Apuleius was born sometime around the year 124 in the city of Madaura (near modern Mdaourouch in Algeria) in the Roman province of Numidia, during the reign of Hadrian. He also lived during the reigns of emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. His father was a duumvir (a colonial official) of Madaura, and upon his death left Apuleius and his brother small fortunes.
Lucius Apuleius's early education was most likely acquired in Madaura.
De Platone et Eius Dogmate is an attempt to convey Plato's teachings and a brief sketch of his life to Apuleius's contemporaries who were unable to read the Greek.
It is a collection of translations and abridgments, the first section dealing with the Timaeus, and the second section the Gorgias, the Republic, and Laws.
A third section, on dialectic, has been appended to the text but it is generally believed to be a later addition by someone other than Apuleius.
De Mundo is a translation of a treatise that was incorrectly thought to have been written by Aristotle.
The text, which Apuleius was using as his source, has been identifiedas having been written during the first century.
Outside of adding a few personal fragments, Apuleius remained true to the original, making De Mundo interesting only to a select number of scholars.
Apuleius's posthumous fame rests with his satirical masterpiece, Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, as it is known in English.
Written entirely in prose (thus making it one of the earliest novels in existence) and set in Greece and Rome, it tells the story of Lucius, the narrator, who is magically turned into an ass.
He then embarks upon various adventures until the goddess Isis restores him to his proper form.
The adventures are a collection of short stories revolving around the plot of Lucius seeking to regain his humanity.
Scholars have divided them into five groups: magic, crime, love (which is further subdivided into comedy, tragedy and fairy tale), adventure, and religion.
Lucius's adventures as an ass move back and forth from one to another of these themes, making the structure of the work quite complex.
Apuleius not only gave the hero his own name (which has served to complicate the tale's origin in the eyes of scholars), but he wrote autobiographical parts into his romantic fable.
The most well-known section of the Metamorphoses, one that has been often anthologized, is the fairy-tale love story of Cupid and Psyche.
"There is much debate over the source material for the Metamorphoses, but many scholars recognize that Apuleius was indebted to Aristides for his Milesiaca, or Milesian Tales, a collection of ancient ribald stories.
A second possible source has attributed the original version of Apuleius's Metamorphoses to the ancient Greek writer Lucian, others to a lost text by one Lucius of Patrae.
The argument is further complicated by the fact that Lucius of Patrae, as it has come down in the writings of others, is actually the hero of the lost Metamorphosis and that nowhere is the author named.
Other scholars, critics, and translators, reject Lucian's version as the source material for Apuleius's Metamorphoses.
he received an excellent education, first at Carthage and subsequently at Athens.
He easily established his innocence, and his spirited, highly entertaining, but inordinately long defence (Apologia or De Magia) before the proconsul Claudius Maximus is our principal authority for his biography.
From allusions in his subsequent writings, and the mention of him by St Augustine, we gather that the remainder of his prosperous life was devoted to literature and philosophy.
The year of his death is not known.
The work on which the fame of Apuleius principally rests has little claim to originality.
The Metamorphoses or Golden А и (the latter title seems not to be the author's own, but to have been bestowed in compliment, just as the Libri Rerum Quoti- dianarum of Gaius were called Aurei) was founded on a narrative in the Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae, a work extant in the time of Photius.
From Photius's account (impugned, however, by Wieland and Courier), this book would seem to have consisted of a collection of marvellous stories, related in an inartistic fashion, and in perfect good faith.
It is also composed with a well-marked literary aim, defined by Kretzschmann as the emulation of the Greek sophists, and the transplantation of their tours de force into the Latin language.
Nothing, indeed, is more characteristic of Apuleius than his versatility, unless it be his ostentation and self- confidence in the display of it.
The dignified, the ludicrous, the voluptuous, the horrible, succeed each other with bewildering rapidity; fancy and feeling are everywhere apparent, but not less so affectation, meretricious ornament, and that effort to say everything finely which prevents anything being said well.
The Latinity has a strong African colouring, and is crammed with obsolete words, agreeably to the taste of the time.
The allegorical purport he has infused into it is his own, and entirely in the spirit of the Platonic philosophy.
Don Quixote's adventure with the wine-skins, and Gil Bias's captivity among the robbers, are palpably borrowed from Apuleius; and several of the humorous episodes, probably current as popular stories long before his time, reappear in Boccaccio.
Of Apuleius's other writings, the Apology has been already mentioned.
They deal with the most varied subjects, and are intended to exemplify the author's versatility.
The pleasing little tract On the God of Socrates expounds the Platonic doctrine of beneficent daemons, an intermediate class between gods and men.
Two books on Plato (De Platone et Ejus Dogmate) treat of his life, and his physical and ethical philosophy; a third, treating of logic, is generally considered spurious.
The De Mundo is an adaptation of the Ilept косгроо wrongly attributed to Aristotle.
He prided himself on his proficiency in both Greek and Latin.
His place in letters is accidentally more important than his genius strictly entitles him to hold.
The Apologia
The Apologia was delivered at Sabrata c. 156-158 when proconsul Claudius Maximus held court there.
At this point, Pudentilla's younger son, Pudens, charged Apuleius with use of magic and assorted minor offenses.
Because of its many digressions, some have argued that the Apologia was handed down is a reworked text.
Then he rebuts the lesser charges writing love poems and poverty before going on to answer the charge of magic.
The final section of the Apologia is an eloquent argument that leaves no one in doubt of Apuleius's innocence while at the same time explaining his interest in magic.
Since Claudius Maximus's decision has been lost, scholars are divided as to whether or not Apuleius was acquitted.
However, it is known that Apuleius returned to Carthage and resumed his career. Apuleius's considerable fame during his lifetime rested on his oratory, for which statues in his honor were erected in Carthage, Oea, and elsewhere.
Outstanding selections of Apuleius's oratory are collected in Florida ("Flowers").
At least three of the speeches were delivered between the years 161 and 169.
The exact date of Apuleius's death is unknown, though most believe it was around 170.
Apuleius was also a Platonic philosopher.
His writings in this field include De Deo Socrates ("On the God of Socrates"), De Platone et Eius Dogmate ("On Plato and His Doctrine") and De Mundo ("On the World").
Apuleius himself termed De Deo Socrates an oratio as opposed to a philosophus, thus linking it closer to the spirit of Socrates, who never wrote but lectured in public, as well as to his own public speeches.
This was not a new concept.
Prior to Apuleius, this doctrine had been touched on by Hesiod, Pythagoras, Plato, and Plutarch.
That the work has exerted great influence over the centuries is undeniable.
The tale of Cupid and Psyche has inspired numerous imitators.
Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, and Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote owe much to the Metamorphoses, stylistically and in their treatment of earthy themes.
Until the latter part of the twentieth century, modern readers had tended to overlook Apuleius's great work.
Composers, too, have rediscovered it.
1999 saw the premiere performance of an operatic version of The Golden Ass, composed by Randolph Peters with a libretto by Robertson Davies.
Lucius Apuleius's most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into a donkey.
Apuleius admitted spending nearly all of his inheritance on his twin passions: travel and study. This brought him into contact with the beliefs and ceremonies surrounding the Egyptian goddess Isis, which he later made use of in the Metamorphoses.
