[3] He studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries.

He declaimed and then distributed his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near Oea (modern Tripoli, Libya).

[4] Apuleius was born in Madauros, a colonia in Numidia on the North African coast bordering Gaetulia, and he described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian.

He subsequently went to Rome[9] to study Latin rhetoric and, most likely, to speak in the law courts for a time before returning to his native North Africa.

[13] On his way there he was taken ill at the town of Oea (modern-day Tripoli) and was hospitably received into the house of Sicinius Pontianus, with whom he had been friends when he had studied in Athens.

[14] Meanwhile, Pontianus himself married the daughter of one Herennius Rufinus; he, indignant that Pudentilla's wealth should pass out of the family, instigated his son-in-law, together with a younger brother, Sicinius Pudens, a mere boy, and their paternal uncle, Sicinius Aemilianus, to join him in impeaching Apuleius upon the charge that he had gained the affections of Pudentilla by charms and magic spells.

[4] The Metamorphoses ends with the (once again human) hero, Lucius, eager to be initiated into the mystery cult of Isis; he abstains from forbidden foods, bathes, and purifies himself.

[25] Apologia (Apulei Platonici pro Se de Magia) is the version of the defence presented in Sabratha, in 158–159, before the proconsul Claudius Maximus, by Apuleius accused of the crime of magic.

Between the traditional exordium and peroratio, the argumentation is divided into three sections: The main interest of the Apologia is historical, as it offers substantial information about its author, magic and life in Africa in the second century.

He wrote works of poetry and fiction, as well as technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic, and he translated Plato's Phaedo.