Vulgar words in Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 2 (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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"That's the most lovely way of making love I ever saw!" said the ladies who stood round about, and then they took water in their mouths to gurgle when any one spoke to them.
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LUCIUS APULEIUS (Second Century A. D.) Lucius Apuleius, author of the brilliant Latin novel 'The Metamorphoses,' also called 'The [Golden] Ass,'--and more generally known under that title,--will be remembered when many greater writers shall have been forgotten.
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[Illustration: Apuleius] The suggestion of the plan of the novel familiarly known as 'The Golden Ass' was from a Greek source, Lucius of Patræ.
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The transformation of the hero into an ass, at the moment when he was plunging headlong into a licentious career, and the recovery of his manhood again through divine intervention, suggest a serious symbolism.
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Hence we may say of 'The Golden Ass' in its entirety, that whether readers are interested in esoteric meanings to be divined, or in the author's vivid sketches of his own period, the novel has a charm which long centuries have failed to dim.
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This in after days became oddly jumbled with the story of 'The Golden Ass' and its transformations, so that St. Augustine was inclined to believe Apuleius actually a species of professional wizard.
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The plot of 'The Golden Ass' is very simple.
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By mistake he receives the wrong salve; and instead of the bird metamorphosis which he had looked for, he undergoes an unlooked-for change into an ass.
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'The Golden Ass' is full of dramatic power and variety.
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In addition to 'The Golden Ass,' the extant writings of Apuleius include 'Florida' (an anthology from his own works), 'The God of Socrates,' 'The Philosophy of Plato,' and 'Concerning the World,' a treatise once attributed to Aristotle.
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She treated me with the greatest kindness, gave me a good supper for nothing, and then let me make love to her.
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THE AWAKENING OF CUPID [The radical difference in the constituent parts of the 'Golden Ass' is startling, and is well illustrated by the selection given previously and that which follows.
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The story of Cupid and Psyche is the purest, daintiest, most poetic of fancies; in essence a fairy tale that might be told of an evening by the fire-light in the second century or the nineteenth, but embodying also a high and beautiful allegory, and treated with a delicate art which is in extreme contrast with the body of the 'Golden Ass.'
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He describes the scenes of his desert life: the sand dunes; the camel, antelope, wild ass, and gazelle; his bow and arrow and his sword; his loved one torn from him by the sudden striking of the tents and departure of her tribe.
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But he sang of love as he made love,--with utter disregard of holy place or high station, in an erotic strain strange to the stern Umáyyids.
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Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh.
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There was besides a man of the name of Lityerses, a bastard son of Midas, the King of Celænæ, in Phrygia, a man of a savage and fierce aspect, and an enormous glutton.