Written in the 2nd Century CE, this is the only completely preserved full length Roman prose
fiction.
It tells the story of a young man named Lucius who had a great curiosity in particular for anything to do with witchcraft. Despite warnings of the dangers of getting involved with witches, he is fascinated when he discovered that the lady of the house where he is staying is herself a witch. He begins an affair with the slave girl Photis as a way of finding out more. First he persuades her to let him watch in secret while her mistress annoints herself with a strange potion, then he watches in amazement as she is transformed into a
bird and flies away. Despite her misgivings, Lucius then insists that Photis steal some of the potion so that he too can become a bird. Unfortunately, Photis picks up the wrong ointment and Lucius is enraged and horrified when he realised that he has turned not into a graceful bird but into an ass. Photis assures him that he can easily be turned back simply by eating
rose petals. She leaves him in the stable with his own
horse, promising to return with the petals the next morning. Events however intervene, that night
robbers break into the house and use Lucius and his horse to carry off the loot. At the
Robber''s den, Lucius encounters a terrified young girl who has been kidnapped by the robbers. Left alone in the day time, an old woman, the robber''s housekeeper tells the girl the story of Cupid and Psyche, an allegory (Psyche means soul) about a beautiful young girl who becomes the beloved of Love Himself although she nearly comes to grief through her own inveterate curiosity. Eventually, Lucius helps the girl to escape the robbers but his troubles do not end there. Through a sequence of events and misfortunes, Lucius the ass finds himself with a series of owners, good and bad, always looking out for a chance to eat rose petals and be restored to human form. In the course of his adventures we are treated to tale after tale involving murderous stepmothers, eunuch priests and corpses brought back to life. Just when it seems Lucius is at the nadir of degradation (he is about to be forced to have sex with a murderess in the arena for the delight of the crowd) he recieves a vision of the Goddess Isis. Under her guidance he succeeds in eating some rose petals and in gratitude at being restored to human form he becomes a shaven headed priestess in her cult, putting his old interest in witchcraft behind him for a purer faith - thus this collection of bawdy and comic adventures of a man transformed to a donkey turns out to be a serious narrative of religious conversion.
More reviews about the Metamorphoses