Apuleius

Apuleius (ca. 125-185 AD) was a Roman author born in M’Daourouch in Northern Africa (now Algeria), who became a famous orator in Carthage. He wrote several works of philosophy, including several studies of Platonism, some erotic Latin poetry, and many speeches. One of these speeches is his famous Apology, or Self-Defence against the Use of Magic. Apuleius had married a rich widow ten or fifteen years older than him, and her envious relatives accused him of forcing her into the marriage by using illegal love magic. His defence speech, held in Sabratha in Libya in 158/9 AD, is a magnificent rhetorical tour de force, in which Apuleius channels philosophy and literature in his defence, and reveals that he actually knows quite a lot about contemporary magic. He convinced the magistrates and the proconsul that he was innocent.

His most famous, and most influential, work is his novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass. In it the young man Lucius narrates his adventures in Thessaly in Greece, the famous land of the witches. When Lucius hears fantastic stories of Greek witches being able to turn people into animals, or kill them,he hopes to find out more about witchcraft. With the help of a servant girl, Lucius watches a witch transform herself into an owl, and wants to do the same. Unfortunately, the wrong magical ointment turns him into a donkey instead. The servant girl places the now speechless and indignant donkey in the stables and tries to find the antidote, roses. In the meantime, robbers break into the house and steal Lucius, whom they use as a beast of burden. Lucius’ travels as a donkey begin. Black-Beauty-like, he moves from one owner to the next, and he describes Greek society as he sees it, from its underbelly. The novel charts the lives of slaves and the lower classes, from the viewpoint of a well-educated, but still rather foolish, young man who as a donkey can think like a human, but not speak. In the end, Lucius is transformed back into a human being with the help of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who appears to him in a vision after his desperate prayer. The donkey eats roses from the hands of her priest, and instantly turns human again. Lucius becomes Isis’ lifelong devotee and, after initiation into her mystery cult, her priest in Rome.

The novel has many inset tales, which range from the downright bawdy and sexual to the sublime. The longest and most important of them is the story of Cupid and Psyche. It is told to a young girl who was kidnapped by the same robbers who have taken hold of Lucius the donkey, who overhears the tale. Psyche (her name means both “butterfly” and “soul”) is the youngest daughter of Greek royal parents. She is so beautiful that she is worshipped as the goddess of love, Venus. The goddess feels neglected and jealous, and orders her son Cupid to punish Psyche. Instead, Cupid falls in love with the beautiful girl himself. Psyche’s parents are worried that Psyche has no suitors, and consult an oracle about her fate. They are told to expose her on a lonely rock, for a monstrous bridegroom. Mournfully, they do as they are told, but Psyche is gently carried by the winds to a beautiful palace. There her servants are invisible voices, and at night an invisible husband appears. Psyche never sees him, and is ordered never to try to find out his real identity. Psyche agrees, but feels lonely. After many requests, her husband allows her to invite her sisters to visit her. The sisters guess that a god is Psyche’s husband, and jealously poison her mind against him. On their instigation, Psyche lifts a lamp in the middle of the night and finds out that her husband is no other than Cupid, the god of love himself. Cupid wakes up, is furious about her breach of promise, and leaves her. Psyche wanders the earth until she finds Venus, who punishes her and sets her many tasks. Like Cinderella, Psyche has many helpers: ants, eagles and speaking reeds. Her last task is to fetch a box of beauty from the goddess of the dead, Proserpina. Curious, Psyche opens it and falls into a deathlike sleep, from which Cupid finally awakes her. Cupid petitions Jupiter, the king of the gods, for Psyche to be made immortal. Jupiter agrees, and unites the couple in a divine marriage. Venus is reconciled, and in due course a daughter, Pleasure, is born to the couple.