The Golden Ass

This is a Roman picaresque novel centering on the adventures of Lucius, who travels to Thessaly to seek his fortune. The city’s reputation for magic excites him, and he wants to see wonders. He goes to the home of his aunt Byrrhena. Seemingly unimpressed by the mechanical wonders of her palace, he decides to seek lodging in the city. Ignoring his aunt’s warning, he stays with Milo, whose wife is a witch. Lucius becomes romantically involved with Milo’s slave Photis, who is instrumental in providing Lucius with the ointment that brings about his transformation into an ass.

Up to this point in the narrative, there a several points of interest from a Gnostic perspective. The names Lucius and Photis share a common calque, light. This suggests a certain relationship between them, beyond the obvious sexual one depicted on the surface of the novel. Attracted to the reputed wonders of Thessaly, he spurns those that are readily before him in favor of the illusions he brings with him, i.e., the stories of witches and their powers. At Lucius’ request, Photis steals some metamorphosing ointment from her mistress. Instead of becoming a bird, as he had seen the witch do, Lucius becomes an ass. It is unclear whether Photis brought the wrong ointment, and if she did, whether she did so intentionally, or whether the effect of the ointment varies by user. Even then, it is an open question whether Photis knew what would happen to Lucius. Interestingly, she knows the cure: he must simply eat roses.

Before he returns to his previous form, Lucius goes on a series of adventures, almost like a program of karma yoga. In this respect, it reminds me of Milarepa’s ordeals to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime. Here, however, there is no indication that Lucius had led a bad life and was being punished, he merely must work through the lower, materialistic aspects of his soul before he is given the roses that will give him back his human form.

The most interesting interlude comes halfway through the story when Lucius is held captive by robbers. While in their cave, he hears an old woman tell the story of Cupid and Psyche. Her story covers several chapters of the novel, and the robbers kill her once she finishes it. Both of these details suggest the importance of the story: it takes up a large portion of the narrative, and it is as if the woman was waiting all her life to relate it, and once done, her life was complete. The story itself is a retelling of the Y-H-V-H formula of the redintegration of the Soul. In this version, however, the Queen does not want the Princess to supplant her and actively thwarts the Prince’s actions. In the larger schema of the story, Photis is the Vav to Lucius’s final Heh. Lucius’s inability to get an immediate remedy to his condition suggests an unseen initial Heh at work.

Once the roses physically purify Lucius, he undergoes spiritual purification through a three-part initiation into the cult of Isis. An analogy to Liber XV might be the following: (1) Lucius is transformed into an ass (the Priest, after having purified and consecrated the Priestess, closes the veil, shutting himself off from her light); (2) Lucius undergoes a series of adventures (the Priest circumambulates the Temple); and (3) Lucius eats the roses and resumes human form (the Priest opens the Veil, renewing his visual contact with the Priestess, and the roses on the altar). It is tempting to compare the Priest’s mounting of the three steps with Lucius’s initiations into the mysteries of Isis, but the steps come before the opening of the veil, and only the first step has Isian connotations. ( )

Lucius, a lusty young Greek under Roman rule, is accidentally transformed into a donkey when his experimentation with magic goes awry. In animal form, he passes from owner to owner, undergoing some strange and dangerous experiences before being rescued by an Egyptian goddess.

The Golden Ass was written in Latin by an African about a Greek. Africa is not discussed in the novel, but Apuleius’ African provincial background likely influenced the way he depicts his main character’s Greek provincial background. By the time of Apuleius, Rome had gained control over a territory of more than 100 major and minor provinces, including much of northern Africa and all of Greece. Both had been under Roman rule for more than three centuries. Greece was divided into two administrative regions: the northern province of Macedonia, where the ad-ventures of the Greek main character begin, and the southern province of Achaea, where they end.

Rome ruled each of its provinces through a governor, whose main duties were to keep the province “peaceful,” that is, out of foreign hands and free from dissidents, insurgents, and criminals. In the words of one ancient authority, a governor “should search out persons guilty of sacrilege, brigands, kidnappers and thieves and punish them according to their offences” (Ulpian in Freeman, p. 503). The empire selected certain cities as assize towns, that is, towns where legal cases were heard. Mostly the cases involved small-scale crimes. A provincial governor would rely on local magistrates to bring the accused before him. They would cooperate with the Roman authori-ties to enforce the imperial laws. With cooperation, recognized the magistrates (and others in the local elite, including army veterans), came privileges—control of the local government, the food supply, various properties, and more.

Society in the provinces was comprised of two basic classes: the honestiores (”more honorable people”) and the humiliores (”humbler people”). Slaves were another case altogether. Not part of the humiliores, they were thought of as property rather than people. The honestiores class, made up of the local elite, received preferential treatment. In criminal cases, their hearings were the first to be conducted, and if convicted, their sentencing involved fines or, at worst, exile, not bodily punishment or death. In contrast, though nominally free and sometimes of citizen status, the criminals who were humiliores suffered penalties such as torture and crucifixion. Often the accused from this class were even condemned without a proper hearing. A governor could judge only so many cases, and, again, the rich came first. Only in fiction, says one historian, such as “The Golden Ass... would a poisoned woman get instant access to justice” (Goodman, p. 193).

The “justice” meted out to slaves was especially harsh. It is impossible to arrive at an accurate number of slaves in the whole of the Roman Empire at any period. It has been conjectured that, during the reign of Augustus (31 bce-14 ce), in the century before Apuleius, the empire had 10 million slaves in a population of roughly 50 million. In Italy itself, one in every three persons was probably a slave (Madden). These figures, while speculative, are likely not to have varied significantly by Apuleius’ time. Romans enslaved war captives, abandoned children, and the kidnapped and then put them to work in various capacities. There were slave road builders, construction workers, factory laborers, cooks, house cleaners, secretaries, miners, barbers, seamstresses, and farmhands. In some cases, the captives looked like their captors and were just as educated, but, in society’s eyes, slavery robbed them of any social or moral status, regardless of their talents and skills. Slaves were commonly subjected to floggings and sexual assaults. For a capital crime (adultery, treason, or murder) they would be crucified or burned alive. One Roman custom called for all the slaves in a household to be murdered if one of them had killed their master. ( )

This is a surprisingly entertaining 2nd century Roman novel. It describes a young man, curious about magic, that gets turned into a donkey. Sarah Ruden's translation into modern English makes this a lively read. ( )

"It is a difficult matter to keep love imprisoned."

Written in the second century AD originally in Latin this book is packed with often grisly stories and striking characters. The narrator, Lucius, travels to Thessaly, the land of witchcraft, where he is accidentally transformed in to an ass as a result of his foolish curiosity about witchcraft.

Lucius starts out as a thoughtless, womanising glutton who basically acts like an ass, and so is transformed into one.He has a pretty rough time of it in his asinine form, trapped in a world of depravity, where violence, cruelty and sexual lust are rife until tiring of abuse at the hands of cruel owners, near death experiences and other shameful circumstances, he finally gives himself up to prayer and is restored by divine intervention by the Goddess Isis. "I have come in pity of your plight, I have come to favour and aid you. Weep no more, lament no longer, for the hour of your deliverance, shone over by my watchful light, is at hand." After his restoration he puts his former ways behind him and lives happily as a lawyer.


Although the book is a fantasy, by turns grim, funny and bawdy the underlying theme is a moral and a religious one, of the soul's redemption by divine love.

A lot of the humour is somewhat crude which really seemed at odds with the oldie-style language used but all the same the story rolls along at a good pace. There are many side stories, including a lengthy section describing the story of Cupid and Psyche, but overall I felt that these helped the main story to flow rather than in any way hinder it.

I'm not sure what my expectations were before I opened this book but they were most definitely dumbfounded. I anticipated some religious undertones but I certainly didn't expect it's bawdy nature, equally I found it a relatively easy, quick and enjoyable read once I got a feel for the language whereas I was expecting a bit of a slog. Nor did I anticipate it being so graphic. I felt that the final chapter was a little too overblown but my main complaint was that in my version of this book the word 'divers' was misused on numerous occasions instead of the word 'diverse', this really did begin to bug me towards the end of it. But these are only very minor gripes.

Don't be afraid to tackle this book because of its age, you may be surprised. As Apuleius puts it himself in his introduction: “If you are not put off by the Egyptian story-telling convention that allows humans to be changed into animals and, after various adventures, restored to their proper shapes, you should be amused by this queer novel… now read on and enjoy yourself!” ( )

Witches, sex, witch sex, donkey dicks, projectile pooping, man-eating ants, piss as a weapon, blood fountains, cuckolds, rabies, murder. What’s not to like? Human vulgarity has thrived since time immemorial, y’all. It is truly fitting that this non-stop debauchathon is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. Last kudos to Apuleius for there has never been as universally and as perennially a relevant question as “do we now have to put up with an ass playing the philosopher?” ( )