The Golden Ass: The Transformations of Lucius

By Charles R. Mack

Book Overview

The story of The Golden Ass is that of Lucius Apuleius, a young man of good birth who encountered many strange adventures while disporting himself along the roads to Thessaly. Not the least of these occurred when Apuleius offended a priestess of the White Goddess, who turned him into an ass. The tale of how Apuleius dealt with this misfortune and eventually resumed human form is conveyed by Robert Graves in modern English that is infused with a bawdy wit and sense of adventure that is "itself a small masterpiece of twentieth-century prose" (Kenneth Rexroth, Saturday Review).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374531811
• ISBN13: 9780374531812
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An enjoyable and enduring classic

Apuleius' The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Composed in the second century, this picaresque work tells the tale of Lucius, a man whose curiosity in magic and indulgence of sexual pleasures leads him to accidently transform himself into an ass. What follows are the various trials and hardships he endures as well as the tales he hears throughout his travels. It is not until...

A Complex and Entralling Work

Lucius Apuleius was one of the main representatives of North African Platonism during the second century (AD). He wrote works ranging from philosophy and medicine to poetry and rhetoric. Apuleius is best known for his remarkable collection of tales, The Golden Ass or Transformations. It is a playful satire containing the use of many different genres, much like one would find in the Mennepian satires of Petronius, Seneca,...

Absolutely hilarious, a classic

Apuleius' great work is not read enough. As the story of an libertine who is unfortunately changed into an ass unfolds, we see a satire unfold that provides both entertainment and a biting commentary of life in the ancient Greco-Roman world. The book shows you the great distance between us moderns and the ancients, but what is likely to surprise you the most is precisely the opposite: those ways in which we are so similar...

Definitely not a pain in the ass...

I read The Golden Ass for a Classic art course I took while at university I loved it! It is fun, entertaining and comical- not your typical dry Roman read. It is a great story and a great look into history.I highly recommend this tale to anyone who not wants to laugh but is interested in an important text from antiquity.

The best translation--quite humorous

I've read another translation which gives no sense of the humor in this most amusing, and sometimes ribald tale of a man's transformation (literally and figuratively) from man to animal. Dabbling in occult matters, the young man is tranformed into an ass. He recounts the many adventures that he has while in this state, from circus performer to beast of burden where he hears the story of Cupid and Psyche (the most extant...