The text is characterized by a number of non-standard spellings, notably the frequent interchange of the letters b and v.[8] The prologue establishes an audience and a speaker, who defines himself by location, education, occupation, and his kinship with the philosophers Plutarch and Sextus of Chaeronea.

The next day, Lucius goes to his aunt's home for dinner, and there meets Thelyphron, who relates his tale about how witches cut off his nose and ears.

He is entrusted with carrying the statue of Cybele on his back while he follows the group of priests on their rounds, who perform ecstatic rites in local farmsteads and estates for alms.

While engaging in lewd activity with a local boy, the group of priests is discovered by a man in search of a stolen ass who mistakes Lucius' braying for that of his own animal.

Lucius' untimely escape from the cook coincides with an attack by rabid dogs, and his wild behavior is attributed to their viral bites.

Lucius is then scheduled to have sex in the arena with a multiple murderess before she is to be eaten by wild beasts; the Tale of the Jealous Wife tells her backstory.

At the last moment he decides that copulating with such a wicked woman would be repugnant to him, and, moreover, the wild beasts would likely eat him along with her; and so he runs away to Cenchreae, eventually to nap on the beach.

He then offers a prayer to the Queen of Heaven, for his return to human form, citing all the various names the goddess is known by to people everywhere (Venus, Ceres, Diana, Proserpine, etc.).

The Queen of Heaven appears in a vision to him and explains to him how he can be returned to human form by eating the crown of roses that will be held by one of her priests during a religious procession the following day.

Similar to other picaresque novels, The Golden Ass features several shorter stories told by characters encountered by the protagonist.

In the middle of the night, Meroë and Panthia break in, cut open Socrates, drain his blood, rip out his heart, and replace it with a sponge.

Aristomenes fears that he will be blamed for the death of his friend and attempts to hang himself, but is comically stopped when the rope is revealed to be too rotten to support his weight.

When he asks, a citizen criticises him and tells Thelyphron not to make fun of the task and warns him that shape-shifting witches are quite common in the area, using pieces of human flesh to fuel incantations.

He witnesses an elder of the town approach the townspeople desperately and claim that the widow had poisoned her husband to cover up a love affair.

Emerging, the lover complains that his supposed purchase is in need of a proper scrubbing if he is to close the deal, so the cuckolded smith gets a candle and flips the tub to clean it from underneath.

In Book Nine, a baker's wife of poor reputation is advised by a female 'confidant' to be wary of choosing her lover, suggesting she find one very strong of body and will.

In Book Ten a woman condemned to public humiliation with Lucius tells him her crimes: A man goes on a journey, leaving his pregnant wife and infant son.

The girl, aware that the husband is her brother, responds immediately, and on arrival at the country home is flogged by the wife's slaves, and put to death by a torch placed 'between her thighs'.

Unable to return home in time to seek an antidote, the doctor dies telling his wife what happened and to at least collect a payment for the poison.

It is an imaginative, irreverent, and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, a virile young man who is obsessed with magic.

The Golden Ass is the only surviving work of literature from the ancient Greco-Roman world to examine, from a first-hand perspective, the abhorrent condition of the lower classes.

Numerous amusing stories, many of which seem to be based on actual folk tales, with their ordinary themes of simple-minded husbands, adulterous wives, and clever lovers, as well as the magical transformations that characterize the entire novel, are included within the main narrative.

In the introduction to his translation of The Golden Ass, Jack Lindsay writes: Let us glance at some of the details of Apuleius' style and it will become clear that English translators have not even tried to preserve and carry over the least tincture of his manner ... Take the description of the baker's wife: saeva scaeva virosa ebriosa pervicax pertinax...(IX.14)  The nagging clashing effect of the rhymes gives us half the meaning.

Read again the merry and expressive doggerel of Apuleius and it will be seen how little of his vision of life has been transferred into English.Lindsay's own version is: "She was lewd and crude, a toper and a groper, a nagging hag of a fool of a mule."

Sarah Ruden's recent translation is: "A fiend in a fight but not very bright, hot for a crotch, wine-botched, rather die than let a whim pass by—that was her.

[15] In 1821, Charles Nodier published "Smarra ou les Demons de la Nuit" influenced by a reading of Apuleius.

In 1915, Franz Kafka published the short story The Metamorphosis under a quite similar name, about a young man's unexpected transformation into an "Ungeziefer", a verminous bug.

In 1956, C. S. Lewis published the allegorical novel, Till We Have Faces, retelling the Cupid–Psyche myth from books four through six of The Golden Ass from the point of view of Orual, Psyche's jealous ugly sister.

[16] In 1985, comic-book artist Georges Pichard adapted the text into a graphic novel titled Les Sorcières de Thessalie.

In 1999, comic-book artist Milo Manara adapted the text into a fairly abridged graphic novel version named Le metamorfosi o l'asino d'oro.