His book The Golden Ass was translated into English by William Adlington in 1 566 (Simpkin Marshall, London, 1 930 and AMS Press, New York, 1 893), and in our own day by Robert Graves in 1 950. It pretends to be an autobiography, telling how Lucius as an adventurous young man found himself in Thessaly, a region in Greece notorious for witchcraft. After hearing from his traveling companions various hair-raising tales about the dark powers of Thessalian witches, he determined to pry into witchcraft himself. His cousin, Byrrhaena, warned him that his host’s wife, Pamphile, was a most dangerous witch; but her words of caution only made his curiosity keener.
He resolved to seduce Pamphile’s maid, Fotis, and thus gain entry into the secrets of Pamphile’s witchcraft. As Fotis was quite willing to be seduced, Lucius’ plan at first appeared to prosper. He persuaded the girl to let him secretly watch her mistress anointing herself with a magic unguent, which transformed her into an owl and enabled her to fly through the night in that shape.
However, when Lucius got the girl to steal a pot of the witch’s unguent for him, it changed him not into an owl, the bird of wisdom, but into an ass. Fotis told him that the counter-magic that would restore him to human shape was to eat roses; but before he was able to do this he passed through one wild adventure after another, until the goddess Isis took pity on him and helped him to regain his humanity.
