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Significantly, this sentence occurs at the end of Apuleius' exposition of Socrates' daemon, where we are told that Socrates was 'made equal to a most splendid divinity' through wisdom (20.5). M.'s text presents another clever answer to a complex problem. Adopting Floridus' haplography-pariand assuming a dittography of-ium (from similium), M. has sensibly restored the text: 'why do we not entrust ourselves to the fortunate zeal of an equal philosophy, desiring to be similar to divinities?' However, M.'s apparatus seems to suggest that she reads similis as genitive along with pari. According to her interpretation, then, numinum is dependent on [c]aventes-'desiring after the divinities'presumably by analogy to cupientes (as N 2 reads), but no parallel exists in extant Latin for aveo + gen. Rather, the solution she prints makes the most sense if we understand similis to be the alternative accusative plural and thus read an elided esse with aveo (OLD 1). This reading has the added advantage of making the most sense contextually: Socrates through wisdom became 'like a most splendid numen'; we, too, through 'zeal for an equal philosophy', can aspire to become 'similar to divinities'. When reading M.'s text, I sometimes sensed that her distaste for emendation and distrust of 'lesser witnesses' could lead her to resort to tendentious defences for retaining her preferred manuscript's reading. At Plat. 1.9, for instance, she cites a passing reference in J. Whittaker (who offers no substantive argument) to defend the manuscript's specious reading (virtutem esse genetricem), which has a more fitting parallel in Mund. (31.5: genitorem virtutum) and is attested in CH. It was somewhat surprising, furthermore, to see no mention anywhere of R. Fowler's recent critical edition and translation of Plat. (Imperial Plato [2016]): M.'s text would have benefited greatly from a perusal of his copious notes on the philosophical background to Plat. However, these are minor quibbles, which pale in comparison to the great service M. has done for Apuleius scholars. By providing such a meticulously edited volume, M. offers us the opportunity to bring the philosophica back into mainstream critical discourse on Apuleius. Besides, it is only fitting that an author who demanded that readers of his novel be 'scrupulous' (Met. 9.30) should have his editors require the same careful eye for detail from their readers.

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created, in different spheres of public activity, an ongoing sense of potential unease and instability within Athenian society. How did a full citizen male of the thetes class feel in comparison with a privileged metic for example? And what implications did that have for how these two groups acted and interacted within Athenian society, and the strategies they adopted for status differentiation and display? One effect may well have been the creation of a 'gap' between the reality and the rhetoric of Athenian status, as identified by K. (p. 111), which sought to paper over the 'problem' of Athenian status. But this book should also encourage us to investigate further the way in which the intricacies inherent in the Athenian status system were not only covered over, but also actively perceived by, and in turn affected the experiences and actions of, individual Athenians at every point on the spectrum.

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