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

...without the aid of a teacher. It is said that by the time he arrived at the capital of the empire, he had so completely dissipated his inheritance as to be forced to sell his clothes to pay for his initiation into the mysteries of OsirisAn ancient Egyptian deity.. This latter statement is at variance with the account he gives of his fortune in the Apologia, where he says only that it had been modice imminutum—original: "modice imminutum" somewhat impaired. The other particulars may or may not be true.

There is, no doubt, a resemblance between Apuleius and Lucius, both regarding mental characteristics and outward incidents, that we can hardly suppose to be accidental. It is highly probable that the author drew his hero from his own likeness; but on the other hand, it is absurd to look for literal accuracy in such a portrait. It is not likely, for instance, that Apuleius would have deemed it appropriate to speak of himself, his father, and his mother by their real names in so playful a work of fiction as The Golden Ass. We find that when he addressed the sons of a friend in some complimentary verses of a peculiar character—such as the customs of his day allowed—he felt it his duty to invent pseudonyms for the objects of his flattery.* See Defence, p. 256.

Apuleius received the rudiments of his education at Carthage, renowned at that time as a school of literature, and there he adopted the Platonic system of philosophy, in which he perfected himself by his subsequent studies at Athens. There, too, he laid the foundations of that copious stock of various and profound learning through which he became the most distinguished literary character of his age. Still thirsting for knowledge, and impelled, like his own Lucius, by an insatiable curiosity to explore all that was hidden from the common gaze, he traveled through Greece, Asia, and Italy, and became a member of many religious brotherhoods, becoming a proficient in their mysteries. After his return to Africa, he was about to renew his travels and, on his way to Alexandria, was taken ill at Oëa, a maritime town that some geographers have identified with modern Tripoli. A young man named Pontianus, whom...