Apuleius is one of the most remarkable and eclictic figures of the ancient world. His career ambitions, and his insatiable curiosity, led him all around the lands and cultures known to the Roman world of the 2nd century AD.
His wide-ranging interests, and unusual sense of mischief, produced one of the great novels of antiquity, the Metamorphoses - a work that Augustine, also born in the African province of Numidia, though two centuries later, celebrated as The Golden Ass. The narrative concerns the fall and redemption of a figure named Lucius (thinly disguising Apuleius himself) whose excessive curiosity ends up turning him into a donkey. Before redemption and the return to human form comes, Lucius the ass hears at the very heart of the work the striking tale of Cupid (Love) and his young lover Psyche (Soul). While this romance has many of the hallmarks of European folktale, it is also deeply suffused with the wisdom that most moved and inspired Apuleius himself: Platonism. In this lecture, Dr Butterfield will introduce the man, the novel, and the inset tale to reveal the many levels on which this unique literary figure worked and played.
