Opening Florida — Apuleius in Plato Scroll…
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Apuleius · Bohn's Classical Library (1853)
It is a common custom with religious travellers, when they come upon some grove or sacred place, to beseech favour, offer up prayers, and sit down a while; in like manner, now that I have entered this most hallowed city, though I am in great haste, I must entreat favour, make oration, and check my hurry. For the traveller can find no fitter motives for a religious pause in an altar decked with flowers, or a dell shaded with foliage, or an oak loaded with horns, or a beech festooned with skins, or even a consecrated and enclosed hillock, or a trunk chiselled into the form of an image, or a turf redolent of libation, or a stone bedewed with ointment. These are small things indeed, and though adored by the few who scrutinise them, are passed unnoticed by those who are not aware of them. But not so my predecessor, Socrates, who, when he had looked for some time upon a handsome but silent …
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