It has everything: comic misunderstandings and cruel mistreatment, amorous slave girls and lustful matrons, witches and ghosts, robbers and murderers, people transformed into animals, an account of religious conversion-plus a visit from the Queen of Heaven and a little bestiality thrown in for good measure. If you remember the old toga movies from the '50's-the ones where all the Romans are played by Brits and all the Jews and Christians by Americans-then I am sure you also remember those orgiastic banquet sequences crammed with sweaty wrestlers, kinky dancers, amphora after amphora overflowing with wine, and culinary surprises like roast oxen stuffed with pheasants (the pheasants in turn stuffed with oysters), and golden salvers heaped high with hummingbird tongues. His publications include numerous articles in classical periodicals, a German translation of Martial, and an original collection of his own Latin poems. He has received several international prizes for Latin poetry, which he speaks and writes fluently, and has translated many languages into Latin. SCHNUR is Professor of Classics at lona College, New Rochelle, New York. This modern, annotated Collier Books edition of Adiington's famous translation includes a new introduction, a bibliography, and a glossary of proper names. It has entertained readers for 1800 years, and inspired many of the humorous episodes in The Decameron, Don Quixote, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Gil Bias. Written by a celebrated philosopher and romanticist in the second century A.D., this is the classic tale of a young voluptuary from the provinces who travels to Thessaly, partakes of a magic potion, and is transformed into an Ass. The story remains as fresh and brilliant today as when William Adiington translated it "out of Latine" four hundred years ago. THE GOLDEN ASS of Lucius Apuleius is an elaborate romance-an adroit blend of realism and witchcraft, wit and pathos, wild fantasy and shrewd observation, bawdy jests and religious fervor.
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