Apuleius, Metamorphoses 3.1

For the text, I am using the Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries, Metamorphses Book III, ed. William Turpin.

A Roman bed from around 100 A.D. Lucius' little cot was almost certainly not this nice.

Latin	Vocabulary	Translation
Commodum punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum caelum inequitabat, et me securae quieti revulsum nox diei reddidit.	commodum quatiens lacertum revulsum	It was around the time that Aurora was riding into the sky with rosy trappings, waving an arm, and night returned to the day myself, wrenched from untroubled rest.
aestus invadit animum vesperni recordatione facinori. complicitis denique pedibus, ac palmulis in alternas digitorum vicissitudines super genua conexis, sic grabatum cossim insidens ubertim flebam, iam forum ac uidicia, iam sententiam, ipsum denique carnificem imaginabundus.	aestus facinori palmulis conexis grabatum cossim ubertim	Worry siezes my soul with the memory of last night's crime. Finally with my feet folded up and my hands clasped together above my knees, fingers intertwined, hunched down on the little cot, I cried my heart out, imagining first the court and the judges, then the sentence, and finally the execution.
"An mihi quisquam tam mitis tamque benivolus iudex obtinget, qui me trinae caedis cruore perlitum et tot civium sanguine delibutum innocentem pronuntiare poterit?	mitis obtinget perlitum caedis delibutum	"But what judge would fall to me so gentle and so benevolent that he might be able to pronounce me innocent, me who is smeared with the gore of three murders and spackled with the blood of so many citizens?
hanc illam mihi gloriosam peregrinationem fore Chaldaeus Diophanes obstinate praedicabat."	peregrinationem obstinate	Diophanes the Chaldean was obstinately predicting that for me would be that glory of travel."
haec identidem mecum replicans, fortunas meas heiulabam. quati fores interdum et frequenti clamore ianuae nostrae perstrepi.	replicans heiulabam quati ianuae perstrepi	Repeating this over and over again to myself, I bewailed my fortunes. Meanwhile the doors were shaking and our hallways resounding with the shouts of a mob.

Notes on this passage:

• Apuleius may just be my favorite Latin writer. I love his play with words, and he is a very vivid, immediate dramatist. Other writers wrote more elegant verse and certainly nobler stories, but I get the sense that Apuleius loves the language he is playing with, and he isn't afraid to make his main character a fool. Drama is more lauded, but comedy is harder. Seneca was called the father of the modern theatre (the perk of being rediscovered a century before the Greek dramas), but Apuleius can write circles around him.
• Heaven help me if I forget what quatio means now. I wish I could think of a modern cognate.
• Apuleius will spend time on the physical details of a scene and then refuse to answer the most obvious of questions. Since he clearly knows what  he is doing, it must be deliberate. You can see some of the details he does include in his description here of Lucius sobbing in the fetal position on his "little cot."