Lucius in the beginning was travelling in Thessaly riding his white horse over the high mountains when he fell in with two other travellers. One of these as they rode on together related a horrible story of how his friend Socrates saw a companion murdered by a witch. The scene of the story was set in Hypata, the very city to which Lucius was going. And the narrative of it by its effect on Lucius reveals all his credulity and curiosity about witchcraft. Lucius was entertained at the house of Milo to whom he brought a letter of introduction and soon he learned from a relative in Hypata, named Byrrhaena, that Milo’s wife Pamphile was a witch. Hypata was full of stories of marvellous happenings and soon Lucius heard another of these thrillers at a dinner-party given by Byrrhaena. It was the story told by a guest Tlelyphron of how he watched a corpse for pay and thereby suffered mutilation of his face by a foul beldam. It was on the way home from the party that Lucius, jittery and drunk, fought his fatal battle with three bold robbers who afterwards, at his trial for murder at the Festival of Risus, god of laughter, were proved to be wine-skins! Now Lucius was determined to investigate magic rites by personal experience so he made ardent love to Pamphile’s servant Fotis until the enamored girl consented to let him peer through a crack in the door of Pamphile’s bed-room and see her mistress transform herself into an owl. This marvel witnessed, nothing would satisfy Lucius but to attempt a similar transformation. Unfortunately Fotis gave him the wrong unguent for the necessary lubrication of his body and he became not a bird, but an ass! The careless maid swore that the antidote was simple, merely a meal of roses, and if he would quietly spend the night in the stable, in the morning she would bring him a breakfast of the flowers. Unfortunately before dawn robbers arrived, pillaged the house and stole, along with Lucius’ own horse and Milo’s ass, Lucius the ass to carry the plunder. This was the beginning of a long series of adventures for the man-ass before he could achieve re-transformation. In the robbers’ hide-out in the mountains Lucius heard the robbers tell three fine stories of their brave chieftains. There too he saw a band of robbers bring in a captive beauty Charite and heard her piteous tale of how she was kidnapped on her wedding-night for ransom. To cheer this weeping girl the old woman who cooked for the robbers told in their absence the story of Cupid and Psyche.