Apuleius and the Initiation of Lucius
Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses Book XI, c. 170 CE)“I approached the boundary of death, and having trodden on the threshold of Proserpina,
I returned from it, being borne through all the elements.
At midnight I saw the sun shining with a splendid light;
I approached even to the presence of the gods below and the gods above,
and stood near and worshipped them.”
A second-century Roman novel containing the only surviving first-person account anyone wrote of undergoing an ancient mystery initiation.
