Alessandro Barchiesi is the Gesue and Helen Spogli Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and professor of Latin literature at the University of Siena, Italy. He is the author of several books and the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. The study of Homeric imitations in Vergil has one of the longest traditions in Western culture, starting from the very moment the Aeneid was circulated. Homeric...

This book examines the comic and philosophical aspects of Apuleius' Metamorphoses, the ancient Roman novel also known as The Golden Ass. The tales that comprise the novel, long known for their bawdiness and wit, describe the adventures of Lucius, a man who is transformed into an ass. Carl Schlam argues that the work cannot be seen as purely comic or wholly serious; he says that the entertainment offered by the novel includes a vision of the possibilities...