In the Mill with Slaves: Lucius Looks Back in Gratitude

At Apuleius Metamorphoses 9.13.3-5 Lucius confesses that his experiences as an ass have profited him only as a literary artist, not as a philosopher, an admission borne out by his own narrative. This, it is suggested, reflects Apuleius' own retrospective assessment of a fruitless attempt to reconcile Egyptian religion with Platonism. The Greek ass-story which he appropriated and embellished conveniently provided a fictional alter ego as narrator, a highly dramatic metaphor with Egyptian resonances for Apuleius' own experiences, and an opportunity for a bravura display of the rhetorical talents on which his reputation as at once Sophist and Platonic philosopher was based.