Introduction

with problems of mathematics, music, astronomy, medicine, botany, and zoology.

The glory won by Apuleius during his lifetime survived after his death. Augustine Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), an influential Christian theologian who lived in the same region of North Africa as Apuleius knows his works well. He recognizes his importance as a writer, but abhors him as a magician. Apuleius is a thaumaturge a performer of miracles or magic against whom the faithful need to be warned. ‘The enemies of Christianity,’ says Augustine (Letter 138 original Latin: "Ep. 138"), ‘venture to place Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana a Greek philosopher and contemporary of Jesus who was also reputed to be a miracle-worker on the same or even a higher level than Christ.’ But in the same letter he speaks of him as a ‘great orator’ whose fame still lives among his fellow countrymen of Africa. Above all the Golden Ass also known as the "Metamorphoses," the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety has kept his name alive to our own day. Even those who know nothing of the work as a whole, or who would relegate it to obscurity for its occasional gross indecency, know and love the story of Cupid and Psyche, if not in the original at least in many a work of art, and in the pages of La Fontaine, Walter Pater, or William Morris modern writers from the 17th to 19th centuries who adapted Apuleius's stories.

As might be expected from one who left so few themes untouched, Apuleius is one of the most superficial of ancient writers. It has been well said of him by M. Paul Monceaux a French scholar of Latin literature and North African history, ‘Apuleius is one of those encyclopedic minds, eager for the hunt of all knowledge, who are found at the beginning and the end of civilizations.’ original French: "Apulée est un de ces esprits encyclopédiques, âpres à la curée de toutes les connaissances, qui se rencontrent au commencement et à la fin des civilisations." For the acquisition of his extraordinary reputation he needed an age and an audience in which learning and literature alike were decadent referring to a period of perceived cultural decline where style often outweighed substance, though far from forgotten. He has none of the scientific spirit. He does not really understand