The Golden Ass by Apuleius

This is the most continuously and accessibly amusing book that has come down to us from classical antiquity.
(E. J. Kenney, editor and translator of the 1998 Penguin edition)

Give me your ear, reader; you will enjoy yourself.
(The Golden Ass, first paragraph)

Apuleius’s biography

[Lucius] Apuleius [Madaurensis] (whose dates are from roughly 124 AD to some time after 170 AD) was a Roman prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician.

He was born in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, in modern-day Algeria, hence his third name.

His first name is given in no ancient manuscript and only appears in medieval sources, leading to the suspicion that it was copied from the name of his most famous fictional character, the hero of ‘The Golden Ass’, called Lucius.

Apuleius studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was initiated into several cults or mysteries, including the Dionysian Mysteries. He also served as a priest of Asclepius, so was a man familiar with magic and mysteries. He spent some time in Rome, to study Latin rhetoric and probably to speak in the law courts.

The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using charms and magic spells to gain the love of a wealthy widow. He vigorously defended himself, writing, declaiming in public, and then distributing his own defence, before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near Oea (modern Tripoli, Libya). This defence still exists and is known as the Apologia or A Discourse on Magic, which is why we know so much about this incident.

Apuleius is named as the author of many works so it seems that he was a prolific author but, alas, almost none of them have survived. His most famous work is his picaresque novel, properly titled The Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It describes the adventures of its protagonist, Lucius, who experiments with magic and accidentally transforms himself into a donkey (ass). The bulk of the narrative describes his humorous adventures before he manages to get turned back into a human being by the goddess Isis.

The fact the character is named Lucius makes many scholars suspect that the name of the author that’s come down to us, Lucius Apuleius was invented in the Middle Ages by simply adding the protagonist’s name to the only actual name which dates back to antiquity, Apuleius.

I read Apuleius when I was a student, probably in the old Penguin edition translated by Robert Graves and first published in 1950. I recently came back to the story (in this new Penguin translation by E.J Kenney) because it is mentioned in Walter Pater’s 1885 novel, Marius the Epicurean where: in Book 1, it is the favourite book of young Marius and his literary-minded friend Flavian, then, in Book 4, Apuleius himself is depicted visiting Rome and meeting the older Marius; then Book 5 consists of an extended translation of the story of Cupid and Psyche, the most famous story in the text, which has been translated numerous times.

The Golden Ass: executive summary

‘The Golden Ass’ is a first-person narrative told by the central protagonist, Lucius, an ‘eager student of the remarkable and miraculous’, who has an insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to copy a witch he saw transform into a bird he accidentally changes himself into an ass. There follows a long sequence of comedic events, themselves continually interspersed with subsidiary stories, as Lucius tries to get himself changed back into a man, being sold on from one human owner to another in the process. Lucius is finally saved by the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins.

All these changes of physical shape, in the main narrative and many of the inset stories, explain why the formal title of the text is The Metamorphoses, presumably a knowing reference to Ovid’s famous collection of the same name.

The story is notable for its many digressions, the longest being the tale of Cupid and Psyche, a rare instance of a fairy tale preserved in an ancient literary text. It’s also notable because, once he’s restored to human form, Lucius is initiated into the mystery cults of first Isis, and then Osiris, and the text gives detailed descriptions of the process, rites, rituals, books and incantations involved in both ceremonies, which weren’t recorded anywhere else.

The Golden Ass: stories within stories

In the very first sentence the narrator warns you it is going to be a ‘Milesian discourse’. This refers to the kinds of collections of popular tales and stories associated with the author Aristides of Miletus (flourished around 100 BC) – assemblages of sub-literary tales and yarns sewn together for the delectation of an educated audience. It’s a concatenation of stories, a deliberate embroilment, a net of narratives. Part of the pleasure comes from getting confused and caught up by these stories within stories, sometimes stories within stories within stories.

But also, right at the start, he says: ‘Lector, intende!’ which simply means, ‘Reader, be alert‘. The text is sophisticated and savvy and demanded a high level of literary awareness in its readers. It contains all kinds of cultural and philosophical references, playing with names and references to older literature, playing with the narrative, with conventions and so on. Lector, intende!

The Golden Ass: synopsis

The frame of this synopsis i.e. the line divisions, is copied from A. S. Kline’s excellent online translation to which I’ve added my own summaries. Ancient texts like this were long ago, during the Renaissance, divided up into books and sections, conventions everyone still uses.

Book 1. Aristomenes’ tale, Milo’s house

Book 1. Chapter 1: Apuleius’s address to the reader.

Book 1. Chapters 2 to 5: Aristomenes begins his tale:

The narrator is travelling towards Thessaly when he overtakes two other walkers, squabbling because one of them is sceptical of the tall tales the other one, Aristomenes, is telling. The narrator likes a good story and asks Aristomenes from Aegium to tell his. He had travelled to Hypata to buy some cheese he’d heard about but arrived too late. So he went to the baths for consolation and bumped into an old friend, Socrates, looking thin and dishevelled. Aristomenes is amazed because back home everyone thinks Socrates is dead, they’ve held a funeral, his widow is in mourning. Socrates tells his story.

Book 1. 6 to 10: Socrates’ misfortune

Socrates had gone on business to Macedonia, made money, was on his way back when he was set upon by robbers. He staggers to a nearby inn, where he’s taken in by the middle-aged woman owner, Meroe. She fixes him up, takes him in, gives him work at the inn, and into her bed. But she turned out to be a witch who enslaved him as Circe enslaved Ulysses. She can do all sorts of tricks including changing men’s forms.

She changed an unfaithful lover into a beaver. She changed a rival innkeeper into a frog. She changed a lawyer who appeared against her into a ram. She extended the pregnancy of the wife of another of her lovers indefinitely. When the townspeople rose against her she used spells to lock them in their homes. The man who convened the public meeting, she whisked, along with his house and belongings, to another place a hundred miles away.

Book 1. 11 to 17: Aristomenes’ nightmare

Terrified, Aristomenes takes Socrates back to his own hotel room and wedges the door shut with his bed. But that night the door is blown off its hinges and Aristomenes thrown to the floor with the upturned bed on top of him so he looks like a tortoise and through the smashed door come Meroe and her sister Parthia. They consider castrating Aristomenes, but instead Meroe turns sleeping Socrates’ head to one side, slashes open his neck, reach into his chest cavity and pulls out his beating heart. Before leaving, the two old women pull the bed off cowering Aristomenes, squat down, and piss all over him. Then the doorframe magically flies back into place as if nothing had happened.

He goes to see the porter to beg to be allowed to leave the inn, but the porter refuses, saying it’s the middle of the night and the roads are full of robbers. Now Aristomenes realises the old women left him alive so he’d be discovered with a corpse in his room and charged with murder and crucified, so he rigs up ropes from the bed and tries to hang himself but the rafters break and he falls onto Socrates’ body just as the porter bursts in.

Book 1. 18 to 20: Socrates’ strange death

And Socrates bounds up from his sleep and starts arguing with the porter so…was the whole thing a twisted nightmare? Except that Aristomenes really does smell of human piss, as Socrates points out when the former embraces him. They check out of the inn and set off down the road, when Socrates says that he himself had a similar dream and then starts turning pale. They stop for a breakfast of bread and cheese and, as Socrates leans over a stream to drink, the wound in his neck reappears and he dies.

Aristomenes buries his body in a shallow grave and, terrified, never returns to his home country, remarrying and living in Aetolia. And that is the story this wayfarer tells his companion and the narrator as they walk along.

Book 1. 21 to 26: Arriving at Milo’s House

Aristomenes’s companion thinks it’s a load of nonsense but the narrator says to be cautious; it’s a funny world and you never know. And the story has beguiled the journey because now they have arrived at their destination, the town of Hypata. The other two go off to a farm and Lucius stops at an inn to ask the way to Milo’s house. He has a letter of introduction to Milo from Demeas of Corinth.

Milo is a well-known miser who welcomes him into his humble abode, introducing his wife, Pamphile, and his servant girl, Photis.

The strange episode of the market. Lucius wants to check out the market so goes and buys some fish, haggling down the price to 80 sesterces. He meets Pytheas, who he was students with at Athens, who inspects the fish, insists it’s sub-standard and orders his clerk to trample it to a pulp. ‘There!’ he says, ‘that’ll teach that rogue of a fishmonger!’ Nonplussed, Lucius repairs to the baths to wash and be rubbed down with oil.

Back at Milo’s ‘the tiresome old man’ subjects him to a lengthy interrogation about his family and home town and motives for visiting, before finally letting him go to bed, exhausted and with an empty stomach.

Book 2. Photis, Thelyphron’s tale

Next day he goes walking in the streets of Hypata and witnesses a woman dressed in impressive jewellery and gold embroidered dress with a train of attendants. To his astonishment the man with her points Lucius out and they come and embrace him, announcing that she was his ‘foster mother’ and brought him up when he was a baby. Her name is Byrrhena and she invites him to visit her house and stay there.

The house is very impressive, starting with the elaborate sculpture of Diana being spied on by Actaeon in the central atrium. Byrrhena warns him against Milo’s wife, Pamphile, who is said to be a witch and lists all the spells she can cast. Characteristically, this only fires Lucius’s curiosity. He tells himself he won’t try anything with his host’s wife, but pretty Photis tucked him in and kissed him goodnight (!) and was obviously reluctant to leave his room. He’ll ‘have a go’ at her.

So back at Milo’s place, Lucius enjoys watching Photis wiggling her bum as she stirs the cooking pot which gives him a nice erection (2.7). He flirts with her verbally and discovers she has a saucy sense of humour, before risking a kiss and discovering she is happy to kiss him back and french kiss him, before promising to come to his room tonight (2.10).

At dinner Lucius avoids Pamphile’s eye. When she makes a minor prediction about the weather that triggers Lucius describes the prophet Diophanes the Chaldaean who’s making a big impact back in his native Corinth. Milo says he made a splash here in Hypata until he was unmasked as a fraud.

But Lucius is in a burning hurry to end the meal and get to his bedroom and the promised sex with Photis. Sure enough they lock themselves in and go for it. It’s interesting that Lucius finds the most beautiful and arousing part of a woman’s body to be her hair, which he asks Photis to let down over him as she straddles him (2.16). This continues for many nights.

Lucius is invited to a dinner party at Byrrhena’s. Conversation moves to the widespread practice of magic in the area and how witches steal body parts of corpses to perform magic. This leads the hostess to ask Thelyphron to tell his story. This is a macabre tale: He describes travelling round as a young man and coming to Larissa. Here he comes across a man in the public square offering a good price, a thousand sesterces, for anyone who will guard the corpse of the newly dead son of one of the city’s leading citizens. The man warns him that the task is to protect the corpse against witches but that if any part of it is stolen, the protector must give up the same body part. Scornful of all this, naively Thelyphron says he will do it.

So he’s locked into the room with the corpse and food and drink and settles down. After a while a weasel appears in the room, staring at him. Thelyphron shoos him away but then falls into a profound sleep and only wakes at cock crow. In the morning the family come and check the corpse which is completely untouched so they pay him the money.

Thelyphron watches the funeral procession going through the streets but it is interrupted when an old man dressed in black shouts accusations that the widow poisoned the young man. She denies it but he produces ‘a prophet of the first rank’, Zatchlas of Egypt who performs the magic feat of bringing the corpse back to life. The corpse a) complains of being dragged back from the underworld b) confirms the story is true; he was poisoned by his wife to make way for her lover. Then c) as proof he tells a bizarre story: that he was conscious, as a corpse, of lying in the locked room with Thelyphron. How the witches bewitched Thelyphron to go over to the locked door and how they, through cracks and gaps cut off his nose and ears! To cover it up, they replace them with wax ones. And the corpse points at Thelyphron in the crowd who tugs at his nose and ears and they come off in his hands. At which he slunk away, and has worn long hair and a scarf over his nose ever since. So that is Thelyphron’s tale.

Byrrhena tells him the following day is devoted to the god of Laughter and asks Lucius to come up with an appropriate and he assents.

At the end of the evening, walking back to Milo’s house, Lucius sees three thieves at the door trying to force it. So he draws his sword, runs forward and, in a fierce affray, runs them through, then falls into the house hot and sweating and goes straight to bed where he passes out.

Book 3. On trial, Lucius turns into a donkey

Book 3. 1 to 11: Lucius’s trial

Next day he Lucius is arrested and put on trial for murdering three citizens. This is a big comic set piece with extended descriptions of the court, the vast crowd that gathers, the grandstanding prosecutor and then Lucius’s tearful testimony and pleading with the gods that he is innocent. But an old woman approaches, weeping and wailing over the body of her son who Lucius has murdered. And the prosecutor calls for the implements of torture to be fetched so Lucius can be forced to admit his guilt.

It’s all looking very bad for our hero but when he is ordered to pull back the pall covering the three bodies he does so to reveal…three old wineskins covered in cuts and punctures! At which the audience falls about laughing. The leading magistrates now reveal that every year, on the festival of the god of Laughter, they devise a new comic tribute…and Lucius has just been the unknowing actor in a farce they devised. For being such a good sport they enrol him among the city’s patrons and vote for a bronze statue to be erected of him.

Milo takes him to the public baths and all through the streets and in the baths everybody points at Lucius, smirking and laughing, until he is so self conscious he is in ‘a state of mental collapse’ (3.12).

Back at Milo’s house Photis comes to his room at night (as usual) but confesses that everything is her fault. In a kinky moment she undoes a strap from her dress and tells him to spank her for her crime. But Lucius merely kisses her trembling eyelids and asks her to explain. This is the explanation:

Pamphile is a witch. She uses her powers to ensnare handsome young men. Her latest crush is a handsome young Boeotian. Pamphile ordered Photis to follow him to the barbers where she knew he was going to get his hair cut and steal some of his hair. But when she tried to pinch some the barber grabbed it back off her and kicked her out. Not wanting to return empty-handed, Photis walked past trimming three goatskin bags. When he wasn’t looking she pinched some of these hairs and took them back to Milo’s house, handed them over to Pamphile swearing they were the hair of the handsome young man.

That night Photis watched Pamphile go out to the wooden terrace at the back of her house, her ‘eyrie’ open to the winds, where she performs her spells. These are impressively described. but instead of magicking the handsome man to come running to the house, as she intended, instead her spells 1) changed the goatskins into human form (?) and then 2) made them come running to Milo’s house and start wildly beating at the door to get in. It was then that Lucius stumbled on the scene and, thinking they were robbers trying to get in, bravely lay about him with his sword, ‘killing’ not three humans but three magical wineskins.

This is a fine story in itself but impossible to reconcile with the earlier version where the whole thing was somehow the plan of the chief magistrates and townspeople as a big civic joke. Either it was organised by the magistrates or, as in this version, is an accident caused by Photis-Pamphile, but surely it can’t be both.

This appears to be a good example of the way Apuleius is more concerned with dramatic affect and is happy to leave details, logic and consistency far behind.

The effect on Lucius is to make him beg Photis to let him see her mistress performing magic. So it is that a few nights later, Photis comes to fetch Lucius, and they both watch from a hiding place Pamphile transform herself into an owl and fly away (ostensibly to pursue the handsome young Boeotian she’s still infatuated with). This involves stripping and rubbing herself down with magic ointment (3.21).

Lucius promptly gets Photis to help rub him down with the same magic ointment except that…he is transformed into a donkey! (The one bright side is it hugely increases the size of his **** but then how is he going to be able to use it on Photis? 3.24)

Photis reassures him that the cure should be simple, he just has to eat rose leaves and promises to go and gather some at sunrise. Meantime she leads him to the house’s stable to spend the night where, unfortunately, another ass and his own horse gang up on him, regarding him as a rival for their fodder. He spies some rose garlands pinned up in the shrine to a goddess and reaches up for them but can’t reach them. The slave minding the animals sees them and gives him a sound thrashing (3.27).

3.28: But he breaks off when a gang of robbers bursts into the house. They break into Milo’s strong room, steal everything they can, load it all onto Lucius, the other ass and his horse, and then set about driving them up into the mountains on a long trek.

Book 4. The robbers’ exploits

Exhausted and starving Lucius sees a vegetable garden, breaks in and feasts on raw vegetables. He then spies what he thinks is a grove of roses but is disappointed to discover they are some local plant with vivid red flowers. By this time the man who owns the garden he’s ravaged has discovered the damage and comes to attack Lucius with a stick. Lucius does what donkeys do and kicks the man, hurting him quite badly. His wife runs out, discovers him and sets up a hue and cry. Neighbours come running with their dogs, capture and tie him to a ring. Luckily, the stress of all this makes Lucius discharge a stream of virulent diarrhoea at his attackers and he is able to escape.

Back with the robbers, he is reloaded with swag and forced on another long trek. Eventually he becomes so tired he has the brainwave of lying down and feigning exhaustion. However, just as he’s thinking this the other donkey does just the same, lying down and refusing to budge though the robbers pull his ears and legs. Eventually, they get bored of trying to revive him, so cut his hamstrings, drag him to the edge of the road and chuck him over the edge into the valley below. Terrified of meeting the same fate, Lucius decides on the spot that he will behave like an exemplary donkey!

They finally arrive at the robber’s cave.Lucius gives an extended description, taking in the guard hut out front and the narrow entrance to the cave (4.6). An old woman minds the place but is the butt of the robbers’ abuse, even though she lays on a feast and hot water for bathing.

Here a second band of robbers joins them, ‘Boeotian towns’ contingent’, who take some time to tell the stories of their campaign which divides into:

• the attack on the house of the rich banker Chryseros which leads to the loss of their leader Lamachus
• the looting of an old woman’s house which ends when she pushes Alcimus out the window and he smashes on the stones below

An extended description of a canny plan to loot the house of one Demochares in the town of Plataea (4.13 to 4.21). This man had been planning to hold grand gladiator games and had amassed a collection of ferocious bears which had, however, been decimated by illness. The robbers hit on a cunning plan which is to get hold of one of the bear corpses (which a distraught Demochares has let litter the streets) hollow it out, dry it, then sew a man inside it and take this new man-bear back to Demochares and present it as recently captured in the woods. This they do, the volunteer to hide inside the bear being Thrasyleon. He will act as a kind of Trojan bear. The first part goes off fine, Demochares accepts the bear as a gift, locks it in his house, everyone goes to bed. Then the bear opens the front doors to the robbers who set about looting the mansion and carrying the loot off to a graveyard just outside town, where they plan to hide the loot in empty coffins (?).

However, a slave wakes up to the robbery and wakes up the rest of the household who emerge with cudgels, spears and swords. They surround the big ‘bear’ and set the dogs on it. The narrator of the account tries to intervene, telling the servants the bear is valuable, but at that moment one runs up and skewers him with a spear and others join in. To his immense credit, the ill-fated Thrasyleon dies still in character, groaning as a bear not as a man. The robbers nobly toast their fallen comrades then go to sleep.

Book 4. 22 to 25: The captured girl

In the early hours the robbers stir themselves and set off on more brigandage. A little while later they return in great excitement with a pretty young woman named Charite. She’s been kidnapped from a rich household and will be held to ransom. She has a bad dream in which she sees her fiancé, Tlepolemus, journeying across the mountains to find her only to be struck down by one of the bandits with a huge stone. She bursts into more tears (4.26). To try and calm her down the old lady tells her a story, the longest tale in the book, the legend of Cupid and Psyche.

Book 4. 28 to 33: The tale of Cupid and Psyche

A king and queen have three daughters. Two are beautiful but the third and youngest is breath-taking, so beautiful that people come from far and wide to see her, neglecting worship of the gods, in particular neglecting the shrines of Venus. This makes Venus jealous and angry so she tells her son Cupid to avenge her.

But her beauty also makes Psyche miserable. She hates being a tourist attraction while no man is brave enough to propose to her so she faces being stuck at home turning into an old maid. Her father travels to the oracle at Miletus which tells him to prepare his daughter but take her up to the top of a mountain and leave her there where she will meet a terrible bridegroom. He returns home and gloomily does as the oracle orders, and all the trimmings of a wedding are organised, but with wailing instead of celebration. The bridal procession accompanies her to a crag at the top of the prescribed mountain where they leave her.

In the event, though, the gentle god Zephyr lifts her and wafts her down into a beautiful meadow.

Book 5. The tale of Cupid and Psyche continued

After a short sleep Psyche sets about exploring and comes across a magnificent palace, which is described at length. A feast is laid for her by invisible hands and an invisible singer serenades her. That night, once it is dark, she is visited by a considerate lover who, despite her fears, gently takes her virginity and reassures her. However, he makes it abundantly clear that she must never see his face or body and warns her against her sisters. They think she’s dead and they and her parents are in mourning.

But, being a woman, she insists that he brings her sisters her to the enchanted mansion, which he reluctantly agrees to. So next time they visit the mountaintop Zephyr wafts them to the palace where they are reunited with their sister. She tells them she is alright, makes up a story about her ‘husband’, loads them with treasure and sends them back to reassure her parents.

But the two sisters are overcome with jealousy, specially consider the sick old men they’ve been married off to, and start to conspire against Psyche. Cupid comes int he night and warns Psyche again that her sisters are conspiring against her. He also tells her that she is pregnant and that if she keeps this secret her child will be immortal but if she tells the secret it will be mortal. Nonetheless, Psyche insists that she sees her sisters again. Meanwhile the sisters race up to the crag and, without waiting, throw themselves off it. Luckily Zephyr is under Cupid’s orders to catch them and bring them to the palace.

Here they fawn over Psyche who greets them with food and soft music but they are only interested in interrogating her about her husband. When Psyche makes the mistake of giving a completely different description of her husband the sisters realise she’s never seen him and their curiosity/vengeance is intensified.

They go home, barely greeting the forlorn parents, and are up early to come back to the palace (all the palaver about the crag and Zephyr is now skipped over in order to get to the crux of their malicious plan). The sisters set out to terrify Psyche, reminding her that the oracle warned she would be married to a monster and terrifying her with invented accounts of local peasants who have seen a huge poisonous snake making its way to the palace. They swear the snake will wait till she bears her child and then will gobble them both up.

Terrified, Psyche takes the advice of her sisters who she naively believes have her best interests at heart. They tell her to prepare a big sharp sword and hide it next to her bed, then get a lighted lamp and put a jar over it to conceal it. When the monster next visits, after they’ve had sex, uncover the lamp to reveal the monster then cut its head off with the sword! Then she and the sisters will loot the palace of all its treasure and return home (thus revealing their real motivation i.e. greed).

So that’s what she does that night. But when she uncovers the lamp, instead of a giant snake she sees the very beautiful sleeping Cupid. Apuleius gives a detailed and sensuous description. It made me think that one difference between myth and fairy tale is the length of the description, the sensitivity and consciousness with which later ages imbued what, to begin with, were short simple folk stories.

Anyway as she marvels at Cupid’s perfect body two things happen. 1) Touching his famous bow and arrows she accidentally pricks her finger and so falls profoundly hopelessly in love with love. 2) A drop of hot oil from the lamp falls onto Cupid’s shoulder and wakes him up. Thus is revealed her treachery. Without a word Cupid turns and flies off but Psyche grabs his foot as he leaves and hangs on for a bit until she loses her grip and falls to the ground.

Cupid flies down to lecture her. He warned her against her scheming sisters but she wouldn’t listen. He tells her that angry Venus wanted to attach Psyche to ‘the lowest of wretches’ and force her into a humiliating marriage but that Cupid took pity on her and took her for his own wife. More fool him. Her sisters will be punished. Her punishment is that he will leave her, and he flies off.

In her misery Psyche tries to kill herself by throwing herself in a river but the river (maybe out of fear of Cupid’s power) bears her up and drops her on the riverbank near where the country god Pan is lying with the mountain nymph Echo. Pan advises Psyche not to kill herself but to worship Cupid.

Psyche wanders across the land and finally comes to the city ruled by the husband of one of her two sisters. She makes her way to the palace, is reunited with the sister and tells her a lie; she tells her the true part about revealing Cupid as her lover-husband, truthfully says that Cupid was furious, but then deceitfully tells her that Cupid said that, in revenge, he would marry her (the sister). Driven wild with ambitious lust the sister promptly makes excuses to her husband, rushes off to the famous crag up the mountain and leaps off, assuming that Zephyr will catch her as so many times before. Except he doesn’t and so she plunges to her doom, a mangled wreck.

Psyche wanders on to the city of her other sister and tells her the same lie with the same result, off to the mountain she rushes, jumps over the edge and plunges to a grisly death. The song ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves’ springs to mind. Psyche has transformed very quickly from a naive and gullible girl to a scheming woman almost as vengeful as her sisters. Apuleius is more concerned with speeding from one dramatic moment to another than with what we’d regard as ‘consistency’.

While Cupid lies nursing his wound Venus is down on the seabed and humans spread all kinds of rumours about her family. A seabird, a tern, flies down to the seabed and tells Venus a) her son is wounded b) he has been neglecting his duties because of love for Psyche, the very woman Venus set her son to destroy! Venus is furious and vows all kinds of revenge against her son. She encounters Ceres and Juno who try but fail to calm her down.

Book 6. The tale of Cupid and Psyche concluded – Lucius’s escape attempt

Psyche worships and addresses first Ceres then Juno in her quest for Cupid but both are too scared of Venus and regard Psyche as a runaway slave which custom forbade anyone to help.

Meanwhile Venus goes up to heaven and recruits Mercury to walk the earth proclaiming the news that Venus seeks the runaway slave Psyche and will give anyone who turns her in the rich reward of seven kisses and an eighth ‘with the sweetness of her thrusting tongue’ (6.8). Interesting that a ‘french’ kiss was a distinct category and regarded as extra luxurious one thousand eight hundred years ago.

Psyche is swiftly found and handed over to Venus who gets her servants to beat her, execrates her, and sets her three impossible tasks. However, with the help of sympathetic spirits Psyche achieves all three, the third one being to draw water from the river Styx while avoiding its guardian serpents which, surprisingly, Jupiter’s eagle helps her accomplish.

Finally she is given the task of visiting the underworld and there asking Proserpine to give Venus a little of her beauty. Giving up in despair at this impossible task Psyche heads for a nearby tower to throw herself off it but the tower speaks, giving her a very detailed description of the precise process for entering the underworld (via a ‘breathing hole’ near a village near Sparta), namely carry to cakes of barley (to feed Cerberus on the way in and the way out) and two coins in your mouth (to pay Charon on the way across the Styx, then the way back).

Psyche carries out all these ceremonies and sits before the throne and asks for some beauty to be placed in the box Venus gave her BUT, on the way back, she is overcome by curiosity and opens the box. There is no beauty inside but the deepest sleep which immediately enfolds her (6.21).

Now Cupid was by this time completely cured of his burn, escapes the tower where Venus had been confining him and flies to where Psyche lays asleep. He wakes her and tells her off: ‘Yet again curiosity has been your undoing’. Nevertheless, he flies up to heaven and meets with Jupiter and asks to be allowed to marry his beloved. And Jupiter magnanimously forgives Cupid the hundreds of times he has teased and humiliated him with strange transformations and grants his wish. He makes Venus agree. And the story ends with a (fairly rushed) description of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche in heaven. Soon after she bears his daughter, who we call Pleasure.

With that the robbers’ old lady ends her story to the captive girl.

Moments later the robbers return, bloody and dirty from another escapade. They press Lucius into marching off to another cave where they’ve stashed their booty. It’s so heavy and such a long journey back that Lucius stumbles and falls over. When they get him up he’s lame and so he hears the robbers now discussing chucking him over the nearest cliff when this journey is finished. Once back at the master cave, the robbers turn and set off to get the rest of the loot. This is Lucius’s chance to make a break for it but as he starts heading off the old crone grabs his halter. The girl comes out the cave, sizes up the situation, pushes the old lady aside, leaps on Lucius’s back and spurs him to gallop away.

But they are caught. They come to a crossroads and while they squabble about which way to go, the robbers come upon them, grab and reshackle them. Back to the cave where, in passing, they see the old hag has hanged herself (they throw her body over the cliff). Then there’s a gruesome debate about how to punish the girl for trying to escape which ends with the suggestion that they should kill the ass, eviscerate him and sew the girl up inside his body (obviously echoing the incident with the dead bear, earlier).

Lucius, tied to a stake, hears all this and passes an anxious, sleepless night.

Book 7. Lucius’s sufferings

This book is a list of the physical sufferings and beatings Lucius the ass endures. It starts off when a man comes to the robbers’ cave and declares that he’s been hanging round Milo’s town and can confirm that everyone thinks the sack of Milo’s place was organised by a man called Lucius – that he arrived with an obviously faked letter of introduction, inveigled his way into the maidservant’s charms, then masterminded the attack and sack by a gang of robbers, as proven by the way he disappeared along with the horse he arrived on. Obviously, Lucius listens in mute dismay.

Arrival of Haemus the bandit

Next thing other robbers arrive saying they have come across a volunteer for the band. This is a strapping young man who introduces himself as Haemus the bandit from Thrace. He tells a long cock and bull story about leading a famous gang of robbers till they were hunted down by an Imperial commissioner and his wife. Only he escaped and has been preying on solitary farms. Now he opens his tunic and hands over his gold and money, prepared to share it with the others if they will make him his leader. The robbers confer among themselves then agree. Then they show him the hostage, Charite, and Haemus advises a plan; rather than sewing her up in the corpse of the ass as they’d discussed the evening before, he suggests they simply sell her to a brothel, and says he knows a couple of pimps who’d love to have her. That way they’ll get revenge and make a profit into the bargain!

To celebrate his appointment, Haemus says he’ll lead a contingent away to do some more robbing and come back with wine and food. So while the main body of robbers build a shrine to Mars, the others go looting and return with all the ingredients for a feast. Haemus then oversees the great feast and, above all, much drinking of stolen wine, popping up everywhere filling the robbers’ goblets, virtually forcing it down their throats.

Rescue of Charite

Now, Lucius had been puzzled at the way the girl, when she saw big muscley Haemus, instead of cowering had burst out in smiles; then at the way he had insisted on her being positioned next to him at the fest; and at the way he constantly gave her the best titbits and seemed to be pledging her. Then Lucius realises why: Haemus is her fiancé, Tlepolemus, come to rescue her. And soon enough every single one of the robbers passes out and lies helpless on the floor, because Haemus had slipped a potion into the wine.

He and Charite quickly tie up all the robbers, then load Charite into the ass and ride back to the town of her birth. here they are greeted as heroes, not least by the poor girl’s parents, and even Lucius the ass is feted as Charite explains the role he played in her abortive escape attempt. A posse of men is rounded up and returns to the cave to retrieve all the robbers’ plunder and quite brutally throw some of the unconscious men over the cliff and stab to death the others (7.13).

Life with the stableman

Back in the town the citizens vote for Lucius to be put out to pasture and lead a life of leisure. However as soon as the head stableman leads him off some distance into the countryside, it turns out that he and his wife are going to work him to death. They tie him to a rotary mill and barely feed him.

Then he is taken to a field of horses and set free with a view to mating with them, but it is the mating seasons and the fields are full of het-up stallions who proceed to kick the life out of him.

He is next given over to the charge of a boy to carry wood down from the mountains and this boy turns out to be a sadist who beats him continually. As a cruel punishment he ties thistles to his tail. When Lucius tries to kick him, he loads his back with wood soaked in tow and then sets him on fire, Lucius only surviving by diving into a nearby pond.

Then the boy libels Lucius to all the other herdsmen, inventing the accusation that the ass is so randy that he assaults men and women and tries to mount them. Some of the (very credulous) herdsmen suggest they kill him and preserve the skin. Another suggests that all they need to do is castrate him and he’ll calm down. They all agree to this and the castrator asks for a day or two to fetch the correct equipment. You can see how this is the book which is devoted to listing all the humiliations an ass can possibly undergo to emphasise Lucius’s suffering.

The bear kills the boy

Next thing that happens is the boy takes Lucius up the hillside once more and ties him to a tree when a huge she-bear emerges from a cave (7.24). Lucius rears up in terror, breaks his tether and runs like the wind down the hillside to the plains. Here he is captured by a passerby who mounts him and starts beating him. But this man himself runs into the main body of herdsmen who have discovered the boy’s body up in the hills and so, ignorant of the existence of the bear, they accuse the man of murdering the boy and stealing the ass. They lock him up ahead of taking him before a magistrate next day.

That night the boy’s mother, in ashes from grieving, enters the stable where Lucius is tethered and beats him black and blue with a pole till she’s too tired to hit him again. Then she gets a flaming brand and pushes it into his groin. The only way he can halt all this is by once again letting fly a stream of liquid filth from his rear end.

Book 8. The tale of Thrasyllus and Charite – the eunuchs

A man arrives from the city, one of Charite’s slaves, to bring the terrible news that she is dead. He gathers the other slaves (‘grooms, shepherds, cowherds’) around and tells the tale. It’s all to do with a young man from the neighbouring city, handsome Thrasyllus of a good family who grows up into a hardened debauchee. This Thrasyllus fell in love with Charite but when he applied, was rejected by her family, and nursed a grievance and hatred ever after.

When Charite was rescued from the robbers and restored to her family Thrasyllus embarked on a campaign to present himself as the most relieved of her fans, as the most dutiful family friend, and slowly and systematically worked his way into all their affections.

Then one day, when out hunting with Tlepolemus, instead of a harmless deer, the hunting dogs disturb a huge fierce boar which roars at them then bounds away. Thrasyllus goads Tlepolemus into following him to chase it and acquire glory. Once they’ve ridden far from the slaves and witnesses, Thrasyllus waits till Tlepolemus has thrown his spear then uses his spear to hobble Tlepolemus’s horse, which throws its rider to the ground, which is where the boar gores him to death, Thrasyllus watching from a distance and adding his own spear thrusts until Tlepolemus is quite dead, and then killing the boar. At which point all the servants finally arrive and their is much grieving and lamentation etc as they carry the body back to the city.

Here Charite goes out of her mind with grief and tries to starve herself to death. Thrasyllus presents himself as the friend of the family and manages to coax her into having a bath and eating something. But unfortunately, Thrasyllus is over-hasty and his comforting turns into a premature proposal of marriage, at which Charite recoils, revolted.

Also doesn’t help that the ghost of murdered Tlepolemus appears to Charite in her sleep and tells her the full story of how Thrasyllus murdered him. So Charite transforms (very like Psyche) from a naive victim into a cunning schemer. She makes signs of relenting to Thrasyllus’s advances, at first requesting that he wait the customary one year of mourning and, when Thrasyllus is still importunate, finally giving in and saying he can come to her one evening, her maid will give him entrance to the house and then lead him up to her bedroom where etc etc.

In the event the maid lets him in but claims Charite is a little delayed sitting up with her father and plies him with drink. The drink is, of course, laced with sleeping potion. As soon as Thrasyllus has passed out sprawling on the floor the maid calls Charite who stands over the unconscious body and delivers a page-long speech of revenge before stabbing his eyes with a hair pin.

As Thrasyllus groggily comes round to start screaming in horror, Charite runs off to the tomb of her beloved murdered husband, followed by the family and retainers, all woken by Thrasyllus’s cries, turns and keeps them all at bay waving a sword, explains the full story and her revenge on her husband’s murderer before turning her sword on herself and stabbing herself. Thrasyllus makes his way to the tomb, seals himself in and starves himself to death.

Well. That’s not very funny or spiritually uplifting.

All the slaves and retainers worry about what a change of ownership of the house and its land will mean for them so they decide, rather abruptly, to leave. They all packs their wives and belongings onto horses and donkeys and so Lucius’s imminent threat of castration disappears. Instead he finds himself bearing the wife of the chief herdsman as part of a big caravan which sets off towards the mountains.

Inhabitants of a village they come to try to discourage them from continuing as the countryside around is terrorised by huge wolves, hence the bodies of half eaten cattle and humans. The caravan decides to push on but encounter a second problem, for the next village they come to think, from their size, that they are bandits and so mount an attack on them, first setting ferocious dogs on them and then blasting them with stones. Between them these cause a lot of injuries before the herders shout out that they are not bandits and the barrage ceases.

On the caravan proceeds. A goatherd on a hilltop asks them if they know where they are, then turns and leaves. Worried the caravan continues but then a white-haired old man emerges asking if someone can come and help him rescue his grandson from a crevice in the ground which he’s fallen into. One of the strongest of the caravan volunteers and goes off with the old man. Hours pass and the caravan, rested and refreshed, mounts up to leave but the young man doesn’t reply to their cries. Finally some of the men go off and minutes later run back, saying they found the body of their comrade half-eaten with a giant serpent looming over it (8.21). They ride off in a hurry.

They press on to the next village and stop for the night. Here, of course, they hear another shocking story, a real atrocity.

Next day they continue on to a big famous city where the caravan decide to stop and settle. They feed up all the livestock for three days then take them to market. Here there is a comic scene of an auction. Lucius bites the hands of prospective buyers and generally behaves badly but is nonetheless sold off to one Philebus, one of the tribe who bear images of the Syrian goddess (Atargatis) around the street.

Lucius is taken back to a household which is exclusively male and queer, with lots of references to mincing queens. There is one heterosexual slave whose job it is to ‘service’ all the queers and he greets Lucius’s arrival saying that now they can take it in turns and he’ll get a welcome break.

Next day the household dress up in florid outfits, put on extravagant makeup and process to the compound of a rich man where they behave like religious fanatics. The inhabitants all pile them with gifts of food and drink and Lucius learns this is how they make their living. That night they repair to the baths, strip and wash, and bring back to the feast a robust peasant who they lie on his back and take it in turns sucking his erection.

Disgusted, Lucius tries to interject but, as we know, can only bray. But his braying brings in a group of young men from a nearby village whose ass has been stolen. So they burst in thinking it’s their ass braying but instead discover a load of painted gays sucking off a peasant lad and dance around jeering at them. Word spreads very fast.

With the result that that very same night, the gang of queers load up their goods and move out. Next day they stop in an isolated spot, tie Lucius to a tree and thrash him for being the cause of their bad luck. Some are for killing him but the others point out the need for a donkey to carry the statue of the goddess and they move on.

They arrive at another big city and make their way to the compound of a rich devotee of the goddess who gives them shelter. Here Lucius has his closest shave with death. One of the tenants brings his master the fat haunch of a stag. The cook hangs it up but a hungry hound snatches it down and disappears with it. When the master asks for his dinner the cook is so petrified he prepares to hang himself, but his wife ridicules him and says the solution is at hand: kill this ass and cook his haunch!

Book 9. The mill – the tale of Arete and Philesitherus

To escape the murderous cook Lucius rushes into the main living quarters, interrupting a sacrificial feast with priests, knocking plates everywhere. They lock him up, thus saving him from immediate death. But then a servant bursts in to say a rabid bitch has broken in and attacked many of the livestock and some of the servants. Again Lucius rushes into a bedroom which the men lock and bar after him. Next morning he demonstrates he is not rabid be enthusiastically drinking a whole bucket of water.

Next day he’s loaded up with the statue of the goddess, as usual, and they set off on their rounds. They come to an inn where they hear the story of the lover in the jar. A married woman had a lover who came round every day when her husband went off to work. One day they’re in bed when the husband unexpectedly returns. The wife hurriedly gets the lover to hide in a large jar in the bedroom. The husband comes in and announces he has sold this very same jar at market and the purchaser is about to arrive to take it away. Quick as a flash the wife replies that she has already sold the very same jar, at a higher price, the the buyer is inside it right now, inspecting it. Which is the cue for the lover to emerge from the jar and complain that he’ll pay the higher price but it’s a bit grubby inside. The husband quickly offers to clean it and they swap places. While the husband cleans the inside of the jar the wife bends over it to supervise him and the lover ‘gives her a good going over’ (9.7). Comedy.

Another comic anecdote is that he watches as the priests devise a prophecy which is so vague and ambiguous that it can be delivered to everyone who asks them any question, which makes it even easier to bilk the populace of their money.

Eventually the caravan of priests moves on but is overtaken by angry horsemen who insist they have stolen the gold cup from a shrine at the city and, indeed, when they search their baggage, they find the offending cup. The priests are taken back to the city and thrown in prison, while Lucius is auctioned off and bought by a local miller. He is taken to his farm and set to turning mills. The other animals are beaten down and worn-out but so are the human staff, mangled and scarred. For the first time Lucius admits that all these travels and adventures showed him sides of life he’d never suspected.

Lucius describes the miller’s wife who makes his life and misery and beats and persecutes Lucius. She has (inevitably) taken a young lover and is helped in her affair by an old crone and pandar. One day he overhears the old crone telling the mistress to drop her weedy timid lover and take fine strapping young Philesitherus. She then tells the convoluted tale of Barbarus and Myrmex.

The tale of Barbarus and Myrmex

Barbarus is a town councillor. His wife, Arete, is up for an affair so Barbarus locks her away and hands the key to his housekeeping slave, Myrmex. Then he goes off on business. Young Philesitherus fancies Arete so he bribes Myrmex with 10 gold pieces. So in the dead of night Myrmex unlocks the door and allows Philesitherus up to Arete’s bedroom where the couple strip off and get to it. Then, with thumping inevitability, Barbarus arrives home unexpectedly, banging on the front door. Myrmex delays long enough for Philesitherus to make his escape then opens to the door to his master who goes up to his bedroom, greets his wife and falls asleep. In the morning Barbarus discovers a pair of sandals he doesn’t recognise under his bed and leaps to the correct conclusion that Myrmex has let him down. So he has Myrmex bound in chains and has him led through the street to the town square loudly accusing him of betraying him and waving the sandals as proof. Philesitherus sees all this and behaves quickwittedly. He pushes through the crowd and starts beating up Myrmex, accusing him of stealing his sandals at the public baths. He is so vehement that Barbarus believes him, returns the sandals to Philesitherus, frees Myrmex and goes home believing his wife is sweet and faithful.

The tale of Philesitherus and the adulterous wife

So that’s the tale the crone tells the wife while Lucius overhears. He then hears her telling her she’ll bring handsome young Philesitherus to her bed which is precisely what she does that evening, while her husband has gone to dinner with a friend. They had barely started nibbling the hors d’oeuvres at the feast she’d arranged when, guess what! her husband comes home unexpectedly and she has to hide Philesitherus under a wooden trough.

When the wife asks why he’s come home so early, the husband replies that he was outraged by the behaviour of his host’s wife and tells the following story:

The tale of the fuller’s wife

when he and his host (a fuller by trade) arrive back at the latter’s house after visiting the baths, the wife was in the middle of ‘making love’ to her lover. In a panic she hides the man under a wickerwork frame which fullers use to clean cloth using sulphur fumes. So the host and hostess and husband sit down for dinner but the poor lover starts to asphyxiate from the sulphur fumes. He sneezes and coughs so much that the suspicious fuller tears off the cloth and reveals the lover half dead. He calls for his sword and is about to cut his throat but the narrator restrains him, worried that he might be charged as an accessory to murder. Instead the fuller throws the half-dead lover into the back alley then returns to excoriate his wife, which is why the narrator abandoned the dinner and returned home unexpectedly early, nearly catching his wife with her lover.

Lucius decides to intervene and tramples on the feet of the lover who’s hiding under the trough who screams out and leaps up and is exposed. Instead of threatening him with prison, the miller is mockingly calm and takes him to his bed, sodomising the poor boy all night long. In the morning he orders him to be strung up and beaten by his slaves then thrown out. Then he divorces his wife and throws her out, too.

The aggrieved wife then hires a witch to take revenge on the wronged miller. The witch turns up one day at the mill and asks the miller into his office for a chat. He is gone a long time and when his workers break down the door they find him hanging from a beam quite dead. He’s taken down, the nine days of mourning are performed and he’s buried.

His married daughter arrives because the miller’s ghost appeared to her in a dream. I was expecting all kinds of revenge, but instead this daughter just breaks up the miller’s estate and sells everything off.

Lucius is sold to a market gardener for 50 sesterces who, for once, is a humane master who uses him to take his produce to market. A year passes, and one winter a traveller passing by, asks for shelter and rest and the poor market gardener gives him both. A few weeks later the passerby invites them back to his farm to enjoy his hospitality. But this is the occasion of a really atrocious story. At this dinner, the host and miller and Lucius witness a series of prodigies, signs and portents. While they’re still marvelling at these news comes that all three of his grown-up sons have been killed in a massacre caused by the vendetta between a rich landowner and a poor man whose land he was trying to seize and who the three brothers tried to defend. When he hears how his three sons have all been killed, the host promptly takes a knife and stabs his own throat till he falls dead across the table. not the most successful dinner party, then.

So the kindly miller mounts Lucius but on the way home they are accosted by a fierce soldier who knocks the miller off Lucius who, he says, is being requisitioned by the army. This leads to a fierce fight in which the miller gets the soldier on the ground and beats him so badly, with fists and rocks, that the soldier eventually shams dead.

At which the miller rides quickly not home but to a nearby town where he asks a friend to hide him till the inevitable fuss has blown over, stashing Lucius in the attic while the miller hides in a big chest.

The soldier regains consciousness and staggers into the same town where he tells colleagues from his regiment about the assault. They put word out and a sneaky neighbour betrays the friend who’s hiding Lucius and the gardener. The soldiers get town magistrates to order a search of the house on the pretext that the gardener has stolen a silver cup (a lie) but a thorough search finds neither ass nor gardener.

Until, that is, Lucius, overcome by his besetting vice of curiosity, peeks out the attic window and is spotted by the soldiers arguing outside. At once they re-enter the house, redouble their search and discover the miller (who is hauled off to gaol) and Lucius.

Book 10. The wicked stepmother, the condemned woman

The soldier who’s now taken possession of Lucius loads him up with military equipment, more to worry potential attackers than for any purpose. They arrive at a town where the soldier reports to his commanding officer.

The tale of the wicked stepmother

Not long afterwards occurs a full-on tragedy. A man marries, has a son, the wife dies. He marries again and this second wife has a son. As the first son grows up the step-mother falls in love with him till she can contain her lust no more and calls him to her room to reveal it. But he is appalled and does everything he can to put her off. Her love turns to hate and she plans to murder him by putting poison in his wine. But unfortunately her own son, much younger, comes home from school one day thirsty, drains the poisoned wine and falls down dead. Unabashed, the stepmother raises a hue and cry and accuses the first son of murdering his younger brother, because she (the stepmother) refused to accede to incestuous lust for her and trying to rape her (for all this, compare the legend of Hippolytus).

So the first son is buried and the father proceeds to bring his first, older son to court. The court scene is described at some length. First the slave in the pay of the stepmother falsely testifies that the older son commissioned him to buy poison, mixed it in the wine and personally gave it to the younger son. The magistrates are just about to condemn the son when a venerable doctor stands and delivers the sensational testimony that this slave in fact came to him to buy poison, but he had the gold he offered sealed with his signet ring against just such a scenario. And when the bag of gold coins is brought from his home it is indeed found to be sealed with the same design as the ring on the slave’s finger. However, even under extreme torture the slave refuses to confess and so the elder son is looking at being convicted when the doctor intervenes for a second time with a grand speech. He explains that he never gave the slave real poison but instead mandragora which only inspires a deep sleep. So they all repair to the family tomb where the bereaved father prises off the coffin lid and…the young son wakes from his sleep and sits up!

He is paraded through the town to general rejoicing, the wicked stepmother is sentenced to perpetual exile and the slave crucified.

The cooks

Meanwhile the soldier who had stolen Lucius is himself sent on some mission by the Emperor, so he sells Lucius on to a pair of brothers, slaves who are expert chefs and pastry cooks. Now commences the happiest part of Lucius’s career as an ass as he learns to scoff all the luxury leftovers they bring back from their master’s feasts. At first they blame each other for these disappearances but then they spy on Lucius eating fine human food which they find so funny they call over their master who nearly splits his sides laughing. In fact he takes to laying his dinner table for the donkey and hands Lucius over to his personal freedman who teaches the donkey a load of human tricks to that Lucius becomes a famous talking point.

Thiasus takes him to Corinth

The master is Thiasus, a very rich man from Corinth who has come to Thessaly to find acts to feature in a three-day gladiatorial show he has engaged to put on in his home town. He hugely indulges Lucius who finds himself well treated and then, part by sea, part by land, Thiasus travels with his big entourage back to Corinth, where Lucius’s reputation as a performing ass has preceded him and he is greeted by crowds. People pay to see him and his keeper makes a fortune selling tickets.

One particular noble woman conceives an actual passion for Lucius (the donkey) and pays his keeper to secure a night of passion with him. This is described in some detail, mostly paying attention to the soft furnishings of the bedroom which is decorated for the event, only at the end describing how the woman in question is not only able but super-willing to accommodate his huge donkey erection. The experience leaves her even more besotted (10.22).

But when his keeper tells the master, Thiasus, about this, he realises a donkey copulating with a woman will make a fabulous turn at the games he’s arranging. Unsurprisingly the noble woman in question refuses to perform as does every other woman they approach, no matter how much they offer to pay. In the event only one woman can be found to fuck a donkey onstage and this is a vile and depraved murderess who is scheduled to be thrown to the wild beasts (and torn apart) anyway. Obviously, we are now given her grim story:

The tale of the condemned woman

A man is married. His wife is pregnant. He goes away on business leaving instructions that if the child is a girl she should be killed. The child is a girl but the mother can’t bring herself to expose it and so gives it to neighbours to grow up. When the girl comes of age, she reveals the secret to her other child, a (married grown-up) son, swearing him to secrecy. This son behaves impeccably, not only keeping the secret but taking this poor girl into his own household. His next move is to marry her (his secret sister) off to a good friend of his who he knows will treat her well.

BUT his wife is jealous of her husband’s affection for the girl, becoming convinced they’re having an affair. She lures the sister to one of their country estates and there has the servants stripped and flogged to reveal the truth and when she insists on the truth, kills her by shoving a red-hot poker between her legs.

The murderous wife keeps the cause a secret and the girl is buried after mourning and lamentation. Then the husband (the good son) sickens with grief. In her jealous rage the wife goes to a famous doctor and tells him to prepare a fatal poison. This is presented to the husband as a cure for his fever and depression but, at the last moment, the badwife suggests in front of everybody that the doctor drink half his own potion to prove it isn’t fatal. He is forced to do so and then tries to get back to his house but the badwife keeps him with the family as they watch the husband drink the poison.

The doctor is finally released and makes it home in time to tell his wife he’s been fatally poisoned and to demand from the badwife payment for two killings. The husband also expires, is mourned and buried etc.

The doctor’s wife calls on the badwife and tells her she knows all and demands payment for two killings. The badwife agrees to the payment but asks for the rest of the poison to deal with certain family matters. The doctor’s widow duly provides it.

The badwife then holds a dinner to which she invites the doctor’s widow and her own small daughter. Now the daughter is set to inherit the husband’s wealth and the doctor’s widow is set to expose her, so the badwife serves them both the poison. The young daughter quickly dies but the widow escapes and makes it to the provincial governor where she reveals the badwife’s list of murders. The badwife is promptly arrested, tried and convicted and sentenced to be thrown to the beasts.

This is the woman who Lucius learns he is to couple with for the entertainment of the crowd in the amphitheatre (10.28).

Opening of the festival: the Judgement of Paris

Chapters 29 to 34 give a very interesting description of the opening acts of the spectacle. This is dancing followed by an extended ballet of the Judgement of Paris, complete with stage set and elaborate pyrotechnics (a fountain of wine). Fascinating account, wonder how much is technically accurate.

Nervous that, once he’s performed and plooked the badwife, he will get caught up in the ‘throwing to the beasts’ part, Lucius the ass very slowly sidles out of the side-stage area where he’s being kept. As soon as he’s out the door he bolts and runs as fast as he can down the coast to a town named Cenchreae. Here he finds a soft sandy hollow and, as the sun sets, falls asleep.

Book 11. The vision of Isis, the rites, initiation

Finally Lucius decides to call on the gods for help. It’s around midnight when he walks into the sea and dunks his head seven times in respect and then makes a long, impressive plea to the great goddess, under all the names she uses in all the cultures of the ancient world.

Back on the beach he falls asleep again and in his sleep comes to him a great vision of The Goddess, beautifully described. She explains she has many names but her true identity is Isis. She explains that the next day will see a festival in her honour with many priests and acolytes and devotees. The priests will carry garlands of roses. Gently approach one and eat the roses and he will be changed back into a human. Lucius wakes from his dream (11.7).

Next day he goes into town and sees the procession which is lovingly described, with men in all manner of outfits, some dressed as gods, and all kinds of musical instruments. Everything falls out as the goddess foretold and the ass gently eats the rose petals which the priest holds out to him and is transformed back into human shape (11.13). An acolyte gives him a cloak to hide his nakedness and then the priest addresses him, saying he has been buffeted by Fortune, fell because of his submission to ‘servile pleasure’ and ‘ill-starred curiosity’, but now he is redeemed and become one of the Pious.

The main interest of all this for the modern reader is the similarity between the rhetoric of purity and salvation and the rhetoric of Christianity which we are, of course, far more familiar with. (That said, it’s entirely possible that the translator, Kenney, is consciously using Christian phraseology, thus imposing more similarity than there is in the Latin. After all, whatever language do we have to express religious sentiments and ideas than the language of Christianity?) Sentences like:

The keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess and the initiation ceremony took the form of a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace. (11.21)

Everyone in the crowd witnesses this miraculous transformation and Lucius is pointed out by everyone. The procession goes down to the harbour and blesses and names a new ship devoted to Isis which promptly sets sail for Egypt.

Remember that Lucius hails from Corinth. Rumour spreads so that his closest friends and family come running to embrace him, bring him clothes, and celebrate his return after a long mysterious absence.

Now we move on from that particular day to review the weeks that follow. Lucius moves into a house in the grounds of the temple of Isis and devotes himself to her worship day and night. he prepares to become an initiate.

He has to abstain from certain forbidden foods and from sex. He has to learn the rites and rituals. He is mad keen but the high priest tells him patience is a virtue and the goddess will say when. In chapters 23 and 24 he is finally initiated into the cult, experiencing mystical secrets. He is given a special robe, holds symbolic objects, has a headdress. The curtain is pulled back and he is revealed to the crowd as an initiate. Then he delivers a page-long speech hailing Isis as the saviour of the human race.

He sails to Rome where he devotes himself to non-stop worship of Isis at the temple there. After a year he is initiated into the cult of the other Egyptian god, Osiris, having abstained from meat for ten days and had his head shaved. In Rome he makes a modest living in the law courts (as the real-life Apuleius did) and was promised in a dream literary fame (as Apuleius hoped for).

And lastly he undergoes a third initiation at the bidding of Osiris himself and is entered into the college of the Pastophori and enrolled in the order of decurions, and told to continue his successful practice in the law courts and to ignore criticism and ill-wishers. These last sentences seem to apply to Apuleius as much as to his fictional creation and with them, the narrative ends.

Themes and variations

Curiosity killed the cat

Lucius claims descent from the philosopher Plutarch. Savvy readers would have known that Plutarch wrote an essay on curiosity. Curiosity is repeatedly described as the besetting sin of Lucius, ‘an all too eager student of the remarkable and miraculous’ (2.1). And it is, of course, what triggers the central event, his transformation into an ass. When he enters Aunt Byrrhena’s house the first thing he sees is an elaborate statue recording the myth of Diana and Actaeon who was, of course, torn apart by his own hounds as punishment for spying on the naked goddess. I hadn’t really grasped, until I read Kenney’s notes, that curiosity is also the central issue in the myth of Cupid and Psyche who won’t rest content with her husband’s commands but insists in seeing him. The Golden Ass is, from one perspective, an extended treatise on the perils of unchecked curiosity.

The lover in the wardrobe

Lots of the tales are comic tales about infidelity. In several of them the husband returns unexpectedly and the lover in the bedroom is forced to hide in a panic, the lover who hides in a giant jar, Philesitherus escaping from Barbarus. Presumably, like everything else in ancient literature, this trope has a name. It was certainly very, very long-lived. It occurs in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale 1,200 years after Apuleius. I’ve just read a variation in the short story ‘At a Dinner of Atheists’ by Barbey D’Aurevilly, where Mesnilgrand the lover has gone for an assignation with the fair Rosalba when her husband Major Ydow returns home unexpectedly early and Mesnilgrand has to hide in the closet, about 1,600 years after Apuleius. And then London theatreland for decades was dominated by Whitehall farces packed with embarrassed lovers, 1,800 years after. An enduring, apparently timeless comic scenario.

Sex

Coming to this brash ancient text from the timid velleities and self-imposed censorship of 19th century literature (specifically, E.M Forster) was a breath of fresh air. Apuleius considers sexual attraction, desire, lust, whatever you want to call it, a natural part of the human condition, to be described frankly on the same level as all the other physical conditions like cold, hunger, tiredness, humour and so on.

Thus I enjoyed his simple (simplified and idealised) description of Lucius falling in lust with Milo’s servant, Photis, and their numerous happy sexual couplings. (Although he repeatedly refers to her sweet-smelling breasts, it was interesting to note that he thinks the most important attribute in a woman is her hair.)

Without any embarrassment he describes their French kissing, him lifting up his tunic to show her the erection she has prompted; describes them locking his bedroom door, stripping off and setting to. Describes her taking as an enthusiastic part in proceedings as he does, in fact taking the lead. On the very first occasion she straddles him and rides him to exhaustion. On another occasion she presents her bum to him ‘like a boy’ (3.20). (Compare Lucian in his ‘True Histories’, written around the same time, describing the common practice of boys ‘offering their behinds for intercourse’, TH chapter 23.)

Why did it take one thousand six hundred years (from the 170s to the 1970s AD) for this level of simple honest physical description of very obvious and basic acts to be achieved again? What blotted out honesty about human nature for nearly 2,000 years? Christianity.

Kenney’s notes suggest that Photis, from the Greek phos meaning ‘light’, is symbolically named because she is an ignis fatuus, distracting Lucius with sensual pleasure and distracting him away from the True Light, which will is the ‘pure’ and chaste worship of Isis described at the end of the tale.

This is a very familiar binary archetype, familiar from two millennia of Christian moralising and the high-minded pagan moralising (Plato, the Stoics) which preceded it. But what if there is no True Light? What is there is no Jupiter or Isis, no platonic Demiurge, no Stoic Universal Spirit, no Yahweh, no God, no Allah? What if that entire way of thinking about the world is a delusion, established by controlling priesthoods and copied for two thousand years of moralising acolytes who get pleasure and power from bullying anyone who wanted to indulge in simple physical pleasures?

Sex is most often problematic because so many people don’t know how to handle the intense emotions and feelings it gives rise to without resorting to blame or guilt or other negative concepts. So often people have wonderful sex but then mishandle the emotional side of the relationship and then invoke three millennia of priests and moralisers to justify their bad feelings.

But what if D.H. Lawrence was right and sex is a lovely experience two people who care for each other can share and, if handled in an adult way, need entail no ‘guilt’ or ‘sinfulness’ or ‘spiritual loss’ or any recriminations whatsoever?

Law and order

Lucius is continually being warned not to go out anywhere at night, not to set off on journeys alone for fear of bandits; he gets involved in a (farcical) fight with the three robbers at Milo’s door); once transformed into a donkey, he is stolen away from Milo’s house by a large gang of organised robbers. And of course half the central books are about an organised band of robbers whose activities are seen to stretch far and wide, systematically attacking citizens in towns or isolated farmsteads. Lucius’s world – provincial Greece in the 160s or 170s AD – appears to be an extremely lawless one.

At least that’s what Kenney’s notes say. Actually, having read the book, I wonder if it isn’t an elementary error to read what is designed to be an entertainment as if it was social history. If we took the story at face value not only would we think 2nd century Roman provinces were riddled with crime but were also packed with magicians, gods and goddesses, magical transformations and that every marriage included at least one psychopath. But just possibly every element in the story is turned up to maximum exaggeration in order to create an action-packed yarn and doesn’t warrant the heavy freight of social history or moral significance modern critics load it with.

Magic

Most of all, though, it is a book overflowing with references to witches, wizards, magicians and magic. It is set in Thessaly which was, apparently, famous for its magicians, recorded at least as far back as Aristophanes (446 to 386 BC). The first book contains a barely comprehensible farrago about a pair of witches who invade the hotel room of in book 1 and cut the throat and rip out the heart of Socrates who is, despite all this, alive and well the next morning and then magic spells, transformations and witches occur in virtually ever book.

Kenney explains the conventional view that all these manifestations are subsidiary to the Real Religious and philosophical truth which is revealed by the cult of Isis. Magic is a sort of failed religion, failed because 1) it has such petty aims 2) it is so small-minded 3) because it just enmeshes you in more fleshly desires and satisfactions instead of lifting your mind onto a ‘loftier plane’.

Slavery

Finally, nowhere in Kenney’s introduction or notes does he make much of the fact of slavery. The book overflows with slavery, slaves are in every household, ordinary life across the ancient world couldn’t function without millions and millions of slaves performing everyday tasks, working in the house or the fields, in the faraway mines and latifundia which covered Italy and all the Roman provinces.

This is so noticeable to me because I keep going to art exhibitions which bang on and on and on about the wicked iniquity of the Atlantic slave trade, repeating again and again how the systematic enslavement of Africans was one of the worst crimes in history (which it was). But of the equally vast extent of slavery in the ancient world, in ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome and far beyond, for well over 1,000 years?… not a dicky bird, no eyebrows are raised. All the commentary is about magic the idea that the Central Lesson of the book is the need to rise above the temptations of the flesh in order to attain full ‘spiritual awareness’. Easy to fritter away your life pondering ‘higher spiritual planes’ when you’re not a slave, banned from being in a relationship, from having children, liable to arbitrary physical punishment up to and including branding and crucifixion.

Violence

Above all, this welter of learned criticism and scholarship, with its careful account of genres and artful literariness, dissecting the recurring theme of metamorphoses, analysing subtle distinctions in the text between Fate and Fortune and so on, the tributes to the story’s ‘sheer exuberance’ and ‘spiritual illumination’, ‘the most continuously and accessibly amusing book that has come down to us from classical antiquity’ –all this fine talk tends to gloss over the fact that it is a very, very, very violent and bloodthirsty book.

I told my wife it was a famous comic novel from the ancient world and would make ideal bedtime reading, so I began reading book 4 out loud to her, but what I found myself reading out was:

• the description of Lamachus having his hand nailed to a door and then his arm sawn off at the elbow before, in his misery, he asks to be stabbed to death
• Alcimus being pushed out the window to be smashed on the stones below, gushing out blood from his ruptured rib-cage
• then Thrasyleon disguised as a bear being torn to pieces by savage dogs

At which point she asked me to stop because it was going to give her nightmares. Read without the  high-minded blinkers of allegory and Platonic philosophy, it’s neither a philosophical text or a comedy , rather a compendium of really unpleasant, gruesome beatings, tortures, kidnappings, murders and massacres (all of the robbers are murdered in their sleep). There are (as you can see from my summary) many farcical and a handful of genuinely comic moments. But by and large it’s an atrocity exhibition.

A servant, whose master had made him steward of his entire estate, had previously acted as bailiff therefore of the large holding where we had stopped for the night. He was married to a servant in the same household, but burned with love for a freedwoman, who lived outside his master’s estate. Angered by her husband’s disloyalty, the wife set fire to his store-room and all his accounts, destroying both utterly. Not content with this act as revenge for the insult to her marriage, she turned her bitter rage against her own flesh. Tying a rope round her own neck and that of the child she’d just borne her husband, she hurled herself into a deep well, dragging the infant with her. Their master, horrified at their deaths, had the servant, whose infidelity had provoked the dreadful tragedy, arrested, stripped naked and smeared with honey, and tied to a rotting fig-tree inside whose trunk lived a colony of nesting ants that marched in and out in their myriad streams. Detecting the sweet sugary scent on his body, they quickly fastened their tiny jaws in his skin, wounding him deeply with endlessly repeated bites, until after interminable torment, he died. His flesh and his innards were totally consumed and his body stripped to the bare bones which, gleaming a brilliant white, were left tied to the tree. (8.22)

The moment when the evil wife in Book 10 kills her entirely innocent sister-in-law by shoving a flaming brand into her vagina was not, in my opinion, very ‘amusing’ or spiritually enlightening at all and there are scores of other equally brutal moments.

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Credit

I read ‘The Golden Ass’ in the English translation by E.J. Kenney which was published by Penguin Books in 1998, then reprinted with revisions in 2004. It is a very good edition, the translation is fluent and pacey and the notes at the end actually tell you things you want to know.

Related links

• The Golden Ass book translated by A. S. Kline (2013)
• Wikipedia article with detailed summary

Related reviews

• My Roman reviews

Posted by Simon on June 21, 2024

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/06/21/the-golden-ass-apuleius/