The Golden Ass


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The Golden Ass  
Author Apuleius
Country Roman Empire
Language Latin
Genre(s) Picaresque novel
Publisher Various
Publication date Late 2nd century CE
ISBN n/a

The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus)[1], 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 [2]; at the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Maudaurus[3], the hometown of Apuleius himself. The identification of the protagonist as Lucius of Maudorus have led some scholars to posit that the narrator and the author are one and the same person.[4] The plot revolves around the protagonists 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.

Contents

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.[5] 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 Λούκιος ἢ ὄνος (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

Lucius is travelling to Thessaly when he encounters two men on the road. One of them, Aristomenus, relates the tale of how he and his friend Socrates had a run-in with witches which culminated with Socrates' death by organ removal. The second man is skeptical about the truth of the story. Lucius leaves the two men and eventually reaches the city of Hypata where he stays at the house of Milo, a mutual friend through Demeas.

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[6]). 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, but when the three bodies of the murdered men are revealed they have miraculously transformed into bladders. The judges laugh the whole thing off as a trick done by the god Risus. 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 the 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

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:

Let us glance at some of the details of Apuleius' style and it will become clear that English translators have not even tried to preserve and carry over the least tincture of his manner... Take the description of the baker's wife: saeva scaeva virosa ebriosa pervicax pertinax... The nagging clashing effect of the rhymes gives us half the meaning. I quote two well-known versions: 'She was crabbed, cruel, cursed, drunken, obstinate, niggish.' 'She was mischievous, malignant, addicted to men and wine, forward and stubborn.' And here is the most recent one (by R. Graves): 'She was malicious, cruel, spiteful, lecherous, drunken, selfish, obstinate.' Read again the merry and expressive doggerel of Apuleius and it will be seen how little of his vision of life has been transferred into English.

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.[7]

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.[8]

The humorous prose of the earlier books is exchanged for an equally powerful, sometimes quasi-poetic, style that draws upon Lucius' religious experiences.[clarify]

History of the book

In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his own version of the story, as a terza rima poem.

In the 20th century, T. E. Lawrence carried a small copy of The Golden Ass in his saddlebags all through the Arab Revolt. It was Lawrence who first introduced the book to his friend Robert Graves, who later translated the work.

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.

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

  1. ^ St. Augustine, The City of God 18.18.2'
  2. ^ The Golden Ass 1.24
  3. ^ The Golden Ass 11.27
  4. ^ Walsh, P.G. "Lucius Maudaurensis," Phoenix 22.2(1968): 143-157.
  5. ^ S. J. Harrison [2000] (2004). Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, revised paperback, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 9–10. ISBN 0-19-927138-0. 
  6. ^ Apuleius, Lucius; Walsh, P.G. (Trans) (1994). The Golden Ass. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-283888-9
  7. ^ S. J. Harrison (2006). "Some Textual Problems in Apuleius' Metamorphoses", in W. H. Keulen et al.: Lectiones Scrupulosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius' Metamorphoses in Honour of Maaike Zimmerman, Ancient Narrative Supplementum. Groningen: Barkhuis, pp. 59–67. ISBN 90-77922-164. 
  8. ^ Iles Johnson, Sarah, Mysteries, in Ancient Religions pp.104-5, The Belknap Press of Harvard University (2007), ISBN 978-0-674-02548-6

References

  • Apuleius, Lucius; Adlington, William (Trans.) (1996). The Golden Ass. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, Wordsworth Ed. Ltd.: Ware, GB. ISBN 1-85326-460-1
  • Apuleius, Lucius; Lindsay, Jack (Trans.) (1962). The Golden Ass. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20036-9
  • Apuleius, Lucius; Walsh, P.G. (Trans.) (1994). The Golden Ass. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-283888-9
  • Apuleius, Lucius; Relihan, Joel C. (Trans.) (2007). The Golden Ass Or, A Book of Changes Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis. ISBN 978-0-87220-887-2
  • Peter Oswald; The Golden Ass or the Curious Man. Comedy in three parts after the Novel by Lucius Apuleius. Oberon Books: London, GB. 2002. ISBN 1-84002-285-X (first rehearsed with great success at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in 2002)
  • Robert H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The 'Metamorphoses' of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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