Product Description

Apuleius's Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel--the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived from antiquity. It tells the story of the hero Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic results in his transformation into an ass. After suffering a series of trials and humiliations, he is ultimately returned to human shape by the kindness of the goddess Isis. Simultaneously a blend of romantic adventure, fable, and religious testament, The Golden Ass is one of the truly seminal works of European literature, of intrinsic interest as a novel in its own right, and one of the earliest examples of the picaresque. This new translation is at once faithful to the meaning of the Latin, while reproducing all the exuberance of the original.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #543531 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review

"An execllent introduction and an accurate...translation."--Jim Williams, SUNY at Genesco
"This translation deserves the highest praise. It is idiomatic whenever possible, clear and effective throughout; I am more impressed with it than with three others that I have sampled. The introduction is informative and balanced in judgment."--Philip F. O'Mara, Bridgewater College
"This is a good edition. The translation flows, the introduction is thorough."--Richard Mason, George Mason University
"[A] fresh, funny, evocative translation that captures Apuleius at his most uncanny."--W. Gardern Campbell, Mary washington College
"Walsh's new rendering--which on every page, improves upon the commonly used and dated translations of Jack Lindsay and Robert Graves--appears at a time when this ever popular novel is even more greatly appreciated by social historians for the window it provides on provincial life among real imperial subjects in the second century CE. This edition is enhanced by an excellent introduction, a select bibliography, explanatory notes, and an index and glossary of names....It should quickly become the obvious choice for Latin-less readers."--Religious Studies Review6R
"This translation is literal enough to come to a scholar's aid, and at the same time scholarly enough to use without embarrassment."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"P.G. Walsh has given us an excellent translation, contemporary without being too trendy, as well as a superb introduction that gives the historical, philosophical, and religious background of the work....Oxford's World's Classics has done it again, has produced a useful edition and superior translation of a work that has needed it for several generations."--CAES Newsletter
"Splendid volume, living up to the scholarly accuracy that makes the World's Classics series."--Professor John R. Lenz, Drew University
"OUP's decision to commission a new translation of Apuleius' novel by a scholar who has made a significant contribution to Apuleian studies is a welcome move. This is without doubt the translation I would prescribe for students studying the work in English."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"The best scholarly introduction and notes among the currently available paperback editions and a very high standard of accuracy in representing the Latin original."--Professor Robert Lamberton, Washington University

About the Author
P. G. Walsh is Professor Emeritus of Humanity at the University of Glasgow.

Customer Reviews

Four Gold Stars for the Golden Ass
I consider myself a connosieur of the classics, so when I heard of an ancient novel concerned with sex, illicit sex, and illicit donkey sex, I decided to take a closer look.

And I'm glad that I did. At the back end of the classical Western literary tradition of silliness, which includes such hallowed humorists as Chaucer, Bocaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, and, in its divine form, Shakespeare, we find the one tale that may have excited them all--Lucius Apuleius's Golden Ass.

The Golden Ass is filled with adventure, suspense, humor, and nonsense. I had a grin on my face most of the way through, and I got the feeling that the author did too. Tip o' the hat to Robert Graves for delivering an authentic translation that brings us Apuleius in his bawdy best.

The only thing I found occasionally irritating was that, like Cervantes, Apuleius has a tendency to digress. Big time. He inserts the entire myth of Cupid and Psyche right into the middle of the narrative, for example. Does this add to the mythological message of the whole? Probably, but it subtracts from the fantastic flow of the story. My urgent plea to Apuleius, were he alive today, would be, "Stick to the ass!"

There are a number of reasons that traditionally bring people to this book: to study Classical Rome, classic literature, mythology, psychology... maybe you're curious about the intimate lives of donkeys. Whatever has brought you to this novel, now that you're going to read it, perhaps the best thing to do is to take the advice of the author himself, who says, "Read on and enjoy yourself!"

the first novel?
The most shocking thing about this book is how un-unusual it is. All the cliches, jokes, etc., which one takes for granted, are here centuries ago and unchanged by time. Reading it is stepping back in time and realizing that 2000 years is nothing--for there has been little or no change in our collective sensibilities and desires. Beyond its offer of the eternal human, if that were not enough, here is the only printed evidence of initiation into a Mystery Cult--very important in itself, for scholars anyway. But what is most enlightening is the revelation that all that you read you have heard before. These stories are somehow part of Western tradition, or perhaps all human traditions. Eg., the hen-pecked husband, the cuckhold, etc. Like the film Citizen Cain, one is often un-struck by it because all of its techniques have been adopted, and so it is rather dull; there is nothing in it we have not seen as we have adopted all its devices (or what it was, is now what is). Try as some of us might, this book is evidence that we have not changed--and this is not fodder for conservatives, nor for liberals (nor for radicals); all can be disheartened and gladdened, and all can learn what human stuff is made of through its perusal.

A wild and entertaining romp of a novel
This is certainly an entertaining reading experience and Robert Grave's translation makes this 1800 year old novel come to life for modern audiences. The book is full of stories within stories, a device that I found very entertaining and reminded me of the best works of A.S. Byatt. The story within a story approach allowed for multiple wild digressions of the most fantastic types. Stories of magic, murder, rape, incest, poison, bribery, theives, beastiality, orgies, homosexuality, and all other manner of hair-raising encounters populate the multiple stories within stories.

Yet there is certainly a strong central theme and storyline in the plight of poor Lucius, the attorney turned into a donkey. The world and humanity are seen anew through the eyes of an ass.

The book does take one major departure with the longer story of Cupid and Psyche, skillfully told. The book ends with another change of pace when Lucius devotes himself to the gods, especially the goddess Isis/Diana/Artemis, the White Goddess.

I think the book was excellent and would never have survived so many centuries if each age did not find the human condition to be much unchanged despite the wild and wooly tales encountered here.