If you are not put off by the Egyptian story-telling convention which allows humans to be changed into animals and, after various adventures, restored to their proper shapes, you should be amused by this queer novel, a string of anecdotes in the popular Milesian style, but intended only for your private ear, which I call my Transformations.
Let me briefly introduce myself as Lucius Apuleius, a native of Madaura in North Africa, but of ancient Greek stock. Various ancestors of mine lived on Mount Hymettus near Athens; in Ephyra, as the province of Corinth was once called; and at Taenarus in Laconia-all of them places immortalized by more famous writers than myself. I was brought to Athens as a child to learn Attic Greek, and later went to Rome where I set myself to study Latin-a painful task, because I was a stranger there and had no regular schoolmasters. You will, I hope, forgive me for not having thoroughly Romanized my literary style; after all, this story with its temperamental shifts and changes is so Greek in character that I should have done wrong to write it in academic Latin. Now read on and enjoy yourself!
