Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works of Apuleius: Comprising the Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, the God of Socrates, the Florida, and His Defence, or a Discourse on Magic
The author of the celebrated romance of "The Golden Ass" lived in the early part of the second century, under the Antonines. By most modern biographers he is called Lucius Apuleius, or Appuleius, but the authority on which they assign him that praenomen is very questionable. He was a native of Madaura, an inland African town, and he styles himself, in allusion to its position on the borders of two kingdoms, "a half-and-half Numindian and Getulian;" adding that, in that respect, he resembled the elder Cyrus, who was "a Semi-Median and Semi-Persian." Madaura, after having formed part of the kingdom of Syphax, was bestowed by the Homans on their ally Masinissa, and being eventually resumed and peopled by veterans, it obtained the rank and immunities of a "colony," and rose to considerable splendour. The father of Apuleius filled the office of duumvir, the highest magisterial dignity in his native place, and bequeathed at his death the sum of nearly two millions of sesterces to his two sons, one of whom, the subject of our present inquiries, succeeded to his office. These facts we learn from the direct testimony of the son in his Apologia or Defence; but most of the 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 sundry details of his own personal history.
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