The Golden Ass: an ancient novel of the Greek and Roman world; Apuleius, CUPID AND PSYCHE MYTH, RENAISSSANCE PAINTERS; PRE-RAPHAELITES; classical, international, transformation story, metamorphosis

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The Golden Ass: A novel of the ancient world.
The source of the Cupid and Psyche story.

a mosaic of apuleius, the author of The Golden Ass


The Golden Ass is an 1800 year old Latin novel by Lucius Apuleius. Widely regarded as one of the first novels ever written, this complex work captures the many intellectual anxieties of the old world of mythical religion as it was being challenged by Christianity. The story is simple: Lucius, the philosopher hero, is turned into an ass because of his “sacrilegious” curiosity; then the thinking animal sets out on a perilous journey in search of an antidote--a rose-flower, which he spots on the crown of Venus and he pursues the goddess as a devotee, eager to reverse his metamorphosis. He also learns from everything he sees and hears on the way, particularly from an old wife’s tale about the love of Cupid and Psyche. C. S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche story by giving a radical new role for Psyche's sister Orual who is ugly, who is loved by Cupid, by god of love. The Birth of Pleasure by Carol Gilligan An immensely important new reading of the story, by the distinguished Harvard psychologist whose early work on the development of girls, seems to be the definitive modern restatement of the relevance of the Cupid and Psyche myth Find Robert Graves' The Golden Ass