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The Golden Ass
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The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus), is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety.
The protagonist of the novel may in fact be the author himself. His first name is revealed to be Lucius ; at the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madaurus, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The identification of the protagonist as Lucius of Madaurus has led some scholars to posit that the narrator and the author are one and the same person.
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The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus), is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety.
The protagonist of the novel may in fact be the author himself. His first name is revealed to be Lucius ; at the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madaurus, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The identification of the protagonist as Lucius of Madaurus has led some scholars to posit that the narrator and the author are one and the same person. The plot revolves around the protagonist's curiosity (curiositas) and insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to perform a spell to transform into a bird, he accidentally gets transformed into an ass (similar to A Midsummer Night's Dream). This leads to a long journey, literal and metaphorical, filled with in-set tales. He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins.
Origin
The date of composition of the Metamorphoses is uncertain. It has variously been considered by scholars as a youthful work preceding Apuleius' Apology of 158/9 AD, or as the climax of his literary career and perhaps as late as the 170s or 180s. Apuleius adapted the story from a Greek original, possibly by Lucius of Patrae (if that name isn't merely derived from that of the lead character and narrator). The Greek text has been lost, but there is ??????? ? ???? (Loúkios è ónos, Lucios or the Ass), a similar tale of unknown authorship that is possibly an abridgement or epitome of Lucius of Patrae's text, wrongly attributed in ancient times to Lucian of Samosata, a contemporary of Apuleius.
Plot
Book One
The prologue establishes an audience and a speaker, who defines himself by location, education, and occupation. The narrator journeys to Thessaly on business. On the way, he runs into Aristomenes and an unnamed traveler. The unnamed traveler refuses to believe Aristomenes’ story. The narrator scolds the unnamed traveler and tells a short story about a sword swallower. He promises Aristomenes a free lunch if he will retell his tale. Aristomenes’ tale begins with him going on business for cheese and he runs into his friend Socrates, who is disheveled and emaciated. Aristomenes clothes Socrates and takes him to the bathhouse. Aristomenes berates Socrates for leaving his family. While they’re eating lunch, Socrates tells about his affair with Meroë. Socrates tells Aristomenes that Meroë is an ugly witch who turns her ex-lovers into rather unfortunate animals. Aristomenes doesn’t believe Socrates’ tale but is nevertheless afraid. Aristomenes barricades the door and they both go to bed. 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. Before leaving, they urinate on Aristomenes. Aristomenes fears that he will be blamed for the death of his friend and contemplates killing himself. In the morning, Socrates wakes up and everything seems to be normal. They continue travelling and reach a stream, where Socrates bends to take a drink, which causes the sponge to fall out and him to die. The narrator believes Aristomenes’ tale and becomes more eager to learn about magic. The narrator arrives at Hypata, where he stays with Milo, a family friend and miser, and his wife Pamphile. Photis, Milo’s servant, takes the narrator to the baths, after which the narrator goes to the marketplace. There, he buys some fish and runs into his old friend Pytheas, who is now a magistrate. Pytheas reveals the narrator’s name as Lucius. Pytheas says that Lucius overpaid for the fish and humiliates the fish-monger by trampling on the fish. Lucius returns to Milo’s house, hungry and empty-handed. Milo asks Lucius about his life, his friends, and his wanderings. Lucius goes to sleep hungry.
Book Two
The next morning, Lucius meets his cousin Byrrhena in the town, and she warns him that Milo's wife is an evil witch who will kill Lucius. Lucius, however, is interested in becoming a witch himself. He then returns to Milo's house, where he repeatedly makes love to the slave-girl Focis (also spelled Photis). The next day, Lucius goes to his cousin's home for dinner, and there meets Bellephron, who relates the tale of how witches cut off his nose and ears. After the meal, Lucius drunkenly returns to Milo's house in the dark, where he encounters three robbers, whom he soon slays before retiring to bed.
Book Three
The next morning, Lucius is abruptly awoken and arrested for the murder of the three men, He is taken to court where he is laughed at constantly, witnesses are brought out against him, they are just about to announce his guilt when the widow demands to bring out the dead bodies, but when the three bodies of the murdered men are revealed they have miraculously transformed into bladders. It then turns out that it was a prank played by the town upon Lucius. Later that day, Lucius and Focis watch Milo's wife perform her witchcraft and transform herself into a bird. Attempting to copy her, Lucius accidentally turns himself into a ass, at which point Focis tells him that the only way for him to return to his human state is to eat a rose.
Book Four
Lucius the ass trotted over to a garden to munch on a rose when he was beaten by the gardener and chased by dogs. He was then stolen from Milo's house by thieves, who talked about how their leader Thrasileon had been killed whilst dressed as a bear. The thieves then kidnapped a young woman, Charites, who was housed in a cave with Lucius the ass. Charites started crying, so an elderly woman who was in league with the thieves began to tell her the story of Cupid and Psyche.
Book Five
The elderly woman continues telling the story of Cupid and Psyche.
Book Six
The elderly woman finishes telling the story of Cupid and Psyche. Lucius the ass and Charites escape from the cave but they are caught by the thieves, and sentenced to death.
Book Seven
A man appears to the thieves and announces that he is the renowned thief Haemus the Thracian, who suggests that they should not kill the captives but sell them. Haemus later reveals himself secretly to Charites as her fiancé Lepolemus, and drugs all of the thieves. When they are asleep he slays them all. Lepolemus, Charites and Lucius the ass safely escape back to the town. Once there, the ass is entrusted to a horrid boy who torments him but the boy is later killed by a bear. Enraged, the boy's mother plans to kill the ass.
Book Eight
A man arrives at the mother's house and announces that Lepolemus and Charites are dead, caused by the scheming of the evil Thrasillus who wants Charites to marry him. After hearing the news of their master's death, the slaves run away, taking the ass Lucius with them. The large group of traveling slaves is mistaken for a band of robbers and attacked by farmhands of a rich estate. Several other misfortunes befall the travelers until they reach a village. Lucius as the narrator often deters from the plot in order to recount several scandal-filled stories that he learns of during his journey. Lucius is eventually sold to a catamite priest. He is entrusted with carrying the statue of a goddess on his back while he follows around the group of sinful priests.
Book Nine
Book Ten
Book Eleven
Lucius wakes up in a panic during the first watch of the night. Considering Fate to be done tormenting him, he takes the opportunity to purify himself by seven consecutive immersions in the sea. 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, Paphos, 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. In return for his redemption, Lucius is expected to be initiated into Isis’ priesthood (Isis being the Queen of Heaven’s true name, according to her). Lucius follows her instructions and is returned to human form and, at length, initiated into her priesthood. Lucius is then sent to his ancestral home, Rome where he continues to worship Isis, under the local name, Campensis. After a time, he is visited once more by the Goddess who speaks again of mysteries and holy rites which Lucius comes to understand as a command to be initiated into the cult of Osiris. He does so. Shortly afterwards, he receives a third vision. Though he is confused, the God appears to him and reassures him that he is much blessed and that he is to become once more initiated that he might supplicate in Rome as well. The story concludes with the God, Lord Osiris, appearing to Lucius and declaring that Lucius shall rise to a prominent position in the legal profession and that he shall be appointed to the College of Pastophori that he might serve Osiris and Isis’ mysteries. Lucius is so happy that he goes about freely exposing his bald head. The End.
Overview
The text is a precursor to the literary genre of the episodic picaresque novel, in which Quevedo, Rabelais, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Voltaire, Defoe and many others have followed. 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. Finding himself in Thessaly, the "birthplace of magic," Lucius eagerly seeks an opportunity to see magic being used. His overenthusiasm leads to his accidental transformation into an ass. In this guise, Lucius, a member of the Roman country aristocracy, is forced to witness and share the miseries of slaves and destitute freemen who are reduced, like Lucius, to being little more than beasts of burden by their exploitation at the hands of wealthy landowners.
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. Yet despite its serious subject matter, the novel remains imaginative, witty, and often sexually explicit. 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. The longest of these inclusions is the tale of Cupid and Psyche, encountered here for the first but not the last time in Western literature.
Style
Apuleius' style is as amusing as his stories are, for though he was not a Roman by birth he was a master of Latin prose and could play with the rhythm and rhyme of the language as if he were a native speaker. In the introduction to his translation of The Golden Ass, Jack Lindsay writes:
Lindsay's own version is: "She was lewd and crude, a toper and a groper, a nagging hag of a fool of a mule."
Apuleius' vocabulary is often eccentric and includes some archaic words. However, S. J. Harrison argues that some archaisms of syntax in the transmitted text may be the result of textual corruption.
Final book
In the last book, the style abruptly changes. Driven to desperation by his asinine form, Lucius calls for divine aid, and is answered by the goddess Isis. Eager to be initiated into the mystery cult of Isis, Lucius abstains from forbidden foods, bathes and purifies himself. Then the secrets of the cult's books are explained to him and further secrets revealed, before going through the process of initiation which involves a trial by the elements in a journey to the underworld. Lucius is then asked to seek initiation into the cult of Osiris in Rome, and eventually becomes initiated into the pastophoroi, a group of priests that serves Isis and Osiris.
The humorous prose of the earlier books is exchanged for an equally powerful, sometimes quasi-poetic, style that draws upon Lucius' religious experiences.
Modern adaptations and influence
In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his own version of the story, as a terza rima poem.
In April 1999 the Canadian Opera Company produced an operatic version of The Golden Ass, the libretto of which was written by celebrated Canadian author Robertson Davies. An operatic production of The Golden Ass also appears as a plot device in Davies's novel A Mixture of Frailties (1958).
In 1999, comic book artist Milo Manara adapted the text into a graphic novel.
In 2002, Shakespeare's Globe theatre rehearsed for the first time the drama The Golden Ass or the Curious Man (starring Mark Rylance as Lucius) written by Peter Oswald after Apuleius' novel, while performing A Midsummer Night's Dream during the same season. This shows the connections on how Shakespeare used ancient literature as a source for his comedy (Bottom's head being transformed into that of an ass).
Footnotes
See also
- Black Beauty - One of the first novels in English from the perspective of a horse, it also allegorically examines the nature of the working poor.
- Till We Have Faces - A novel by C. S. Lewis; retells the story of Cupid and Psyche from a different point of view.
- Silver Age of Latin literature
- Dushenka - A long poem written by Ippolit Bogdanovich using a storyline remarkably similar to The Tale of Cupid and Psyche tale in The Golden Ass
External links
Text
- (Latin text only.)
- William Adlington's English translation made in 1566:
- (Plain text.)
- (Based on the preceding.)
- (Choice of plain text or HTML.)
- (Based on earlier edition of the HTML version above.)
- (Excerpt illustrated by Dorothy Mullock, 1914.)
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