Introduction

Young Lucius, eager to learn magic, steals a witch's ointment hoping to become a bird, and turns into a donkey instead. If he can eat roses he will become a man again, but roses are always just out of reach. Carried off by robbers, bought and sold, beaten and worked by one master after another, he sees through a donkey's eyes all the greed, cruelty and lust of mankind, and hears many strange tales, the loveliest of them Cupid and Psyche. At last the goddess Isis appears to him in a dream; in her procession he eats the roses, becomes a man again and devotes himself to her. It is the only Latin novel to survive complete.