8. Horace, Quintilian, Apuleius, and the appearance of free (unrestricted) translation.

Known in the English-speaking world as Horace was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.

His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep") but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".

Quintilian, Latin in full Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Latin teacher and writer whose work on rhetoric, Institutio oratoria, is a major contribution to educational theory and literary criticism. He also deals with the nature, value, origin, and function of rhetoric and with the different types of oratory, giving far more attention to forensic oratory (that used in legal proceedings) than to other types. During his general discussion of invention he also considers the successive, formal parts of a speech, including a lively chapter on the art of arousing laughter. The Institutio is further distinguished by its emphasis on morality, for Quintilian’s aim was to mold the student’s character as well as to develop his mind. His central idea was that a good orator must first and foremost be a good citizen; eloquence serves the public good and must therefore be fused with virtuous living. At the same time, he wished to produce a thoroughly professional, competent, and successful public speaker.

Apuleius was a Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorian. He was a Numidian who lived under the Roman Empire and was from Madauros (now M'Daourouch, Algeria). His most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into a donkey. The Golden Ass (Asinus Aureus) or Metamorphoses is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It is an imaginative, irreverent, and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into an ass. In this guise he hears and sees many unusual things, until escaping from his predicament in a rather unexpected way. Within this frame storyare found many digressions, the longest among them being the well-known tale of Cupid and Psyche.

Apologia (Apulei Platonici pro se de magia) is the version of the defense presented in Sabratha, in 158-159, before the proconsul Claudius Maximus, by Apuleius accused of the crime of magic. Between the traditional exordium and peroratio, the argumentation is divided into three sections:

• in the first, the writer refutes the accusations leveled against his private life. He demonstrates that by marrying Pudentilla he had no interested motive and that he carries it away, intellectually and morally, on his opponents.

• The second tends to prove that his so-called "magical operations" were in fact indispensable scientific experiments for an imitator of aristotle and Hippocrates, or the religious acts of a Roman Platonist.

• The third recounts the events that have occurred in Oea since his arrival and pulverize the arguments against him.