Some reader may now ask as Apuleius anticipated: “Who is this man?”[364] So I must refer all to my other writings about him and briefly characterize him here for the uninformed.[365] Apuleius was born about A.D. 125 in the Roman colony of Madaura where his father was a leading citizen and official. He was educated at Carthage, Athens and Rome, was certainly bi-lingual and probably tri-lingual as he must have known Punic as well as Latin and Greek. Returning to Africa, he practiced successfully the art of a sophist, giving public discourses, many of them impromptu. Specimens of these are extant in a collection of extracts from his speeches called the _Florida_. He married a wealthy widow, mother of a university friend at Athens, and was promptly sued by his in-laws for having gained her hand by magic practices. The brilliant speech in which he defended himself at Sabrata against their charges, the _Apologia_, is extant and constitutes his autobiography. St. Augustine called him a Platonist and he did indeed try to convey Plato’s ideas to his contemporaries in works on _The God of Socrates_, _Plato and his Doctrine_ and other lost writings. His fame when he was alive rested on his oratory and it was so great that he was honored by statues and made priest of Aesculapius at Carthage. But his undying glory comes from his novel, the _Metamorphoses_. The date of its composition is uncertain as indeed are most of the dates of his life. He lived from about A.D. 125 to A.D. 171, that is, in the time of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He was therefore a contemporary of Lucian and may have met him as Walter Pater imagines in _Marius the Epicurean_. What concerns us here is his novel and its relation to the Greek Romances. The _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is a long story written in eleven books. It is an ego-romance with Lucius a Greek acting as narrator and hero. “The plot is simple. The hero Lucius who is greatly interested in magic is enabled by the aid of the maid-servant of a witch to achieve transformation. But a mistake in the use of the unguents changes him not into a bird as he had planned, but into an ass. Although he knows that the antidote is a meal of roses, he is kept by Fortune from securing release through long months and meets various adventures until at last through the aid of the goddess Isis Lucius the Ass becomes again Lucius the Man.”[366] The similarity of this plot to that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_ is apparent at once. But its unique differences caused by diversification of anecdotes and long additions become clear as we read the narrative.