The Golden Ass
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 story are found multiple digressions, the longest among them being the well-known tale of Cupid and Psyche.
The
Metamorphoses ends with the (once again human) hero, Lucius, eager to be initiated into the mystery cult of Isis; he abstains from forbidden foods, bathes and purifies himself. Then the secrets of the cult's books are explained to him, and further secrets revealed before going through the process of initiation which involves a trial by the elements in a journey to the underworld. Lucius is then asked to seek initiation into the cult of Osiris in Rome, and eventually is initiated into the
pastophoroi...a group of priests that serves Isis and Osiris.
Other works
His other works are:
- Apologia (A Discourse on Magic). Apuleius' courtroom defense. The work has very little to do with magic, and a lot to do with making mincemeat of his opponents, with hilarity and panache. It is among the funniest works that have come down to us from Antiquity, and one of the most entertaining examples of Latin courtroom oratory to survive.
- Florida. A compilation of twenty-three extracts from his various speeches and lectures.
- On Plato and his Doctrine. An outline in two books of Plato's physics and ethics, preceded by a life of Plato
- De Deo Socratis (On the God of Socrates). A work on the existence and nature of daemons, the intermediaries between gods and humans. This treatise was roughly attacked by Augustine.
- On the Universe. This Latin translation of the work De Mundo is probably by Apuleius.
Apuleius wrote many other works which have not survived. He wrote works of poetry and fiction, as well as technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic, and he translated Plato's
Phaedo.
Spurious works
The extant works wrongly attributed to Apuleius are:
- On interpretation (Peri Hermeneias). A brief Latin version of a guide to Aristotelian logic.
- Asclepius. A Latin paraphrase of a lost Greek dialogue (The perfect discourse) featuring Asclepius and Hermes Trismegistus.