Excerpt from The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: A Romance of the Second Century The Metamorphoses of Apuleius is a work singular of its kind, - a genuine ancient romance, written at the beginning of the second century, replete with graphic and characteristic descriptions, scenes and inci dents, exhibiting, in infinite variety, the habits, man ners, and customs prevailing among the people in the provinces subject to the Roman empire. Under the form of a personal narrative, interspersed with episodes, are collected interesting, instructive, and amusing sketches relating to popular superstitions, religious ceremonies, social entertainments, proceedings of courts of law, dramatic spectacles of the amphitheatres, hordes of robbers, &c., &c., &c. Nevertheless, although the detail of marvellous and fabulous adventures, mingled with the common occurrences of every-day life at such an early period, must naturally be a species of light reading, calculated above all things to engage the attention of the general public, there is perhaps no work of the ancient writers with which they are so little acquainted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.