others'! But the difficulty is not invincible; and the adventurous have their reward. The prose sparkles with light and colour. Not a page but is rich inlaid with jewels of fantastic speech. For Apuleius realised centuries before Baudelaire that a vocabulary is a palette, and he employed his own with incomparable daring and extravagance.
His Debt to LucianThough his style be personal, the machinery of his story is frankly borrowed. The hero who, transformed by magic to an ass, recovers human shape by eating roses was no new invention. He had already supplied two writers with a motive; and the learned have not decided whether it was from Lucian (so-called) or from Lucius of Patrae that Apuleius got his inspiration.[1] But a comparison of the Latin version with its Greek forerunner, commonly attributed to Lucian, proves the debt a feather's weight. Whatever Apuleius conveyed, he so boldly changed and elaborated, as to make the material his own. His method is a miracle of simplicity. He accepts the Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος
- ↑ That the hero transformed to an ass was the motive of two Greek romances can hardly be doubted after Photius' statement. The one, he says, was the work of Lucius of Patrae (who wrote μεταμορφώσεων λόγουσ διαφόρους), the other the work of Lucian. The Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος, preserved in the works of Lucian, is doubtless one of the romances known to Photius. But its style and impartiality never for an instant suggest Lucian, who would have made the metamorphosis a peg for satire. And modern scholars are for the most part agreed that Lucian was not the author. Other considerations prevent our assigning it to Lucius, who, it is said, ran to a greater length, and it would be difficult to set forth the story in briefer terms than are employed by the author of Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος. Probably it is the work of neither, though it may well be the romance attributed to Lucian by Photius. The only sure fact is that in the Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος are to be found the dry bones of The Golden Ass. The curious may consult Professor Rohde's Ueber Lucian's Schrift Λούκιος ἢ Ὄνος und ihr Verhaeltniss zu Lucius von Patrae und den Metamorphosen des Apuleius.
