Written sometime after 161 CE, the story, told in an ornate Latin style both florid and vivid, concerns Lucius who, burning with curiosity to unlock the secrets of magic while visiting Thessaly in Greece, a region infamous for its sorcery, is accidentally turned into an ass. The story of Cupid and Psyche is excerpted from his work called Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (Aureus Asinus), which is the first complete surviving Latin novel, although it is based on a Greek original now lost. Some of his oratory survives (for instance, an anthology called Florida), but many of his works-including another novel, Hermagoras, and works on astronomy, arithmetic, zoology, arboriculture, medicine, and music-are lost. Its base still survives, inscribed “To the Platonic philosopher.” Fascinated by Plato, Apuleius wrote two popularizations of his thought: a discussion of Socrates’ inspiring daimonion called The God of Socrates ( De deo Socratis) and the (perhaps spurious) Teachings of Plato ( De dogmate Platonis). But soon afterwards he left Oea for Carthage, where he lived out his life teaching rhetoric and philosophy and gaining enough fame that a statue of him was erected in his honor. He also charged him, among other things, with being obsessed with his mirror and having long hair like a gigolo ! Apuleius successfully defended himself in court in his surviving Apologia, a tour de force of rhetoric and wit. But the brother of the man previously betrothed to Pudentilla sued Apuleius, accusing him of winning his new wife’s love through magic.
During these travels, while he was staying at Oea (modern Tripoli in Libya) in c.156 CE, a student friend convinced Apuleius to marry his widowed mother, Pudentilla, in order to protect her wealth. As a young man, he squandered his inheritance touring Egypt and Asia Minor. Lucius Apuleius (c.125 CE-after 170CE) was born in North Africa (in Maudaura, or modern Mdaurusch, Algeria) to prosperous Berber parents and educated at Carthage, Athens (where he studied Platonic philosophy), and Rome.
Fresco depicting the punishment of Eros by Venus, found in the House of Punished Love in Pompeii, 25 BC, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.The Story of Cupid and Psyche from The Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius.
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