The Golden Ass

Not necessarily the world’s first novel (the world’s first novel is probably lost) nor even the world’s first great novel (that would be Petronius’ Satyricon, which you should also not get caught reading), The Golden Ass is definitely the world’s first great novel that has survived through the centuries intact.

It’s the story of a man who tries just one time to dabble in magic and accidentally turns himself into a donkey. The poor guy has a bunch of adventures as he tries to figure out how to, you know, stop being a donkey.

That doesn’t sound so bad,… show more.

This comic, clever, and subversive work is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The main character, Lucius, makes an error while using a witch’s balm to change himself into a bird and ends up – to his great despair – transformed into an ass. While being passed on to different owners, he is whipped and cursed and nearly butchered for his meat, learning first-hand how cruel humans can be to their fellow creatures, which is why I regard this to be the first work written in defense of animal rights. Will Lucius find a… show more.

Not so much a novel as a loosely connected set of rambling anecdotes dealing with everything from incompetent market officials to Greek myth and sex and superstition. The whole thing is told with great verve and is a sackful of fun. Try P.G. Walsh's translation available from Oxford. World Classics.