Pseudo-Apuleius is the name given in modern scholarship to the author of a 4th-century herbal known as Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius or Herbarium Apuleii Platonici. The author of the text apparently wished readers to think that it was by Apuleius of Madaura (124–170 CE), the Roman poet and philosopher, but modern scholars do not believe this attribution. Little or nothing else is known of Pseudo-Apuleius. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Herbarium is the 6th-century Leiden, MS. Voss. Q.9. Until the 12th century it was the most influential herbal in Europe, with numerous extant copies surviving into the modern era, along with several copies of an Old English translation. Thereafter, it was more or less displaced by the Circa instans, a herbal produced at the school of Salerno. "Pseudo-Apuleius" is also used as a shorthand generic term to refer to the manuscripts and derived works.

Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius

Illustrations

Text

The text of Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius is based on late antique sources, especially Pliny's Historia naturalis and Discorides's De materia medica. Scholars agree that it was compiled in the 4th century, according to Sigerist (1930, p. 200) from Latin, according to Singer (1927, p. 37) from Greek sources. Each of the 128 to 131 chapters (the number varying between manuscripts) deals with one medical plant. In these chapters the name of the plant is followed by the enumeration of indications in the form of recipes and by synonyms of the plant's name. For example: Chapter 89, Herba millefolium (Edition of Howald/Sigerist 1927):

Associated texts

In the surviving codices the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius was combined with other treatises:

Manuscripts

Howald and Sigerist (edition 1927, V–XVI) divided the codices into 3 classes (α, β and γ) according to the varying mixture of associated texts in the codices: Singer (1927), Grape-Albers (1977, pp. 2–5) and Collins (2000) cited more manuscripts: Several more manuscripts can be added (see Mylène Pradel-Baquerre 2013 and Claudine Chavannes-Mazel 2016):

Translation: the Old English Herbarium

A version of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius was translated into Old English, surviving now in four manuscripts: Like many of the Latin manuscripts, it includes the Herbarium of Pseudo-Apuleius, De herba vetonica, De taxone, medicina de quadrupedibus, and the Liber medicinae ex herbis feminis. It was first edited and translated by Oswald Cockayne, re-edited in 1984 by Jan de Vriend, re-translated in 2002 by Anne Van Arsdall, and again re-edited and re-translated in 2023 by John D. Niles and Maria A. D'Aronco. A variety of dates and places have been suggested for the production of this translation, ranging from eighth-century Northumbria to late-tenth-century Winchester, with recent scholarship tending towards tenth-century Wessex.

Incunabula and early printings

Based on a 9th-century manuscript of Monte Cassino the first incunable of Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius was printed in Rome in 1481. The first printing in northern Europe was done in 1537 in Zürich.

Editions

Sources