The Golden Ass

Translated by William Adlington. Revised by S. Gaselee. With an Introduction by James Morwood.
This famous novel written in Latin in the second century AD tells of the journey of the picaresque hero Lucius, through Thessaly, the land of witchcraft. His mad curiosity leads to his accidental transformation into an ass, and in his asinine form he finds himself trapped in a world of ever-increasing moral depravity, where brigandage, violence, cruelty and sexual lust are rife. Packed with entertaining if often grisly stories and a gallery of striking characters the novel is by turns grim, funny and bawdy. It also contains the delightful romance of Cupid and Psyche, an allegory of the soul's education by divine love, and there is a serious message of redemption, through the goddess Isis, underpinning the main story.