Apuleius

Apuleius is best known today as the author of The Golden Ass (also sometimes called the Metamorphoses), the only full-length Latin novel from Roman times that has survived into the present. He was born in Numidia, a Roman province in northern Africa, close to where the later writer and theologian Augustine of Hippo would live. Apuleius’s father was a magistrate, and this gave him a large inheritance, which allowed him to travel widely throughout his life, including to Carthage, Athens, Rome, Egypt, and Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Some aspects of Apuleius’s life, including even his first name, are disputed, but in addition to The Golden Ass, he was also well known for giving public speeches and for some of his writings about philosophy, particularly Greeks like Plato and Socrates.