Apuleius (c.124–c.170 CE,) also Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis, was a Roman philosopher, rhetorician, and satirist of Berber North African origin. His best-known work is his satirical masterpiece, Metamorphoses. Known in English as The Golden Ass, it is the only complete work of Latin prose fiction to survive.
Born in Madaura, in Numidia, Africa, near modern M’Daourouch, Algeria, Apuleius was educated at Carthage and Athens. He used his inheritance to visit Italy and Egypt, where he was possibly initiated into the mysterious religion of Isis and Osiris.
Apuleius’s familiarity with ceremonial fraternities is reflected in his Metamorphoses. They consist of a collection of short stories about the adventures of a young Lucius, who, changed by magic into an ass, seeks to reclaim his human form until the goddess Isis finally restores him.
Metamorphoses are interspersed with many digressions that formed an essential source of allegories and myths during the Renaissance—the longest of these digressions is the familiar tale of Cupid and Psyche. Besides, it provided a stylistic, thematic, and structural model for many of the great writers of Europe and America. Shakespeare knew of William Adlington’s popular translation, The Golden Ass (1566.)
Later writers, including the English poets Mary Tighe, William Morris, and Robert Bridges, have frequently imitated the fairy-tale love story of Cupid and Psyche. C. S. Lewis featured it in his novel Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956.) Lucius’s other adventures appear in The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio, in Don Quixote (1605, 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes, and in Gil Blas (1715) by Alain-René Lesage.
After Apuleius married a wealthy, middle-aged widow named Aemilia Pudentilla, he was charged by her family members with having used magic to acquire her affections. Apuleius wrote Apologia (Apulei Platonici pro Se de Magia, “Defense,”) an eloquent speech in his defense. He later settled in Carthage, where he devoted himself to literature, philosophy, and rhetoric.
Apuleius’s Platonist philosophical treatises include De Platone et eius dogmate (“On Plato and His Teaching”) and De Deo Socratis (“On the God of Socrates.”)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Apuleius
It is with life just as with swimming; that man is the most expert who is the most disengaged from all encumbrances.
—Apuleius
But he who knows what insanity is, is sane; whereas insanity can no more be sensible of its own existence, than blindness can see itself.
—Apuleius
Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
—Apuleius
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