The Golden Ass
Apuleiusc. 170Apuleius wrote the only complete Roman novel that survives, and it's a wild ride: a man turned into a donkey wandering through a world of magic, sex, and religious revelation.
Read this if you…
- want to read arguably the worlds oldest Novel
- like the idea of a guy getting turned into a donkey as the plot
- like a fun episodic romp (as compared to most other serious ancient Lit)
Skip this if you…
- want a serious novel, its more of a fun/funny romp
- want it to be FULLY as funny/fun as more modern stories
Why It Matters
Apuleius wrote the only complete Roman novel that survives, and it's a wild ride: a man turned into a donkey wandering through a world of magic, sex, and religious revelation. The embedded tale of Cupid and Psyche became one of the most retold stories in Western culture. It showed that prose fiction could hold the sacred and the filthy in the same book.
The 
Take
Pretty incredible to be the oldest full novel we have. Cupid in psyche is a classic story within a story and the overall story was pretty fun. Impressed
Where to go next
- The Aeneid by Virgil. The Golden Ass built on it. - Under the talking-donkey comedy, *The Golden Ass* is shadowed by Virgil's epic — read the *Aeneid* first and you'll catch how much Apuleius is playing against it - Psyche's journey down to the dead is built on Aeneas's katabasis in Book 6, the same architecture shrunk into a tale within a tale - The Sychaeus-to-Dido dream and the golden-bough imagery are lifted and twisted — knowing the source makes the wit land
- The Symposium by Plato. The Golden Ass built on it. - The Cupid and Psyche story isn't just a fairy tale — it's Plato's philosophy of love dressed as one - Apuleius, a trained Platonist, builds Cupid's double nature on the *Symposium*'s two Venuses, Heavenly and Common - Read Plato on the ascent of eros first and Psyche's trials read as the soul's journey toward divine love, not just a girl chasing a god
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. The Golden Ass built on it. - Apuleius's novel was itself titled *Metamorphoses* — a deliberate nod to Ovid's poem of changing shapes - The donkey-plot came from elsewhere, but the governing idea, transformation as the thread that strings a story together, is Ovid's, lifted out of verse and into the first great Latin novel
- Phaedrus by Plato. The Golden Ass built on it. - Beneath the donkey jokes runs Plato — Apuleius maps Lucius's fall and recovery onto the chariot allegory of the *Phaedrus* - The unruly black horse of the soul becomes Lucius the ass; the white horse Candidus that surfaces near the end nods back to Plato's steed drawing the soul upward - Read the *Phaedrus* on the winged, fallen soul first and Psyche's ascent reads as the myth turned into story
- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The Golden Ass shaped it. - The bawdy adultery tales here didn't just survive antiquity — they got copied out by hand, twelve centuries later, by the man who wrote the *Decameron* - Boccaccio personally annotated the Monte Cassino manuscript of Apuleius and transcribed the whole text for himself - Two of those tales walk straight into the *Decameron*: the wife's tub becomes Peronella's (VII.2), the fuller's wife becomes day five's tenth story (V.10)
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The Golden Ass shaped it. - Cervantes plundered Apuleius's playbook — the *Golden Ass*'s knack for stuffing inset tales inside the main road-narrative becomes *Don Quixote*'s whole architecture - The most pointed debt is a single scene: Lucius stabbing three wineskins he takes for robbers at the Festival of Laughter is reborn as Quixote's midnight assault on the wineskins in Part 1 - Read the original drunken misadventure here and you'll spot Cervantes's wink across fifteen centuries
- Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. The Golden Ass shaped it. - Apuleius's bawdy, shape-shifting, episodic *Golden Ass* is a recognized ancestor of Rabelais's comic sprawl - Scholars name Rabelais a direct heir to the ancient comic-novel tradition — Apuleius alongside Lucian — feeding the lewd-and-fantastical register the giants run on
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. The Golden Ass shaped it. - The only Latin novel to survive whole — and the seed of Shakespeare's most famous transformation - Lucius, turned into an ass, is taken to bed by a noblewoman who adores the beast; Shakespeare hands Bottom an ass-head and a doting queen of the fairies - Adlington's 1566 English version put Apuleius within Shakespeare's reach — phrasings from it surface across his plays
Depicted in Art
Cupid leans over a swooning Psyche, lifting her head as their lips nearly meet; her arms drape upward to encircle his shoulders.
Antonio Canova, 1793
A grinning, wide-awake Cupid slips from the bed at dawn while Psyche sleeps nude beside him, his arrows and a butterfly on the linens.
Jacques-Louis David, 1817
Cupid stands gazing at the sleeping Psyche beside a fountain at night, his wings folded, just before falling in love with her.
Edward Burne-Jones, 1874
Psyche stands wide-eyed as the invisible Cupid kisses her forehead from behind; a butterfly hovers above her head as her soul-emblem.
François Gérard, 1798
Gods recline at a long table among clouds; Cupid and Psyche feast at center as the Hours scatter flowers and the Graces perfume the air.
Raphael, 1518
Jupiter presides over an assembly of Olympians who agree to grant Psyche immortality; Mercury hands her the cup of ambrosia.
Raphael, 1518
The maid Fotis recoils in horror as Lucius, mid-transformation, sprouts donkey ears and a snout in the lamplit bedroom.
Nicolai Abildgaard, 1809
Recommended Editions
Sarah Ruden
Yale University Press · 2011
Ruden matches Apuleius's tonal whiplash: bawdy in the witch scenes, plain in the Cupid and Psyche tale, hushed at the Isis ending. Her colloquial English catches a Latin original that was already trying to be outrageous.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Yet, as the light shone clear and the bed's mysteries were revealed, she found her savage beast was the gentlest and sweetest creature of all, that handsome god Cupid.”
“I reached the very gates of death and, treading Proserpine's threshold, yet passed through all the elements and returned. I have seen the sun at midnight shining brightly.”