The Apologia, Apuleius’s speech of defence against charges of magic (see above), sometimes called De magia in older editions and later manuscripts, is an extraordinary rhetorical tour de force. In rebutting the charges Apuleius digresses hugely in order to show a vast range of literary and other learning, and presents himself as a committed intellectual and philosopher. The title recalls Plato (1)’s Apology, and the argumentation Cicero at his most colourful.

The Metamorphoses, sometimes called the Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel which survives whole. On an epic scale (eleven books) and full of narratological cleverness, erotic, humorous, and sensational by turns, it is a remarkable and fascinating work. The basic story is that of the young man Lucius, who through his curiosity to discover the secrets of witchcraft is metamorphosed into an ass and undergoes a variety of picaresque adventures before being retransformed through the agency of the goddess Isis. This plot is punctuated by a number of inserted tales, which have in fact a close thematic relation to the main narrative; the most substantial and best-known of them is that of Cupid and Psyche (‘Soul’ in Greek, see psyche), which parallels the main story of Lucius by presenting a character (Psyche) whose disastrous curiosity causes troublesome adventures before her rescue through divine agency. The last book provides a much-discussed and controversial double twist: after his rescue by Isis, Lucius’s low-life adventures are interpreted in a new religious and providential light (11.15.1–5), and the identity of the narrator seems to switch from Lucius to Apuleius himself (11.27.9), a final metamorphosis. The novel’s literary influences are various, including much Greek and Latin poetry; the main ass-tale is partly paralleled by the Onos dubiously ascribed to Lucian (which has no Isiac conclusion or inserted tales but is evidently an epitome), and the two may well have a common source in the lost Greek Metamorphoses of “Lucius of Patrae” (Phot. Bibl. cod. 129). Many of the stories may derive from the tradition of bawdy Milesian Tales (see aristides (2)), and that of Cupid and Psyche, with its element of Platonic allegory, may owe at least something to a Greek source (cf. Fulg. Myth. 3. 6).

The Florida are a short collection, derived from a longer one, of choice excerpts from Apuleius’s showy declamations given at Carthage in the 160s, containing passages of narrative, description, and anecdote which show considerable rhetorical and stylistic talent.

The De deo Socratis is a declamation on the daimonion of Socrates, probably based on a Greek original (note Plutarch’s similar De genio Socratis), showing Apuleius’s Platonic interests as well as his oratorical skills. For the daimonion see socrates.

Lost works: collections of speeches from which the Florida are a selection, other speeches and poems, Ludicra (minor poems), De proverbiis, Hermagoras (another novel), Phaedo (version of Plato), Epitome historiarum, De republica, De medicinalibus, De arboribus, Eroticus (cf. ps.-Lucian Amores), Quaestiones conviviales, and works on astronomy, zoology, agriculture, music, and arithmetic.

Disputed works: controversy continues on the authenticity of two extant works ascribed to Apuleius. (a) De dogmate Platonis or De Platone are two books of mediocre exposition of the philosophy of Plato; The extant Περὶ ἑρμηνείας‎ (On Interpretation), a treatise on formal logic, has been by some ascribed to Apuleius as the third book of this work, but many regard it as spurious. (b) De mundo is a translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Περὶ κόσμου‎.

Spurious works: Asclepius, Herbarius, De remediis salutaribus, Physiognomonia. Of these the Asclepius has some interest as a Latin version of a Hermetic treatise.