Apuleius, Lucius
A Roman writer of the African Period, born at Madaura, in Numidia, about A.D. 130. Having
been educated at Carthage, he went to Athens to study philosophy, especially that of Plato;
later, he travelled far and wide, everywhere obtaining initiation into the mysteries. For some
time he lived in Rome as an advocate. After returning to Africa, he married a lady
considerably older than himself, the mother of a friend, Aemilia Pudentilla, whereupon her
kinsmen charged him with having won the rich widow's hand by magic, and of having contrived
the death of her son—a charge to which he replied with much wit in his oration
De Magia (earlier than A.D. 161). He afterwards settled down at Carthage, and
thence made excursions through Africa, delivering orations or lectures. Of the rest of his
life and the year of his death nothing is known. Beside the apology above-mentioned, and a few
rhetorical and philosophic writings, another work, his chief one, also survives, which was
composed at a ripe age, with hints borrowed from a book of Lucian's. This is a satirical and
fantastic moral romance,
Metamorphoseon Libri XI. (de Asino Aureo), the
adventures of one Lucius, who is transformed into an ass, and under that disguise has the
amplest opportunities of observing, undetected, the preposterous doings of mankind. Then,
enlightened by this experience, and with the enchantment taken off him by admission into the
mysteries of Osiris, he becomes quite a new man. Of the many episodes interwoven into the
story, the most interesting is the beautiful allegorical fairy tale of
Cupid and
Psyche, so much used by later poets and artists. Throughout the book Apuleius paints
the moral and religious conditions of his time with much humour and in life-like colours,
although his language, while clever, is often affected, bombastic, and disfigured by obsolete
and provincial phrases. The
editio princeps is that published at Rome in
1469; and the most elaborate edition remains that of F. Oudendorp
(Leyden,
1786-1823). The
Cupid and Psyche was translated in 1566 by Adlington,
whose version was reprinted
(London, 1887), with an introduction by Andrew Lang.
Of the
Golden Ass, as a whole, there is an English translation by Sir G. Head
(1851), and of the whole of Apuleius
(1853). The best edition of
the entire works is that by G. F. Hildebrand
(Leipzig, 1842). O. Jahn has edited
the
Cupid and Psyche separately
(Leipzig, 1856).
