APRIL-FOOLS' DAY, or ALL-FOOLS' DAY, the name given to the 1st of April in allusion to the custom of playing practical jokes on friends and neighbours on that day, or sending them on fools' errands. The origin of this custom has been much disputed, and many ludicrous solutions have been suggested, e.g. that it is a farcical commemoration of Christ being sent from Annas to Caiaphas, from Caiaphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, and from Herod back again to Pilate, the crucifixion having taken place about the 1st of April. What seems certain is that it is in some way or other a relic of those once universal festivities held at the vernal equinox, which, beginning on old New Year's day, the 25th of March, ended on the 1st of April. This view gains support from the fact that the exact counterpart of April-fooling is found to have been an immemorial custom in India. The festival of the spring equinox is there termed the feast of Huli, the last day of which is the 31st of March, upon which the chief amusement is the befooling of people by sending them on fruitless errands. It has been plausibly suggested that Europe derived its April-fooling from the French. They were the first nation to adopt the reformed calendar, Charles IX. in 1564 decreeing that the year should begin with the 1st of January. Thus the New Year's gifts and visits of felicitation which had been the feature of the 1st of April became associated with the first day of January, and those who disliked the change were fair butts for those wits who amused themselves by sending mock presents and paying calls of pretended ceremony on the 1st of April. Though the 1st of April appears to have been anciently observed in Great Britain as a general festival, it was apparently not until the beginning of the 18th century that the making of April-fools was a common custom. In Scotland the custom was known as “hunting the gowk," i.e. the cuckoo, and April-fools were April-gowks," the cuckoo being there, as it is in most lands, a term of contempt. In France the person befooled is known as poisson d'avril. This has been explained from the association of ideas arising from the fact that in April the sun quits the zodiacal sign of the fish. A far more natural explanation would seem to be that the April fish would be a young fish and therefore easily caught. A PRIORI (Lat. a, from, prior, prius, that which is before, precedes), (1) a phrase used popularly of a judgment based on general considerations in the absence of particular evidence; (2) a logical term first used, apparently, by Albert of Saxony (14th century), though the theory which it denotes is as old as Aristotle. In the order of human knowledge the particular facts of experience come first and are the basis of generalized laws or causes (the Scholastic notiora nobis); but in the order of nature the latter rank first as the self-existent, fundamental truths of existence (notiora naturae). Thus to Aristotle the a priori argument is from law or cause to effect, as opposed to what we call a posteriori (posterior, subsequent, derived), from effect to cause. Since Kant the two phrases have become purely adjectival (instead of adverbial) with a technical controversial sense, closely allied to the Aristotelian, in relation to knowledge and judgments generally. A priori is applied to judgments which are regarded as independent of experience, and belonging to the essence of thought; a posteriori to those which are derived from particular observations. The distinction is analogous to that between analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction (but there may be a synthesis of a priori judgments, cf. Kant's Synthetic Judgment a priori"). Round this distinction a rather barren controversy has raged, and almost all modern philosophers have labelled themselves either "Intuitionalist " (a priori) or “Empiricist " (a posteriori) according to the view they take of knowledge. In fact, however, the rival schools are generally arguing at cross purposes; there is a knowledge based on particulars, and also a knowledge of laws or causes. But the two work in different spheres, and are complementary. The observation of isolated particulars gives not necessity, but merely strong probability; necessity is purely intellectual or "transcendental." If the empiricist denies the intellectual element in scientific knowledge, he must not claim absolute validity for his conclusions; but he may hold against the intuitionalist that absolute laws are impossible to the human intellect. On the other hand, pure a priori knowledge can be nothing more than form without content (e.g. formal logic, the laws of thought). The simple fact at the bottom of the controversy is that in all empirical knowledge there is an intellectual element, without which there is no correlation of empirical data, and every judgment, however simple, postulates a correlation of some sort if only that between the predicate and its contradictory. APRON (a corruption arising from a wrong division of “a napron" into "an apron," from the Fr. naperon, napperon, a diminutive of nappe, Lat. mappa, a napkin), an article of costume used to protect the front of the clothes. It forms part of the ceremonial dress of Freemasons. The " apron " worn by church dignitaries is a shortened cassock (q.v.). The word has many technical uses, as for the protecting slope in front of the sill of dock-gates, or at the foot of weirs. APSARAS, in Hindu mythology, a female spirit of the clouds and waters. In the Rig-Veda there is one Apsaras, wife of Gandharva; in the later scriptures there are many Apsaras who act as the handmaidens of Indra and dance before his throne. They are able to change their form, and specially rule over the fortunes of gaming. One of their duties is to guide to paradise the heroes who fall in battle, whose wives they then become. They are distinguished as daivika (“ divine ”) or laukika (“worldly"). APSE (Gr. àvis, a fastening, especially the felloe of a wheel; Lat. absis), in architecture, a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault. The term is applied also to the termination to the choir, transept or aisle of any church which is either semicircular or polygonal in plan, whether vaulted or covered with a timber roof; a church is said to be "apsidal" when it terminates in an apse. The earliest example of an apse is found in the temple of Mars Ultor at Rome (2 B.C.), and it formed afterwards the favourite feature terminating the rear of any temple, and one which gave importance to the statue of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated. Its use by the Romans was not confined to the temples, as it is found in the palaces on the Palatine Hill, the great Thermae (Baths) and other monuments. In the civil basilicas the apse was screened off by columns, and constituted the court of justice. In the Ulpian (Trajan's) Basilica the apses at each end were of such great dimensions as to come better under the definition of hemicycles (q.v.). In these apses the floor was raised, and had an altar placed in the centre of its chord, where sacrifices were made prior to the sittings. The only other two Roman basilicas in which the semicircular apse can still be traced are that commenced by Maxentius and completed by Constantine at Rome and the basilica at Trier (Trèves). In the earliest Christian basilica, St Peter's at Rome, built 330 A.D., the apse, 57 ft. in diameter, raised above the confessio or crypt, was placed at the west end of the church. This orientation was originally followed in the churches of St Paul and St Lawrence (S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura), both outside the walls of Rome, and is found in most of the churches at Rome. On the other hand, in the Byzantine church, the apse was built at the east end of the church. During the reign of Justin the Second (A.D. 565-574), owing to a change in the liturgy, two more apses were added, one on each side of the central apse. These in the Greek Church were provided not to hold altars but for ceremonial purposes. One of the earliest examples is found in the church of St Nicholas at Myra of the 6th century, and the basilica erected in the great court of the temple at Baalbek shows the triple apse. The earliest example in Rome is found in the church of Sta Maria in Cosmedin (772-795), built probably by Greek craftsmen, who had been exiled by the Iconoclasts. Other triapsal choirs are found in the cathedral of Parenzo (542 A.D.), in St Mark's, Venice, in Sta Fosca and the Duomo at Torcello, and in numerous examples throughout Italy and Germany. In central Syria there is one example only, at Kalat Seman, where the side apses were a later addition, There is one important distinction to be drawn between the | in the 6th or 7th century, others were subsequently added at Byzantine and the Latin apses; they are both semicircular the west end of existing churches, and this is considered to have internally, but externally the former are nearly always poly- been the case at Canterbury; but in the German churches gonal. It follows, therefore, that in those churches in Italy sometimes apses were built from the first at both ends, such as where the apse is polygonal externally, it is a sign of direct are shown on the manuscript plan of St Gall, of the 9th century. Byzantine influence. This is found in St Mark's, Venice; Western apses exist at Gernrode; Drübeck; Huyseburg; the Sta Fosca, Torcello; Murano; nearly all the churches at Obermünster of Regensburg; St Godehard in Hildesheim; Ravenna; and in the Crusaders' churches throughout Syria. the cathedrals of Worms and Trier; the Abbey church of In the Coptic church in Egypt we find other characteristics; Laach; the Minster at Bonn; and in St Pietro-in-Grado near in the churches of the Red and White Monasteries, attributed Pisa. to St Helena, an unusual depth is given to the apse, in the walls of which niches are sunk; in the church of St John at Antinoë there are no fewer than seven. Similar niches are found in the apses of St Mark's, Venice, built in A.D. 828, O Apse of the White Monastery. it is said in imitation of St Mark's in Alexandria, to receive the relics of St Mark brought over from there. In a large number of the apses in the Coptic churches the seats round the apse with the bishop's throne in the centre are still preserved; of these the best examples are at Abu Sargah, Al 'Adra and Abu-s-Sifain. Unfortunately there are no remains of the fittings in the tribunes of the ancient Roman basilicas, but those in St Peter's at Rome, which were probably copied from them, are recorded in drawings, there being two or three rows of stone scats with the papal throne in the centre. It is possible also that some may still exist in the other early Christian basilicas at Rome, but there have been so many changes that it is not possible to trace them. In the cathedral of Parenzo in Istria (A.D. 532-535), the hemicycle of marble seats for the clergy with the episcopal chair in the centre still exists. A similar arrangement is found in the apse of the church of the 6th century attached to the church of St Helena in the island of Paros, where there are eight steep grades of semicircular stone seats with the bishop's chair in the centre. The aspect of the interior of this apse has in consequence very much the appearance of a Roman theatre. A third example, better known, exists at Torcello, with six concentric seats rising one above the other, and in the centre the episcopal chair with a flight of thirteen steps down in front of it. In the basilica at Bethlehem, the east end of which was reconstructed probably in the 5th century, apses of similar dimensions to the eastern apse were built at the north and south end of the transept. The same disposition is found in the Coptic churches of the Red and White Monasteries just referred to, in the church of St Elias at Salonica (c. 1012), the cathedral of Echmiadzin in Armenia, at Vatopedi, Mt. Athos, and some other Byzantine churches. An early example in France exists in the church of Germigny-des-Prés on the Loire (806; rebuilt 1868), where the three apses are horseshoe on plan, and the same is found in the church at Oberzell in the island of Reichenau, Lake of Constance, except that the eastern apse there is square. Small examples also are found at Querqueville and at St Wandrille near Caudebec, both in Normandy, but the finest development takes place in the church of St Maria im Capitol at Cologne, where the aisles are carried round both the northern and southern apses. The same feature exists in the cathedral of Tournai in Belgium and the churches at Cambrai, Soissons and Valenciennes (the last destroyed at the Revolution) in France, and also in the cathedrals of Como and of Pisa in Italy. Without aisles, there are examples in the churches of the Apostles and of St Martin at Cologne; St Quirinus at Neuss; at Roermond; St Cross, Breslau; the cathedral of Bonn; and, at a later date, in the Marienkirche at Trier; S. Elizabeth at Marburg; the church of Sta Maria-del-Fiore at Florence; and the cathedral of Parma. The triapsal churches, to which we have referred, are those in which the side apses form the termination of the side aisles; but where there are transepts, the aisles are sometimes not continued beyond them, and the expansion of the transept to north and south gives more ample space for apses; of these there are many examples, as in the Abbey church of Laach in Germany; at Romsey; Christchurch, Hants; Gloucester, Ely, Norwich and Canterbury cathedrals, in England; and at St Georges de Boscherville in France; sometimes there being space for two apses on each side. In the beginning of the 13th century in France, the apses became radiating chapels outside the choir aisle, henceforth known as the chevet. These radiating chapels would seem to have been suggested in Norwich and Canterbury cathedrals, but the feature is essentially a French one and in England is found only in Westminster Abbey, into which it was introduced by Henry III., to whom the chevets of Amiens, Beauvais and Reims were probably well known. (R. P. S.) APSE and APSIDES, in mechanics, either of the two points of an orbit which are nearest to and farthest from the centre of motion. They are called the lower or nearer, and the higher or more distant apsides respectively. The " line of apsides" is that which joins them, forming the major axis of the orbit. APSINES of Gadara, a Greek rhetorician, who flourished during the 3rd century A.D. After studying at Smyrna, he taught at Athens, and gained such a reputation that he was raised to the consulship by the emperor Maximinus (235-238). He was the friend of Philostratus, the author of the Lives of the Sophists, who speaks of his wonderful memory and accuracy. Two rhetorical treatises by him are extant: Téxin intopih, a handbook of rhetoric greatly interpolated, a considerable portion being taken from the Rhetoric of Longinus; and a smaller work, Пepl toxnμatioμévwv πpoßλnuáтwv, on Propositions maintained figuratively. Editions by Bake, 1849; Spengel-Hammer in Rhetores Graeci, ii. (1894); see also Hammer, De Apsine Rhetore (1876); Volkmann, Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer (1885), - APT, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Vaucluse, on the left bank of the Coulon, 41 m. E. of Avignon by rail. Pop. (1906) 4990. The town was formerly surrounded by massive ancient walls, but these have now been for the most part replaced by boulevards; many of its streets are narrow and irregular. The chief object of interest is the church of Sainte-Anne (once the cathedral), the building of which was begun about the year 1056 on the site of a much older edifice, but not completed until the latter half of the 17th century. Many Roman remains have been found in and near the town. A fine bridge, the Pont Julien, spanning the Coulon below the town, dates from the 2nd or 3rd century. A tribunal of first instance and a communal college are the chief public institutions. The chief manufactures are silk, confectionery and earthenware; and there is besides a considerable trade in fruit, grain and cattle. Apt was at one time the chief town of the Vulgientes, a Gallic tribe; it was destroyed by the Romans about 125 B.C. and restored by Julius Caesar, who conferred upon it the title Apta Julia; it was much injured by the Lombards and the Saracens, but its fortifications were rebuilt by the counts of Provence. The bishopric, founded in the 3rd century, was suppressed in 1790. APTERA (Greek for "wingless "), a term in zoological classification applied by Linnaeus to various groups of wingless arthropods, including some of the insects, the centipedes, the millipedes, In consequence of a change made in the orientation of apses the Arachnida (scorpions, spiders, &c.) and the Crustacea. In modern zoology the term has become restricted to the lowest | Machilidae and Lepismidae (these two families are known as order of the class Hexapoda or true insects. This order includes the bristle-tails and the springtails. Many wingless insects-such as lice, fleas and certain earwigs and cockroaches-are placed in various orders together with winged insects to which they show evident relationships. In such cases the absence of wings must be regarded as secondary -due to a parasitic or other special manner of life. But the bristle-tails and springtails, which form the modern order Aptera, are all without any trace of wings, and, on account of several remarkable archaic characters which they exhibit, there is reason for believing that they are primitively wingless-that they represent an early offshoot which sprang from the ancestral stock of the Hexapoda before organs of flight had been acquired by the class. FIG. 1.-A typical Thysanuran (Machilis maritima). Female, ventral view Mx', Mx, 1st and 2nd maxillae. segments are shown, some the Ectotrophi) the maxillae are like those of typical biting Characters. In addition 3 From Carpenter, Proc. R. Dub. Soc vol. xi, FIG. 2.-Structure of Collembola. 1. Isotoma hibernica. Side view. 2. 5. 6. Tip of left dens with mucro. Outer view Classification.-The 7. Entomobrya anomala. Catch. Aptera are divided into two divergent sub-orders, the Thysanura (q.v.) or bristle-tails, and the Collembola or springtails. Thysanura. The bristletails have an abdomen of eleven segments, the tenth usually carrying a pair of long many-jointed tail-feelers (cerci, fig. 1, x.); sometimes a median, jointed tail-appendage is also present. To these feelers the popular name is due. There may also be abdominal appendages-in the form of simple unjointed stylets (fig. 1, ii.-ix.), accompanied by paired eversible sacs, probably respiratory in function-on eight (or fewer) other abdominal segments. The head of a bristle-tail carries a pair of compound eyes and a pair of elongate many-jointed feelers. The air-tube system is developed in varying degree in different bristle-tails, the number of pairs of spiracles being three (Campodea), nine (Machilis), ten (Lepisma), or eleven (Japyx). Four families of Thysanura are usually recognized. In the like the single elements (ommatidia) of a compound insect eye, in others like simple ocelli. The abdomen consists of six segments only. The first of these usually carries a ventral tube, furnished with paired eversible sacs which assist the insects in walking on smooth surfaces, and perhaps serve also as organs for breathing. From the researches of V. Willem it appears that the viscid fluid which causes the adherence of the ventral tube is secreted by a pair of glands in the head whose ducts open into a superficial groove leading from the second maxillae backward to the tube on the first abdominal segment. The third abdominal segment usually carries a pair of short appendages whose basal segments are fused together; this is the "catch" (fig. 2, 7), whose function is to hold in place the "spring," which is formed by the fourth pair of abdominal appendages-also with fused basal segments. In most Collembola the spring appears to belong to the fifth abdominal somite, but Willem, by study of the muscles, has shown that it really belongs to the fourth. The fused basal segments of the appendages form the "manubrium " of the spring, which carries the two "dentes" (usually elongate and flexible), each with a mucro 'at its tip (fig. 2, 5). The fifth abdominal segment is the genital, and the sixth the anal somite. The spring serves the Collembola which possess it as an efficient leaping-organ (see SPRINGTAIL). But in some genera it is greatly reduced and in many quite vestigial. Most springtails are without air-tubes, and breathe through the general cuticle of the body. But in one family (Sminthuridae) a spiracle, opening on either side between the head and the prothorax, leads to a branching system of air-tubes. The Sminthuridae are further characterized by the globular abdomen, which shows but little external trace of segmentation, and by the well-developed spring. In the Entomobryidae the body is elongate and clearly segmented, but the dorsal region (tergum) of the prothorax is much reduced and the head downwardly directed; the spring is well developed. In the Achorutidae the head is forwardly directed, the tergum of the prothorax conspicuous, and the spring small or vestigial. In many genera of springtails a curious post-antennal organ, consisting of sensory structures (often complex in form) surrounded by a firm ring, is to be noticed on the cuticle of the head between the eyes and the feelers. It may be of use as an organ of smell. Other sensory organs occur on the third and fourth antennal segments in the Achorulidae and Entomobryidae (fig. 2, 3). Distribution and Habits.-The Aptera are probably the most widely distributed of all insects. Among the bristle-tails we find the genus Machilis, represented in Europe (including the Faeroe Islands) and in Chile; while Campoden lives high on the mountains and in the deepest caves. The springtails have even a wider distribution. The genus Isoloma, for example, has some of its numerous specics in regions so remote as Alaska, Franz Josef Land, the Sandwich Islands, the South Orkneys, Graham Land, Kerguelen and South Victoria Land. As it is unlikely that these delicate insects could be transported across seachannels, their wide and discontinuous range suggests both their great antiquity and the former existence of continental tracts over which they may have travelled to their present stations. Springtails and bristle-tails live in damp concealed placesunder stones or tree-bark, in moss, and in the decaying vegetable or animal matter which serves as food for most of them. Some species, however, eat fresh plant-tissues. A species of bristle-tail (Machilis maritima) and quite a number of springtails haunt the sea-coast at or below high-water mark. In such localitics many thousands of individuals may sometimes be found associated together. The insect fauna of limestone caves both in Europe and North America is largely composed of Aptera, especially Collembola. Geological History.-A supposed Thysanuran from the Silurian of New Brunswick has been described by G. F. Matthew, and another genus from the French Carboniferous by C. Brongniart. Not till the Tertiary do we find remains of Aptera in any quantity, species both of living and extinct genera being represented in the amber. Development.-The embryonic development of several genera of Aptera, which has been carefully studied, will be more suitably described in comparison with that of other insects than here (see HEXAPODA). BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The modern study of the Aptera may be said to date from the classical memoirs of T. Tullberg, "Sveriges Podu rider," in Kongl. Svensk Vetensk. Akad. Handl. x., 1872, and Sir J. Lubbock (Lord Avebury), " Monograph of the Collembola and Thysanura," Ray Society, 1873. In these, full references to the older literature will be found. Subsequently our knowledge of the Thysanura has been markedly advanced by J. T. Oudemans, Bijdrage tot de Kennis den Thysanura en Collembola (Amsterdam, 1888); B. Grassi, who published between 1885 and 1889 a series of memoirs entitled "I progenitori dei Miriapodi e degli Insetti," in the Alli Accad. di Scienz. Nat. Catania, and the Memor. R. Accad. dei Lincei: and V. Willem, whose "Recherches sur les Collemboles et les Thy sanoures," in Mem. Cour. Acad. Roy. Belgique, lviii., 1900, are indispensable to the student. In addition to this work of Willem, valuable anatomical papers on Collembola have been published by H. J. Hansen (Zool. Anz. xvi., 1893), J. W. Folsom (Bull. Mus. Comp. Anal. Harv. xxxv., 1899), C. Borner (Zool. Anz. xxiii., 1900), and K. Absolon (Zool. Anz. xxiii. and xxiv., 1900, 1901), the two latter writers having paid especial attention to the peculiar post APTERAL (from the Gr. årrepos, wingless, á-, privative and Tepov, a wing), an architectural term applied to amphiprostyle temples which have no columns on the sides; in the Ionic temple on the Acropolis at Athens known as Nike Apteros, the adjective is used, not as applying to the goddess of victory but to the absence of any peristyle on the sides. "Gar APTIAN (Fr. Apljen, from Apt in Vaucluse, France), in geology, the term introduced in 1843 by A. d'Orbigny (Pal. France Crêt. ii.) for the upper stage of the Lower Cretaceous rocks. In England it comprises the Lower Greensand and part of the Speeton beds; in France it is divided into two sub-stages, the lower, "Bedoulian," of Bedoule in Provence, with Hoplites deshayesei and Ancyloceras Matheroni; and an upper, gasian," from Gargas near Apt, with Hoplites furcatus (Dufrenoyi) and Phylloceras Guettardi. To this stage belong the Toucasia limestone and Orbitolina marls of Spain; the Schrattenkalk (part) of the Alpine and Carpathian regions; and the Terebrirostra limestone of the same area. Parts of the Flysch of the eastern Alps, the Biancone of Lombardy, and argile scagliose of Emilia, are of Aptian age; so also are the "Trinity Beds " of North America. Deposits of bauxite occur in the Aptian hippurite limestone at Les Baux near Arles, and in the Pyrenees. The Aptian rocks are generally clays, marls and green glauconitic sands with occasional limestones. (See GREENSAND and CRETACEOUS.) APULEIUS, LUCIUS, Platonic philosopher and rhetorician, was born at Madaura in Numidia about A.D. 125. As the son of one of the principal officials, he received an excellent education, first at Carthage and subsequently at Athens. After leaving Athens he undertook a long course of travel, especially in the East, principally with the view of obtaining initiation into religious mysteries. Having practised for some time as an advocate at Rome, he returned to Africa. On a journey to Alexandria he fell sick at Oea (Tripoli), where he made the acquaintance of a rich widow, Aemilia Pudentilla, whom he subsequently married. The members of her family disapproved of the marriage, and indicted Apuleius on a charge of having gained her affections by magical arts. He easily established his innocence, and his spirited, highly entertaining, but inordinately long defence (Apologia or De Magia) before the proconsul Claudius Maximus is our principal authority for his biography. From allusions in his subsequent writings, and the mention of him by St Augustine, we gather that the remainder of his prosperous life was devoted to literature and philosophy. At Carthage he was elected provincial priest of the imperial cult, in which capacity he occupied a prominent position in the provincial council, had the duty of collecting and managing the funds for the temples of the cult, and the superintendence of the games in the amphitheatre. He lectured on philosophy and rhetoric, like the Greek sophists, apparently with success, since statues were erected in his honour at Carthage and elsewhere. The year of his death is not known. The work on which the fame of Apuleius principally rests has little claim to originality. The Metamorphoses or Golden Ass (the latter title seems not to be the author's own, but to have been bestowed in compliment, just as the Libri Rerum Quotidianarum of Gaius were called Aurei) was founded on a narrative in the Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae, a work extant in the time of Photius. From Photius's account (impugned, however, by Wieland and Courier), this book would seem to have consisted of a collection of marvellous stories, related in an inartistic fashion, and in perfect good faith. The literary capabilitics of this particular narrative attracted the attention of Apuleius's Contemporary, Lucian, who proceeded to work it up in his own manner, adhering, as Photius seems to indicate, very closely to the original, but giving it a comic and satiric turn. Apuleius followed this rifacimento, making it, however, the groundwork of an elaborate romance, interspersed with numerous episodes, of which the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche is the most celebrated, and altering the dénouement to suit the religious revival of which he was an apostle. BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Complete works: Editio princeps, ed. Andreas (1469); Oudendorp (1786-1823); Hildebrand (1842); Helm (1905 et seq.); P. Thomas (vol. iii. 1908). Metamorphoses, Eyssenhardt (1869), van der Vliet (1897). Psyche et Cupido, Jahn-Michaelis (1883); Beck (1902). Apologia, I. Casaubon (1594); Krüger (1864): (with the Florida), van der Vliet (1900). Florida, Krüger (1883). De Deo The adventures of the youthful hero in the form of an ass are Socratis, Buckley (1844), Lütjohann (1878). De Platone et ejus Dogmate, Goldbacher (1876) (including De Mundo and De Deo Socratis). much the same in both romances, but in Apuleius he is restored For the relation between Lucian's "Ovos and the Metamorphoses of to human shape by the aid of Isis, into whose mysteries he is Apuleius, see Rohde, Über Lucians Schrift Aovros (1869), and initiated, and finally becomes her priestess. The book is a Burger, De Lucio Patrensi (1887). On the style of Apuleius consult remarkable illustration of the contemporary reaction against a Kretzschmann, De Latinitate L. Apulei (1865), and Koziol, Der Stil des A. (1872). There is a complete English translation of the works period of scepticism, of the general appetite for miracle and of Apuleius in Bohn's Classical Library. The translations and magic, and of the influx of oriental and Egyptian ideas into the imitations of the Golden Ass in modern languages are numerous: old theology. It is also composed with a well-marked literary in English, by Adlington, 1566 and later eds. (reissued in the Tudor aim, defined by Kretzschmann as the emulation of the Greek translations and Temple Classics), Taylor (1822) (including the sophists, and the transplantation of their tours de force into the there are recent translations by Robert Bridges (1895) (in verse), philosophical works), Head (1851). Of the Cupid and Psyche episode Latin language. Nothing, indeed, is more characteristic of Stuttaford (1903); and it is beautifully introduced by Walter Pater Apuleius than his versatility, unless it be his ostentation and self-into his Marius the Epicurean. This episode has afforded the subject confidence in the display of it. The dignified, the ludicrous, the of a drama to Thomas Heywood, and of narrative poems to Shakerley voluptuous, the horrible, succeed each other with bewildering rapidity; fancy and feeling are everywhere apparent, but not less so affectation, meretricious ornament, and that effort to say everything finely which prevents anything being said well. The Latinity has a strong African colouring, and is crammed with obsolete words, agreeably to the taste of the time. When these defects are mitigated or overlooked, the Golden Ass will be pronounced a most successful work, invaluable as an illustration of ancient manners, and full of entertainment from beginning to The most famous and poetically beautiful portion is the episode of Cupid and Psyche, adapted from a popular legend of which traces are found in most fairy mythologies, which explains the seeming incongruity of its being placed in the mouth of an old hag. The allegorical purport he has infused into it is his own, and entirely in the spirit of the Platonic philosophy. Don Quixote's adventure with the wine-skins, and Gil Blas's captivity among the robbers, are palpably borrowed from Apuleius; and several of the humorous episodes, probably current as popular stories long before his time, reappear in Boccaccio. end. Of Apuleius's other writings, the Apology has been already mentioned. The Florida (probably meaning simply "anthology," without any reference to style) consists of a collection of excerpts from his declamations, ingenious but highly affected, and in general perfect examples of the sophistical art of saying nothing with emphasis. They deal with the most varied subjects, and are intended to exemplify the author's versatility. The pleasing little tract On the God of Socrates expounds the Platonic doctrine of beneficent daemons, an intermediate class between gods and men. Two books on Plato (De Platone et Ejus Dogmate) treat of his life, and his physical and ethical philosophy; a third, treating of logic, is generally considered spurious. The De Mundo is an adaptation of the Ilepi kooμou wrongly attributed to Aristotle. Apuleius informs us that he had also composed numerous poems in almost all possible styles, and several works on natural history, some in Greek. In the preparation of these he seems to have attended more closely to actual anatomical research than was customary with ancient naturalists. Some other works-dealing with theology, the properties of herbs, medical remedies and physiognomy, are wrongly attributed to him. Marmion, Mrs. Tighe, and William Morris (in the Earthly Paradise). APULIA (sometimes APPULIA in manuscripts but never in inscriptions), the district inhabited in ancient times by the Apuli. Strictly a Samnite tribe (see SAMNITES) settled round Mount Garganus on the east coast of Italy (Strabo vi. 3. 11), the Apuli mingled with the Iapygian tribes of that part of the coast (Dauni, Peucetii, Poediculi) who, like the Messapii, had come from Illyria, so that the name Apulia reached down to the border of the ancient Calabria. Almost the only monument of Samnite speech from the district is the famous Tabula Bantina from Bantia, a small city just inside the Peucetian part of Apulia, on the Lucanian border. This inscription is one of the latest and in some ways the most important monument of Oscan, though showing what appear to be some southern peculiarities (see OSCA LINGUA). Its date is almost certainly between 118 and 90 B.C., and it shows that Latin had not even then spread over the district (cf. LUCANIA). Far older than this are some coins from Ausculum and Teate (later known as Teanum Apulum), of which the earliest belong to the 4th century B.C. Roman or Latin colonies were few, Luceria (planted 314 B.C.) in the north and Brundisium (soon after 268) being the chief. (See R. S. Conway, Italic Dialects, xxviii.-xxx. pp. 15 f.; and Mommsen's introduction to the opening sections of C.I.L. ix.) (R. S. C.) The wars of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. brought a great part of the pastures of the Apulian plain into the hands of the Roman state, and a tax was paid on every head of cattle and every sheep, at first to the tax farmer and later to the imperial procurator. It was under the Romans that the system of migration for the flocks reached its full development, and the practice is still continued; the sheep-tracks (tratturi), 350 ft. wide, leading from the mountains of the Abruzzi to the plain of Apulia date in the main at least from the Roman period, and are mentioned in inscriptions. The plain, however, which once served as winter grazing ground for a million sheep, now gives pasture to about one-half of that number. The shepherds, who were slaves, often gave considerable trouble; we hear that some 7000 of them, who had made the whole country unsafe, were condemned to death in 185 B.C. (Livy xxxix. 29). Sheepfarming on a large scale was no doubt detrimental to the interests The character of Apuleius, as delineated by himself, is attracof the towns. We hear of repeated risings, for the last time in tive; he appears vehement and passionate, but devoid of the Social War. Even in the 4th century B.C. the then chief town rancour; enterprising, munificent, genial and an enthusiast of Apulia, Teate or Teanum Apulum (see above), suffered in this for the beautiful and good. His vanity and love of display are way. Luceria subsequently took its place, largely owing to its conspicuous, but are extenuated by a genuine thirst for know-military importance; but under the Empire it was succeeded ledge and a surprising versatility of attainments. He prided himself on his proficiency in both Greek and Latin. His place in letters is accidentally more important than his genius strictly entitles him to hold. He is the only extant example in Latin literature of an accomplished sophist in the good sense of the The loss of other ancient romances has secured him a peculiar influence on modern fiction; while his chronological position in a transitional period renders him at once the evening star of the Platonic, and the morning star of the Neo-Platonic philosophy. term. by Canusium. The road system of Apulia, which touched all the important towns, consisted of three main lines, the Via Appia (see APPIA, VIA), the Via Traiana, and the coast road, running more or less parallel in an east-south-east direction. The first (the southernmost), coming east from Beneventum, entered Apulia at the Pons Aufidi, and ran through Venusia to Tarentum, and thence, and remained so until 1865. Since that time the tratturi have been 1 The migration was made compulsory by Alphonso I. in 1442, to some extent absorbed by private proprietors. |