Lanterna Rally

Author: Apuleius

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2015-01-24

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9781507717400

From the Foreword. LUCIUS APULEIUS was born about the year A.D. 114, at Madaura, a city on the borders of Numidia and Gætulia, which must not be confused with the Numidian town of the same name, which is now Ayedrah. His father, who was an Italian, had settled at Madaura, where he attained high office and amassed a considerable fortune. He sent his son to school at Carthage, then the second city of the world, and dying, bequeathed him his fortune. Lucius Apuleius then started on his travels, and spent the next ten years of his life wandering through Greece, Italy, and the East, studying rhetoric, philosophy, and especially magic. At the age of twenty-five he returned to Madaura where he appears to have practised as a barrister. Love of knowledge soon drove him again from home, and he started for Alexandria. The cold and fatigue of travelling made him break off his journey at Tripolis, where he met and married a wealthy widow, considerably older than himself. He was accused by her relatives of having gained her affections through magic, but was acquitted after having delivered the "Apology" that has come down to us. Soon afterwards he went to Carthage, where he attained the greatest renown, both as a pleader and as a teacher of rhetoric. Here he spent the rest of his life, dying in the year A.D. 191, about the age of sixty-six. Of his numerous writings, all that have come down to us, are "The God of Socrates," "The Florida," " The Apology," "The Doctrines of Plato," "Description of the World," "Asclepius," and the romance " The Metamorphoses," or, as it is sometimes called, with very little reason, "The Golden Ass." The story of "The Metamorphoses" tells how a young man is turned by magic into an ass. With the loss of his human form he loses his power of speech, but retains his human intelligence. In the course of his adventures he falls into the hands of a band of robbers, who also capture a beautiful maiden. When setting out to seek further booty, the robbers leave the maiden and the ass in the charge of a half-tipsy old woman. This old hag, in order to divert the maiden's thoughts from the evils of her situation, tells her the following story.