Apuleius! The Home Page!

My name is Apuleius, the distinguished rhetorician. Perhaps you've heard of me? You probably know me best from a little book I wrote which I modestly titled Metamorphoses, but which has had a much better sale since that fellow Augustine reported people were calling it The Golden Ass. Mind you, if only somebody would make a movie of it, and I really can't imagine why they don't, then I'd really be rolling in fame. I'm really a fine-looking fellow, even if I am a little vain about my hair.

I'm kind of new at this Internet business, so I'll just do for the moment what I see everybody else doing, which is giving you a few of my favorite links. I hope in this way you'll get to know me better and come to enjoy a few of my favorite things:

Enough about me, let's talk about my books! Some of my works, of course, have modestly made their way to the Internet, such as the English translation of The Golden Ass, or the Latin text of the Cupid and Psyche episode -- which that rather unusual man C.S. Lewis turned into a novel called Till We Have Faces. (Those dear fellows Burne-Jones and Morris got the story about right, if you ask me, and Frederick Leighton's painting of the "Bath of Psyche" has a certain je ne sais quoi about it.) But my proudest site on the net is the elegant and stylish presentation of my Apology, in which I defended myself against that utterly baseless charge of being a murderer and a magician. The nerve of those tacky, tasteless people! Imagine: me! a magician! Why, if I were a magician, I would have worked my own magic and assured myself of endless life -- then I could be sure of living into the twentieth century and getting my own home page on the Internet!

A few of my favorite sites!

No, I'm not a magician, but I wouldn't go anywhere without a good mirror -- but though my sight depends on mirrors, my site doesn't have a mirror yet. Is that a paradox? There is mystery to all this somehow.

My religion means everything to me, you know that. How could it not? But the transformations of the worship of Isis nowadays are just amazing.

My literary taste, of course, is impeccable. The extraordinary dexterity with which I go back and forth between Greek and Latin literature is well worth your praise, but my tastes are entirely catholic, and I might encourage you to look at the little history of Latin literature contained in the third chapter of À Rebours by J.-K. Huysmans -- a little, well, you might say decadent, but a man after my own heart. He is very kind to me, I mean, my dears, just read this!

And then, well, there are our fellow travelers in this world. We live in a world surrounded by intelligences whom we little understand. What did that little man say, "und die findigen Tiere merken es schon, daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind in der gedeuteten Welt" -- exactly! Well, of course, as you know, I've been one very special sort of critter myself and retain a special fondness for them and all their kin.

Now those of you who read my little novel may not know what an utterly marvelous orator I was, and how dazzlingly skilled in every department of the art of rhetoric, which dreary pedants can make just as boring today as it was when I was young, but believe me, when you've heard a really great speech, you know it right down deep inside, I mean it just makes you want to say, "Oh, hey!" And don't you believe for a moment what that Maud Gleason says about us, that rhetoric was just a thing about masculinity -- yeah, right! I'll bet if she were a guy, she wouldn't say things like that!

I'm not a magician, you understand, but some of my best friends are magicians, and I'm quite sure I wouldn't want my sister to marry one, but I hope she wouldn't get any of them angry, either! I know only too well what can happen when you run afoul of spells and wizardry.

Now as those of you who have read the Apology know, there's nothing I like more than a good trial, especially when dazzling advocates gain acquittal for their clients. I mean, acquittal is a sure sign of innocence, don't you think? That's what scholars have always thought about my case, and why should I argue with them?

There are some other links I can throw in here, to some of my favorite places, Africa and Florida.

Of course, I do have some vices. I'm quite fond of a little fish now and then, even perhaps without cooking it. Something fishy about that? And I've always thought highly of older women, no matter what people may think about me for it.

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Well, my friends, that's all for now. If you have some suggestions about sites I'd like, all you have to do is send me some e-mail!