading provides a sophisticated solution to an old problem and is paradigmatic of M.'s process: minimal intervention, maximum comprehensibility.

However, for non-experts in Apuleius’ philosophica M.'s minimalism can displace much of the burden for making sense of the text onto the reader, to whose judgement she readily concedes faith (p. xx: iudicio lectoris … credidi). In fact, it is somewhat surprising to find her text in the Oxford (rather than Teubner) series, since a glance through its pages reveals a substantial apparatus, often taking up one-third to half of the page. As a consequence, some true gems of M.'s minimalist elegance are buried in the apparatus, which frequently overproduces readings from the last 200 years and forces the reader-qua-archaeologist to sift through them. In short, the text is meticulous, but not user-friendly.

To see this onerous approach, consider the opening line of Plat. 2.1:

M.'s apparatus for this sentence reads:

More than double the main text, the apparatus demonstrates the frustration this sentence has caused readers. Yet, M.'s choice of text complicates the matter. Transposing the ut-clause as parenthetical, she nevertheless double-prints it; then, dropping the second ad as a dittography, she creates a lopsided construction, in which the infinitive contingere stands parallel to an indirect question dependent on scias and is connected to it only by verum (rather than verum etiam, as one would expect). In my view, this pushes the limits of variatio even for Apuleius. Buried in the apparatus, however, she offers a preferable solution to this conundrum: adopting Sinko's conjecture of a lost accusative subject t<e> and retaining the original ut-clause, she creates an elegant period with sensible variatio. But it requires great effort to shut out the competing voices of other editors.

The reverse situation – clear text, confusing apparatus – occurs at a critical interpretative juncture in Soc. (21.1). There, M. prints:

The textual problem lies in the closing phrase, where most manuscripts read pari similium numinum caventes permittimus. M. offers the following explanation in her apparatus:

Significantly, this sentence occurs at the end of Apuleius’ exposition of Socrates’ daemon, where we are told that Socrates was ‘made equal to a most splendid divinity’ through wisdom (20.5). M.'s text presents another clever answer to a complex problem. Adopting Floridus’ haplography – pari<s> – and assuming a dittography of -ium (from similium), M. has sensibly restored the text: ‘why do we not entrust ourselves to the fortunate zeal of an equal philosophy, desiring to be similar to divinities?’ However, M.'s apparatus seems to suggest that she reads similis as genitive along with pari<s>. According to her interpretation, then, numinum is dependent on [c]aventes – ‘desiring after the divinities’ – presumably by analogy to cupientes (as N² reads), but no parallel exists in extant Latin for aveo + gen. Rather, the solution she prints makes the most sense if we understand similis to be the alternative accusative plural and thus read an elided esse with aveo (OLD 1). This reading has the added advantage of making the most sense contextually: Socrates through wisdom became ‘like a most splendid numen’; we, too, through ‘zeal for an equal philosophy’, can aspire to become ‘similar to divinities’.

When reading M.'s text, I sometimes sensed that her distaste for emendation and distrust of ‘lesser witnesses’ could lead her to resort to tendentious defences for retaining her preferred manuscript's reading. At Plat. 1.9, for instance, she cites a passing reference in J. Whittaker (who offers no substantive argument) to defend the manuscript's specious reading (virtutem esse genetricem), which has a more fitting parallel in Mund. (31.5: genitorem virtutum) and is attested in CH. It was somewhat surprising, furthermore, to see no mention anywhere of R. Fowler's recent critical edition and translation of Plat. (Imperial Plato [2016]): M.'s text would have benefited greatly from a perusal of his copious notes on the philosophical background to Plat.

However, these are minor quibbles, which pale in comparison to the great service M. has done for Apuleius scholars. By providing such a meticulously edited volume, M. offers us the opportunity to bring the philosophica back into mainstream critical discourse on Apuleius. Besides, it is only fitting that an author who demanded that readers of his novel be ‘scrupulous’ (Met. 9.30) should have his editors require the same careful eye for detail from their readers.