In Apuleius’ tale of life among the Roman ruins before they were ruins, we are presented with a series of stitched together tales that affirm the importance of chastity, dedication and piety. However, we are not presented with typical tales of Rome common to the period. There is no omnipotent military machinery to coerce neighbors to the Roman way of life, no presence of tax collectors weighed down with gold, and no typical picture of elite Roman society presented here. There is a satirical view of Roman romance and society presented, however. False prophets abound, infidelity runs rampant and trickery, witchcraft and magic are alive and well. We come to understand this tongue-in-cheek perspective of Roman society through the perspective of an ass, literally. Lucius is the hero of our tale, and he is transformed into an ass after a whimsical desire made in haste to study magic. By accident he is turned into an ass instead of an owl, and through a succession of different owners, we are able to view Roman society with a fly-on-the-wall perspective so-to-speak, “…when I was an ass, hidden under the ass’s skin, I experienced all life’s variety and acquired much knowledge if little wisdom” (Apuleius 192). However, before Lucius is transformed back into a human, he must travel a long, challenging road to awareness that chastity, dedication, and piety are crucial moral aspects of human development.
If one were to use The Golden Ass as their only source regarding Latin civilization, one might think Roman women never knew the concept of fidelity. Women who commit adultery and conceal their infidelity from their husbands are common throughout the stories in the novel. In the tale of the baker, we see from the baker’s wife’s conversation with her friend that Roman women seldom, if ever from this account, considered fidelity an aspect of marriage. Miles ahead of all other wives on the road of wickedness, the baker’...