The Works of Apuleius (Golden Ass, God of Socrates, Florida, On the Doctrines of Plato)

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BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

The author of the celebrated romance of “The Golden Ass” lived in the early part of the second century, under the Antonine emperors. By most modern biographers he is called Lucius Apuleius, or Apuleius, but the authority on which they assign him that first name is very questionable. He was a native of Madaura, an inland African town, and he describes himself, in allusion to its position on the borders of two kingdoms, as “a half-and-half Numidian and Getulian”; adding that, in that respect, he resembled the elder Cyrus, who was “a half-Median and half-Persian.”

Madaura, after having formed part of the kingdom of Syphax, was bestowed by the Romans on their ally Masinissa. Being eventually resumed and peopled by veterans, it obtained the rank and immunities of a “colony” and rose to considerable splendor. The father of Apuleius filled the office of duumvirA Roman magistrate; one of two holding joint authority., the highest magisterial dignity in his native place, and bequeathed at his death the sum of nearly two million sestercesA Roman monetary unit. to his two sons, one of whom—the subject of our present inquiry—succeeded to his office.

These facts we learn from the direct testimony of the son in his ApologiaDefense., or Defence. However, most biographers of Apuleius add other particulars, drawn from the assumption that, under the character of Lucius, the imaginary hero of the story of “The Golden Ass,” the author has related details of his own personal history. Upon this supposition, we are told that our author’s first name was Lucius, that his father’s name was Theseus, his mother’s Salvia, and that she was of a Thessalian family, descended from the illustrious Plutarch. Furthermore, it is claimed that Apuleius was ignorant of the Latin language until he visited Rome, where he acquired it...