Thessaly (for there too the foundations of our mother’s line, handed down from the renowned Plutarch and later from his nephew, the philosopher Sextus, bring us glory): that was the Thessaly I was making for, on business.

Thessaly, in northern Greece, was the land of witches in the ancient imagination. Its women were said to draw down the moon: Plato mentions “the Thessalian women who draw down the moon” (Gorgias 513a), and in Aristophanes’ Clouds a debtor plans to hire a Thessalian witch to pull the moon down so the month, and his interest, never comes due (749–756). A reader who hears that the hero is riding into Thessaly expects magic, and within a page the talk turns to it. The family tree flatters the Greek side of the empire. Plutarch of Chaeronea (died after AD 119) was the best-known Greek writer of the generation before Apuleius. His nephew Sextus taught philosophy to the young Marcus Aurelius, who thanks him in the first book of the Meditations (1.9). Latin nepos usually means “grandson”; Lewis & Short gives “a brother’s or sister’s son, a nephew” as a later sense. Lucius claims both men, on his mother’s side.