The suggestion of the plan of the novel familiarly known as ’The Golden Ass’ was from a Greek source, Lucius of Patrae.  The original version was still extant in the days of Photius, Patriarch of the Greek Church in the ninth century.  Lucian, the Greek satirist, also utilized the same material in a condensed form in his ‘Lucius, or the Ass.’  But Apuleius greatly expanded the legend, introduced into it numerous episodes, and made it the background of a vivid picture of the manners and customs of a corrupt age.  Yet underneath its lively portraiture there runs a current of mysticism at variance with the naive rehearsal of the hero’s adventures, and this has tempted critics to find a hidden meaning in the story.  Bishop Warburton, in his ‘Divine Legation of Moses,’ professes to see in it a defense of Paganism at the expense of struggling Christianity.  While this seems absurd, it is fairly evident that the mind of the author was busied with something more than the mere narration of rollicking adventure, more even than a satire on Roman life.  The transformation of the hero into an ass, at the moment when he was plunging headlong into a licentious career, and the recovery of his manhood again through divine intervention, suggest a serious symbolism.  The beautiful episode of ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ which would lend salt to a production far more corrupt, is also suggestive.  Apuleius perfected this wild flower of ancient folk-lore into a perennial plant that has blossomed ever since along the paths of literature and art.  The story has been accepted as a fitting embodiment of the struggle of the soul toward a higher perfection; yet, strange to say, the episode is narrated with as brutal a realism as if it were a satire of Lucian, and its style is belittled with petty affectations of rhetoric.  It is the enduring beauty of the conception that has continued to fascinate.  Hence we may say of ‘The Golden Ass’ in its entirety, that whether readers are interested in esoteric meanings to be divined, or in the author’s vivid sketches of his own period, the novel has a charm which long centuries have failed to dim.

Apuleius was of African birth and of good family, his mother having come of Plutarch’s blood.  The second century of the Roman Empire, when he lived (he was born at Madaura about A. D. 139), was one of the most brilliant periods in history,—­brilliant in its social gayety, in its intellectual activities, and in the splendor of its achievements.  The stimulus of the age spurred men far in good and evil.  Apuleius studied at Carthage, and afterward at Rome, both philosophy and religion, though this bias seems not to have dulled his taste for worldly pleasure.  Poor in purse, he finally enriched himself by marrying a wealthy widow and inheriting her property.  Her will was contested on the ground that this handsome and accomplished young literary man had exercised magic in winning his elderly bride!  The successful defense of Apuleius before his judges—­a