In addition to ‘The Golden Ass,’ the extant writings of Apuleius include ‘Florida’ (an anthology from his own works), ‘The God of Socrates,’ ’The Philosophy of Plato,’ and ‘Concerning the World,’ a treatise once attributed to Aristotle.  The best modern edition of his complete works is that of Hildebrand (Leipzig, 1842); of the ‘Metamorphoses,’ that of Eyssenhardt (Berlin, 1869).  There have been many translations into the modern languages.  The best English versions are those of T. Taylor (London, 1822); of Sir G. Head, somewhat expurgated (London, 1851); and an unsigned translation published in the Bohn Library, which has been drawn on for this work, but greatly rewritten as too stiff and prolix, and in the conversations often wholly unnatural.  A very pretty edition in French, with many illustrations, is that of Savalete (Paris, 1872).

THE TALE OF ARISTOMENES, THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELER

From ‘The Metamorphoses’

I am a native of AEgina, and I travel in Thessaly, AEtolia, and Boeotia to purchase honey of Hypata, cheese, and other articles used in cookery.  Having heard that at Hypata, the principal city of Thessaly, fine-flavored new cheese was for sale cheap, I made the best of my way there to buy it all up.  But as usual, happening to start left foot foremost, which is unlucky, all my hopes of profit came to nothing; for a fellow named Lupus, a merchant who does things on a big scale, had bought the whole of it the day before.

Weary with my hurried journey to no purpose, I was going early in the evening to the public baths, when to my surprise I espied an old companion of mine named Socrates.  He was sitting on the ground, half covered with a rag-tag cloak, and looking like somebody else, he was so miserably wan and thin,—­in fact, just like a street beggar; so that though he used to be my friend and close acquaintance, I had two minds about speaking to him.

“How now, friend Socrates!” said I:  “what does this mean?  Why are you tricked out like this?  What crime have you been guilty of?  Why, you look as though your family had given you up for dead and held your funeral long ago, the probate judge had appointed guardians for your children, and your wife, disfigured by her long mourning, having cried herself almost blind, was being worried by her parents to sit up and take notice of things, and look for a new marriage.  Yet now, all of a sudden, here you come before us like a wretched ghost from the dead, to turn everything upside down.’”

“O Aristomenes!” said he, “it’s clear that you don’t know the slippery turns, the freaks, and the never-ending tricks of fortune.”

As he said this, he hid his face, crimson with shame, in his one garment of patches and tatters.  I could not bear such a miserable sight, and tried to raise him from the ground.  But he kept saying with his head all covered up, “Let me alone! let me alone! let Fortune have her way with me!”