"The Florida ('flowery pieces') is a collection of excerpts deriving from an earlier anthology of Apuleian speeches, most apparently delivered at Carthage in the 160s A.D. As a whole, these passages offer a unique view of the rhetorical practice of a performing intellectual in Latin in the second century A.D. They also give important information on civic life in Carthage through their treatment of proconsuls and the local senate." "The De Deo Socratis, probably also from the 160s, is an oration in the form of a popular philosophical lecture on the 'god' of Socrates, the inner voice which, according to Plato, advised him. This is the only surviving sophistic declamation in Latin. The material is treated brilliantly by Apuleius, being much ornamented with poetic quotation and rhetorical and stylistic pyrotechnics."--BOOK JACKET.