However old the book might be, it is a hot topic among literature and classics students, generating a sub-industry of commentary and study in itself. Why? Because Apuleius himself is a very controversial figure who appears in the letters of St Augustine to Volusianus and Marcellinus as a threat to the new Christian faith as they found him comparable to Christ. What ho? Apuleius was an devotee of Isis and initiated into the secret mysteries of Osiris, a renown student of Plato, of ancient mystery cults and of Asclepius. He was known as a wonder-maker and accused as a magician around 156 in Alexandria in a case concerning a elderly widow, Pudentilla-I kid you not, not somebody out of a Mozartean comedy. However, he was skilled in rhetoric, which always helps in a Roman court and part of the argument that he presented was the scandal of reading private love letters in front of the official statutary within the courts of law. The Romans being rather superstitious, treated the statutes as if they were living and doing anything profane or construed as shameful before them could result in a death penalty... this only added in his favor as presumably the trial had to be considered a mistrial on grounds of improper handling.
Apuleius was from Mdaurus, a Roman colony in Numidia, where from St Augustine also originated. He studied Platonic philosophy in Athens and wrote three discourses on Plato, two exist: De platonis et eus dogmato/ On Plato and his teaching; De Deo Socratis/On the God of Socrates.
He also went off to Egypt and entered into the cult of Isis, nearly 400 years after the Isis cult had disappeared which appears in Plutarch's writings. He distinguishes between the left-hand destructive magic which Robert Graves associates to the Triple Goddess as Hecate and the right-hand magic of Isis which has productive powers within the story of the Golden Ass.
Frequently, the book has been seen as autobiographical, so much so, tht Apuleius was given the name he bestowed the ass, Lucius. Lucius is a poet, who in seeking for enlightenment through the mysteries of sorcery inadvertantly gets transformed into an ass. Curiously enough, the ass is a beast repellent to Isis as it symbolizes Python who ambushed and killed Osiris her brother-husband. The structure of the book is of Chinese-box pattern with a story embedded within a story: the most famous of these is Cupid and Psyche, frequently interpreted as a platonic allegory. However, the entire work can be seen as an allegory of human suffering and transfomation into a higher being. There are scholarly comparisons between the work and eastern literature as Apuleius, himself, refers to it as Milesian tales. There are strong parallels between the eastern influence flowing in from India and the Isis cult.
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