The Metamorphosis of Apuleius, which has come to be called The Golden Ass, the name given it by St. Augustine, is the only novel written in Latin from the time of ancient Rome to have survived intact.  It tells the story of a young man fascinated by magic who accidentally transforms himself into an ass while performing a spell intended to transform himself into a bird.  This leads, of course, to a long journey, full of tales of trials and tribulations, before his eventual rescue and salvation by the goddess Isis.  Lucius' lot is often cast with thieves, murderers, slaves, and wretched freemen, and the book is the only surviving work from antiquity to depict the wretched conditions of the lower classes. The style is innovative, mannerly, and exuberant, and the writing imaginative, witty, and sexually frank, unlike the more formal and sedate Latin we get in the schoolroom. The Golden Ass is a picaresque novel, with frequent inset stories, some interlocking with the plot, and others independent of it. The longest of these is the tale of Cupid and Psyche, its first appearance in Western literature. As such, the book is a precursor to works by Rabelais, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Chaucer,Voltaire and Defoe, among others. 

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