Author: APULEIUS
Biography:
APULEIUS (b c. 125 CE: OCD)
A writer and orator, he is sometimes referred to as Lucius Apuleius. He was born in about 125 CE in Madauros in Roman North Africa and educated in Carthage, Athens, and Rome. His biographical details are known from his Apologia and Florida. In about 156 in Oea, a coastal city in what is now Libya, he married Pudentilla, ostensibly to protect her fortune from her family. Accused by her family of having used magic to secure the marriage, Apuleius successfully defended himself; Apologia contains the details of his defence. Florida is a collection of declamations he made at Carthage in about 160. The prose work on which his reputation rests is Metamorphoses, also known as “The Golden Ass," where the protagonist is Lucius of Madauros. The tale of Cupid and Psyche, listed in this bibliography in verse translation, derives from Metamorphoses. Apuleius is also known to have written De Deo Socratis and other works that have not survived. Nothing is known of him after about 170. Of his translators, Hudson Gurney has his own headnote. “J. P. H.,” the translator of Psyche, A Mythological Poem (1816), is identified by HL as J. P. Holmes, but it is not known on what basis and no other information has been located. Although her poem "Psyche" is not a translation, Mary Tighe (q.v.) based it on Metamorphoses. (OCD 7 Mar. 2025; Encyclopedia of Ancient History [2013]) SR