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Concept
The Golden Ass
Summary
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus),St. Augustine, The City of God 18.18.2' is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety.
The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madaurus, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The plot revolves around the protagonist's curiosity (curiositas) and insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to perform a spell to transform into a bird, he is accidentally transformed into an ass. This leads to a long journey, literal and metaphorical, filled with inset tales. He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins.
The date of composition of the Metamorphoses is uncertain. It has variously been considered by scholars as a youthful work preceding Apuleius' Apology of 158–159, or as the climax of his literary career, and perhaps as late as the 170s or 180s. Apuleius adapted the story from a Greek original of which the author's name is said to be an otherwise unknown "Lucius of Patrae", also the name of the lead character and narrator.
This Greek text by Lucius of Patrae has been lost, but there is Lucius or the Ass (Λούκιος ἢ ὄνος, Loukios ē onos), a similar tale of disputed authorship, traditionally attributed to the writer Lucian, a contemporary of Apuleius. This surviving Greek text appears to be an abridgement or epitome of Lucius of Patrae's text.
The Metamorphoses has survived in about 40 manuscripts, all or almost all of which are descendants of codex Laurentianus 68.2 (also called F in critical apparatuses), an extant 11th-century manuscript produced in Monte Cassino. Editors of the text have therefore seen it as their goal to apply textual criticism to this particular manuscript, ignoring the rest except for occasional consultation. The text is characterized by a number of non-standard spellings, notably the frequent interchange of the letters b and v.
Official source
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