In the history of Latin literature, Apuleius has two main claims to attention. As a philosopher without original genius he is important for his transmission of the ideas of Middle Platonism, and as a writer of fiction he is the author of the Metamorphoses, the one Latin romance to have survived complete from the classical period. The Apologia was a speech of self-defence delivered before the proconsul Claudius Maximus at Sabrata. The extant philosophical works traditionally attributed to Apuleius are De deo Socratis, De Platone et eius dogmate, De mundo and Asclepius. The discussion of Plato's physics is preceded by a hagiographical life, important as preceding the not dissimilar account of Diogenes Laertius. The treatment of physics is faithful to the Timaeus and Republic, but the explanation of ethical tenets owes more to the post-Platonist tradition. Middle Platonism had incorporated Peripatetic and Stoic elements into the developed system, and the later systematization Apuleius misleadingly attributes to Plato himself.