Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is an imaginative, irreverent, and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into an ass.

In this guise he hears and sees many unusual things, until escaping from his predicament in a rather unexpected way.

Within this frame story are found multiple digressions, the longest among them being the well-known tale of Cupid and Psyche.

The Metamorphoses ends with the (once again human) hero, Lucius, eager to be initiated into the mystery cult of Isis; he abstains from forbidden foods, bathes and purifies himself.

He is introduced to the Navigium Isidis.

Then the secrets of the cult's books are explained to him, and further secrets revealed before going through the process of initiation which involves a trial by the elements in a journey to the underworld.

Lucius is then asked to seek initiation into the cult of Osiris in Rome, and eventually is initiated into the pastophoroi—a group of priests that serves Isis and Osiris.

Apuleius wrote many other works which have not survived, including works of poetry and fiction, as well as technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic, and he translated Plato's Phaedo.

Of his subsequent career we know little.

Judging from the many works of which he was author, he must have devoted himself assiduously to literature.

He occasionally gave speeches in public with great applause; he had the charge of exhibiting gladiatorial shows and wild beast events in the province, and statues were erected in his honor by the senate of Carthage and of other senates.