Just as
man’s emotions were turned inward so was his thought.
man’s emotions were turned inward so was his thought.
Elizabeth Haight - Essays on Greek Romances
St.
Augustine called him a Platonist and he did indeed try to convey Plato’s
ideas to his contemporaries in works on _The God of Socrates_, _Plato
and his Doctrine_ and other lost writings. His fame when he was alive
rested on his oratory and it was so great that he was honored by statues
and made priest of Aesculapius at Carthage. But his undying glory comes
from his novel, the _Metamorphoses_. The date of its composition is
uncertain as indeed are most of the dates of his life. He lived from
about A. D. 125 to A. D. 171, that is, in the time of Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius. He was therefore a contemporary of Lucian and may have
met him as Walter Pater imagines in _Marius the Epicurean_. What
concerns us here is his novel and its relation to the Greek Romances.
The _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is a long story written in eleven books.
It is an ego-romance with Lucius a Greek acting as narrator and hero.
“The plot is simple. The hero Lucius who is greatly interested in
magic is enabled by the aid of the maid-servant of a witch to achieve
transformation. But a mistake in the use of the unguents changes him
not into a bird as he had planned, but into an ass. Although he knows
that the antidote is a meal of roses, he is kept by Fortune from
securing release through long months and meets various adventures
until at last through the aid of the goddess Isis Lucius the Ass
becomes again Lucius the Man. ”[366]
The similarity of this plot to that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_ is
apparent at once. But its unique differences caused by diversification
of anecdotes and long additions become clear as we read the narrative.
Lucius in the beginning was travelling in Thessaly riding his white
horse over the high mountains when he fell in with two other travellers.
One of these as they rode on together related a horrible story of how
his friend Socrates saw a companion murdered by a witch. The scene of
the story was set in Hypata, the very city to which Lucius was going.
And the narrative of it by its effect on Lucius reveals all his
credulity and curiosity about witchcraft.
Lucius was entertained at the house of Milo to whom he brought a letter
of introduction and soon he learned from a relative in Hypata, named
Byrrhaena, that Milo’s wife Pamphile was a witch. Hypata was full of
stories of marvellous happenings and soon Lucius heard another of these
thrillers at a dinner-party given by Byrrhaena. It was the story told by
a guest Tlelyphron of how he watched a corpse for pay and thereby
suffered mutilation of his face by a foul beldam. It was on the way home
from the party that Lucius, jittery and drunk, fought his fatal battle
with three bold robbers who afterwards, at his trial for murder at the
Festival of Risus, god of laughter, were proved to be wine-skins!
Now Lucius was determined to investigate magic rites by personal
experience so he made ardent love to Pamphile’s servant Fotis until the
enamored girl consented to let him peer through a crack in the door of
Pamphile’s bed-room and see her mistress transform herself into an owl.
This marvel witnessed, nothing would satisfy Lucius but to attempt a
similar transformation. Unfortunately Fotis gave him the wrong unguent
for the necessary lubrication of his body and he became not a bird, but
an ass! The careless maid swore that the antidote was simple, merely a
meal of roses, and if he would quietly spend the night in the stable, in
the morning she would bring him a breakfast of the flowers.
Unfortunately before dawn robbers arrived, pillaged the house and stole,
along with Lucius’ own horse and Milo’s ass, Lucius the ass to carry the
plunder. This was the beginning of a long series of adventures for the
man-ass before he could achieve re-transformation.
In the robbers’ hide-out in the mountains Lucius heard the robbers tell
three fine stories of their brave chieftains. There too he saw a band of
robbers bring in a captive beauty Charite and heard her piteous tale of
how she was kidnapped on her wedding-night for ransom. To cheer this
weeping girl the old woman who cooked for the robbers told in their
absence the story of Cupid and Psyche.
An old wives’ tale she called it, but Apuleius lifted the folk-tale to
the realm of the Olympian gods by making it the love romance of Venus’
son Cupid and Psyche, a mortal maid. Venus herself was the cruel
step-mother who tried to separate the lovers and set all sorts of
impossible tasks for Psyche. But the heroine triumphed over every task
by the aid of Cupid’s minions on earth and in air. Finally the king of
heaven, Jupiter himself, called Psyche to his high throne to receive the
gift of immortality and summoned all the great gods and goddesses to
celebrate her nuptials with the god of love himself.
This happy love romance diverted Charite only briefly, but soon her
lover disguised as a robber came and rescued her and after causing the
destruction of all the robber band carried her away with Lucius to
safety. Charite’s story, however, unlike Psyche’s was not to end
happily. For after her marriage to her Tlepolemus, a former suitor
Thrasyllus because of jealousy made way with her husband in a boar hunt,
pretending his death was an accident. Later when the villain was making
ardent love to the widow, the shade of her husband appeared and
recounted his murder at the hands of his friend. Charite by subtle plans
was able to put out Thrasyllus’ eyes for vengeance and then stabbed
herself over her husband’s tomb. Thrasyllus in repentance starved
himself to death.
Lucius the Ass again left to the mercy of Fortune had a series of
degrading adventures which tended to make him a pessimist. He witnessed
the obscene orgies of a lewd band of Syrian priests. He heard four
naughty Milesian Tales of corrupt women: “The Lover under the Tub,” “The
Baker’s Wife,” “The Sandals under the Bed,” “The Fuller’s Wife. ” These
Milesian Tales of triangular sex episodes are succeeded in the novel by
another group of tragic stories which stir deeper waters. The first is a
record of the terrible oppression of the poor by an arrogant young
nobleman and how three fine young brothers who went to the defense of
the poor family lost their lives in a noble cause. Then follows a tragic
story of an amorous step-mother and her attempt to poison her
unresponsive step-son. And finally comes the awful narrative of five
murders committed by one sadistic woman. Book Ten concludes with the
plan to display Lucius the ass in obscene union with this condemned
criminal at a public exhibition. To avoid this horror, Lucius ran away
from Corinth to the sea-shore at Cenchreae and there found his
salvation.
For lying asleep on the sea-shore that night he had a vision in the
moonlight of the goddess Isis. In all her refulgent beauty she told him
of herself and gave him hope. For she assured him that at the spring
festival of the launching of her sacred vessel she would give him
certain aid. And indeed it was at that festival in the midst of all its
brilliant pageantry that the priest of Isis offered the ass a garland of
roses and munching them he became man again. No wonder that after that
Lucius had only one desire: to serve his savior.
Night after night he had new visions of the goddess and under the
direction of her priest he fulfilled all the arduous preparations for
the initiation into her rites. Finally one night left alone in her
temple he was vouchsafed that mystic experience which only the elect may
achieve, death, rebirth, revelation.
“I approached the borderland of death, trod the threshold of
Proserpina, was borne through all the elements and returned; at
midnight I saw the sun shining with a brilliant light; I approached
the gods of the nether and the upper world and adored them in person
near at hand. ”[367]
After such exaltation Lucius consecrated himself forever to the service
of Isis. Soon going to Rome he continued his worship at her temple there
and by her direction was twice initiated into the mysteries of the god
Osiris though the expense was great for “this poor man of Madaura. ”
Under the blessing of Osiris he prospered greatly as an advocate in the
Roman Forum and finally under the god’s direction he was allowed to
become one of the Pastophores or high-priests of the cult. So ends his
metamorphosis and the novel.
Let us now return to the beginning. In the first chapter Apuleius
announced that he is telling a Greek story. The main outline of his plot
is indeed identical with that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, which as we
have seen, is an epitome of the Greek _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian.
Apuleius’ novel is clearly later than Lucian’s because of rich and
notable additions to the plot of the epitome _Lucius or Ass_. These
additions are Milesian Tales, the Cupid and Psyche story and the great
eleventh book portraying the worship of Isis, who redeemed Lucius from
ass to human shape.
The change in the tone of telling the whole story is significant for
while the earthy character of the original folk-tale occasionally
appears and there are recurrent glimpses of Lucianic wit and satire,
Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ is neither a comic romance nor a satire as
Lucian’s clearly was. Apuleius wrote a serious novel, a sort of
Pilgrim’s Progress of the Ass-Man in his quest for knowledge of marvels.
Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleius
exalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for the
spiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in his
story, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception of
the relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom is
lifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally the
retransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wrought
out by the mystic worship of Isis.
The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced by
the fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author,
implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of author
to reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with “the
poor man of Madaura” so that the whole narrative becomes personal
experience. This fact involves another difference from the structure of
the Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahl
points out,[368] is a “closed” one: in the misfortunes which threaten
the lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to each
other and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of the
action is “closed,” for it is a great cycle in the life of the hero
which places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. The
action in Apuleius is “open,” for the hero is bound and pledged to
nothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does not
need to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to a
test or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but there
is no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual as
corporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And in
profound despair he must beg divine aid.
It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typical
pattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines as
Riefstahl does. [369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius’ main
plot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances in
being a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius’
novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances in
structure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in the
inset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young lovers
unhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greater
goddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of the
pair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus the
conventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author’s
philosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch of
Platonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche,
and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals may
such perfect happiness be won forever.
From this account of Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ it is already clear that
his great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Its
closest parallel is in the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, for the bare outline
of the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. But
all recent research tends to prove that Lucian’s original
_Metamorphoses_ was satiric in character, therefore very different in
tone from Apuleius’ serious work. So although they share the
characteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and of
robbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of the
two romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized by
Apuleius’ two longest and most startling additions to the plot, the
love-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis.
Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupid
and Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience and
the Milesian Tales added to the plot of _Lucius or Ass_ carry out this
Fotis-motif of sex and lechery. [370] The one long love-story of human
beings, Charite’s story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady and
her noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone and
ending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek love
romances.
The third great interest in the Greek Romances besides adventure and
love was religion. To this Apuleius gave a new emphasis and a new
importance. In the center of his novel in the inset story of Cupid and
Psyche he pictures the old familiar Olympian gods in their conventional
mythological characters, but as realistically and with as implicit a
satire as Lucian used in his “Dialogues of the Gods. ” Venus is a very
jealous and cruel step-mother. Jupiter is a lusty, amorous, irresistible
king. Cupid is at first undutiful, mischievous and wanton. The story of
Lucius and Isis is, however, a serious story of a great religious
experience. Through prayer, visions, priestly instruction, ceremonials,
initiation and communion Apuleius becomes one with the goddess to whom
he is to devote the rest of his life. The worship of Isis is pictured
spiritually from the depths of experience by Apuleius who according to
his own statements had actually been many times initiated in her
cult. [371]
Throughout these three parts of Apuleius’ novel with their successive
emphasis on adventure, love and religion, virtually all the conventional
devices of the Greek Romances are employed. In the stories of adventure
there are rapidly shifting scenes, though in a more limited spatial
area. The Greek love romances lie according to the time of their action
in the geography of the colonies of great Greece or within the
boundaries of the hellenistic-oriental world from Byzantium to Egypt,
from Sicily to Babylon. The action is carried out through long sea
voyages, varied with storms and shipwreck. The wide world, the spatial
separations are overcome only through the faithfulness of the lovers.
The Ass-story takes place in narrower compass, in old Greece between
Patrae, Hypata and Corinth. To Lucian’s geographical set Apuleius adds
Rome. In these two versions of the Ass-story all the life of mankind is
represented concretely and in close perspective. The action concerns
little people living in one locality or for purposes of trade taking
short journeys hither and thither on land. [372] Other conventional
devices in Apuleius’ stories of adventure are the introduction as
important characters of robbers and robber chieftains, narratives with
emphasis on external events, descriptions like that of the robbers’
cave.
In the love-story of Charite the interest centers in a lover and his
lass; both are persons in high life, both are faithful. A dream
furnishes an apparition of the dead husband. But the villainy of a
treacherous friend makes the story a tragedy involving murder and
suicide. The story of Cupid and Psyche, true to the type of the Greek
love romance, starts with a religious beginning, the worship of a mortal
girl Psyche as the goddess of love; is motivated by a Greek oracle;
describes at length the proving of the heroine in tasks imposed by the
will of an unfriendly deity; depicts Psyche’s apparent sleep of death;
and finally consummates a happy ending for the lovers through a saving
god, who is Cupid the hero himself. A pastoral note which affiliates the
story with _Daphnis and Chloe_ is introduced by the presence of the
friendly god Pan, who acts as a wise old adviser and comforter to Psyche
in her great despair. And the conventional use of _excursus_ creates a
new pictorial character in brilliant descriptions of Venus charioted
over the sea, of the Palace of Cupid, of Cupid asleep, of the wedding
banquet of the lovers.
In the story of Lucius and Isis in Book Eleven, many of the conventional
devices of the Greek Romances appear: dreams, epiphanies, religious
festivals, a _dea ex machina_. So in Chariton Aphrodite and Fortune
contend for the control of the lovers; in Xenophon of Ephesus Artemis
and Isis are the two saving goddesses; in Heliodorus Apollo and Isis are
prominent though the philosophies of the Gymnosophists and of the
Neo-Pythagoreans have a share in the plot; in Achilles Tatius Artemis
reigns supreme; in Longus Pan and the Nymphs guide the destinies of the
young lovers. The difference in Apuleius is that the whole quest of the
hero is for some meaning in life and when magic, adventure, mythology
and human amours can not supply it, he finds through conversion a union
with a mystic goddess who sublimates his emotion and absorbs his life
into her service.
The greater subjectivity of the Apuleius’ romance as compared to the
Greek Romances is attained by the aloneness of the hero, his quest and
its implicit meaning, his individual satisfaction. This subjectivity is
intensified by the complete adoption of the ego-narrative. Far more
attention is paid by Apuleius than by the Greek romancers to the
narrator and to his point of view in telling the whole romance. Achilles
Tatius was afterwards to attempt the use of this device of narration in
the first person, but he soon lost sight of the narrator in the
narrative and even at the end he never let him reappear. Lucian adopted
completely the _ich-roman_ form, but, as far as can be known, without
rich characterization of the teller. Apuleius uses to the full the
advantage of having a man-ass as narrator, for his composite hero has a
duplex view-point of man and animal and displays a double humor, of man
and beast. All this keeps the hero-narrator before our eyes and we
become ever more and more interested in the effect of the events
narrated on his inner life and on his final solution of life.
Riefstahl points out that in the Greek love romances there is some
striving after subjectivity in the presentation of external events. The
possibility of expression is not yet rich, but by soliloquies, by
descriptions of emotions, by reflections on events expressed in γνῶµαι
the romancers are working from objective to subjective presentation of
their material. The soul is treated as an individual entity separated
from the body and contrasted to it. On this foundation in the love
romances rests the inner structural arch of spatial separation and
spiritual fidelity. The relation of the objective and the subjective
creates somehow the scale on which all these romances take their place.
The love romances are at the objective end of the scale, the older ones
particularly, dynamic events holding writer and reader spell-bound. In
Longus a peaceful atmosphere is created because there are few exciting
events, little travel, only the study of the development of love in two
adolescents in a quiet pastoral setting, but the expression is not
adequate. Longus senses the dual conception of Eros, in man and in
nature, for the love of the two young shepherds is set in the teeming,
growing life of the outer world, but he does not develop fully this
subtle implication. Achilles Tatius inclines toward the subjective
direction through his attempted use of the ego-narrative. But the
fullest subjective treatment is found in Apuleius. In Achilles Tatius as
in Apuleius, the aim of the hero is a µυστήριον but with him it is the
µυστήριον of love; in Apuleius it is the _sacrorum arcana_. [373] The
powerful cosmic force of love appears only in Apuleius and there it is
embodied in the personality of Isis. The goddess describes herself to
Lucius as “the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of
all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers
divine, queen of all that are in hell, the principal of them that dwell
in heaven, manifested above and under one form of all the gods and
goddesses. ”[374]
The whole story of Apuleius pictures, according to Riefstahl, the
striving of the individual towards the All. The cosmic Eros has taken
the place of the ancient Greek Eros, who was a terrible power, often
identified with the blind, cruel Τύχη. To this cosmic Eros Apuleius has
given the name of Isis. [375] Riefstahl to be sure pushes too far his
theory of an underlying philosophical content in Apuleius, representing
the romance “as an artistic unit . . . and as an issue of the writer’s
intellectual interests and personality,” “ein künstlerisch gestaltetes
Anschauungsbild der existenziellen Lebensgrundlage des
Neuplatonismus. ”[376] Yet he does point out astutely the fundamental
difference in Apuleius which makes his _Metamorphoses_ another distinct
type of romance, the subjective philosophical.
A word now in retrospect. By the end of the second century A. D. , this
new genre of literature, the romance, had developed to full stature.
Already besides the author of the Ninus romance, Chariton, Lucian and
Apuleius had written their stories, and perhaps also Xenophon of
Ephesus. The different types of romance were already established: the
historical romance, the love romance with its secondary interests of
adventure and religion, satirical romance, the subjective philosophical
romance. The pastoral was soon to be added. That is, in the second
century of our era, a new type of literature was created, a type which
was to be the most popular in the modern world. [377]
It is strange to find that so distinguished and perceptive an historian
as Rostovtzeff in his histories of Rome does not recognize the
significance for the early empire of this new literary form. In
describing the second century, he writes:[378]
“Except for the troubled reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire
under the Antonines enjoyed profound peace, broken only by distant
wars on the frontier. Within the empire life appeared to be, as it had
been in the first century, a steady forward movement for the diffusion
and enrichment of civilization. The creative power of Rome seemed to
have reached its zenith. There was, however, one disquieting symptom:
after the brilliant age of the Flavians we note an almost complete
sterility in literature and art. After Tacitus, and after the artists
who worked for Trajan . . . the decades that followed failed to produce
a single great writer or a single notable monument of art. . . .
“Even before the time of war and pestilence in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, we mark in the whole of intellectual life not merely a pause
but even a backward movement. The only exception is a revival of Greek
rhetorical prose, perfect in form but monotonous in substance. Its
chief representative is the sophist and rhetorician, Aristides, and
his best work is his _Panegyric_ on Rome. The _Dialogues_ of Lucian
are witty and interesting; he was a sceptic and a humorist who mocked
all ideals both new and old. In the West there are only two names to
be quoted, that of the satirist Juvenal, a gloomy and bitter observer
of the dark side of human life, and that of Pliny the Younger, a
shallow orator and a brilliant representative of the epistolary style.
The rest both in Greece and in Italy are writers of handbooks,
text-books, and of miscellaneous collections of entertaining stories
for the amusement and instruction of the reader. ”
Rostovtzeff’s omission of all reference to the Greek Romances (even to
Lucian’s) and to Apuleius shows how completely they have been
disregarded. Yet for a picture of the social life of the second and the
third centuries and of the psychology of the men of the time the Greek
Romances and Apuleius are a revelation.
The Roman empire had checked both political activity and oratory, indeed
the orator had been succeeded by the rhetor in Greece and Rome. In the
unified Mediterranean world trade had developed greatly and travellers
had followed traders from one country to another, among them the
lecturing sophists. The new lands visited had their curiosities and
splendors so travellers’ tales multiplied with descriptions often worthy
of a natural history. Men, diverted from the aims of personal ambition
which military conquest or a democratic state had afforded, now sought
release and excitement in the personal relations. Women achieved a new
freedom and a new importance. The emotional life came to have a new
interest and this led to the development of the prose romance.
From the east came, with rich material resources, a wealth of new ideas,
a mingling of superstition, magic, religion and philosophy.
Just as
man’s emotions were turned inward so was his thought. The greatest new
adventure became the quest for a solution of life itself. The romances
of the early empire whatever their type reflect the age: its craving for
excitement, its desire for adventure, its dread of brigands, its
curiosity about the new, its interest in art, its wish for fulfillment
of emotion in romantic love, its awareness of unsolved mysteries in man
and the universe. With even the partial re-dating of the Greek Romances
all sorts of subjects open up for investigation such as the apparatus of
religion in the use of oracles, dreams, epiphanies; the interest in
works of art; the new position of women. At any time in the future new
fragments of romances may be discovered, or new dating of some of the
old ones may be made possible. But even now while archaeological
discoveries are suspended and publication of new editions is delayed, we
may read and re-read these amazing old stories and see what escape
literature was in the second and third centuries. The Greek Romances
have much to tell us of the psychology of their authors, their
characters, and their readers. They have a deep human value.
“Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
Augustine called him a Platonist and he did indeed try to convey Plato’s
ideas to his contemporaries in works on _The God of Socrates_, _Plato
and his Doctrine_ and other lost writings. His fame when he was alive
rested on his oratory and it was so great that he was honored by statues
and made priest of Aesculapius at Carthage. But his undying glory comes
from his novel, the _Metamorphoses_. The date of its composition is
uncertain as indeed are most of the dates of his life. He lived from
about A. D. 125 to A. D. 171, that is, in the time of Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius. He was therefore a contemporary of Lucian and may have
met him as Walter Pater imagines in _Marius the Epicurean_. What
concerns us here is his novel and its relation to the Greek Romances.
The _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius is a long story written in eleven books.
It is an ego-romance with Lucius a Greek acting as narrator and hero.
“The plot is simple. The hero Lucius who is greatly interested in
magic is enabled by the aid of the maid-servant of a witch to achieve
transformation. But a mistake in the use of the unguents changes him
not into a bird as he had planned, but into an ass. Although he knows
that the antidote is a meal of roses, he is kept by Fortune from
securing release through long months and meets various adventures
until at last through the aid of the goddess Isis Lucius the Ass
becomes again Lucius the Man. ”[366]
The similarity of this plot to that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_ is
apparent at once. But its unique differences caused by diversification
of anecdotes and long additions become clear as we read the narrative.
Lucius in the beginning was travelling in Thessaly riding his white
horse over the high mountains when he fell in with two other travellers.
One of these as they rode on together related a horrible story of how
his friend Socrates saw a companion murdered by a witch. The scene of
the story was set in Hypata, the very city to which Lucius was going.
And the narrative of it by its effect on Lucius reveals all his
credulity and curiosity about witchcraft.
Lucius was entertained at the house of Milo to whom he brought a letter
of introduction and soon he learned from a relative in Hypata, named
Byrrhaena, that Milo’s wife Pamphile was a witch. Hypata was full of
stories of marvellous happenings and soon Lucius heard another of these
thrillers at a dinner-party given by Byrrhaena. It was the story told by
a guest Tlelyphron of how he watched a corpse for pay and thereby
suffered mutilation of his face by a foul beldam. It was on the way home
from the party that Lucius, jittery and drunk, fought his fatal battle
with three bold robbers who afterwards, at his trial for murder at the
Festival of Risus, god of laughter, were proved to be wine-skins!
Now Lucius was determined to investigate magic rites by personal
experience so he made ardent love to Pamphile’s servant Fotis until the
enamored girl consented to let him peer through a crack in the door of
Pamphile’s bed-room and see her mistress transform herself into an owl.
This marvel witnessed, nothing would satisfy Lucius but to attempt a
similar transformation. Unfortunately Fotis gave him the wrong unguent
for the necessary lubrication of his body and he became not a bird, but
an ass! The careless maid swore that the antidote was simple, merely a
meal of roses, and if he would quietly spend the night in the stable, in
the morning she would bring him a breakfast of the flowers.
Unfortunately before dawn robbers arrived, pillaged the house and stole,
along with Lucius’ own horse and Milo’s ass, Lucius the ass to carry the
plunder. This was the beginning of a long series of adventures for the
man-ass before he could achieve re-transformation.
In the robbers’ hide-out in the mountains Lucius heard the robbers tell
three fine stories of their brave chieftains. There too he saw a band of
robbers bring in a captive beauty Charite and heard her piteous tale of
how she was kidnapped on her wedding-night for ransom. To cheer this
weeping girl the old woman who cooked for the robbers told in their
absence the story of Cupid and Psyche.
An old wives’ tale she called it, but Apuleius lifted the folk-tale to
the realm of the Olympian gods by making it the love romance of Venus’
son Cupid and Psyche, a mortal maid. Venus herself was the cruel
step-mother who tried to separate the lovers and set all sorts of
impossible tasks for Psyche. But the heroine triumphed over every task
by the aid of Cupid’s minions on earth and in air. Finally the king of
heaven, Jupiter himself, called Psyche to his high throne to receive the
gift of immortality and summoned all the great gods and goddesses to
celebrate her nuptials with the god of love himself.
This happy love romance diverted Charite only briefly, but soon her
lover disguised as a robber came and rescued her and after causing the
destruction of all the robber band carried her away with Lucius to
safety. Charite’s story, however, unlike Psyche’s was not to end
happily. For after her marriage to her Tlepolemus, a former suitor
Thrasyllus because of jealousy made way with her husband in a boar hunt,
pretending his death was an accident. Later when the villain was making
ardent love to the widow, the shade of her husband appeared and
recounted his murder at the hands of his friend. Charite by subtle plans
was able to put out Thrasyllus’ eyes for vengeance and then stabbed
herself over her husband’s tomb. Thrasyllus in repentance starved
himself to death.
Lucius the Ass again left to the mercy of Fortune had a series of
degrading adventures which tended to make him a pessimist. He witnessed
the obscene orgies of a lewd band of Syrian priests. He heard four
naughty Milesian Tales of corrupt women: “The Lover under the Tub,” “The
Baker’s Wife,” “The Sandals under the Bed,” “The Fuller’s Wife. ” These
Milesian Tales of triangular sex episodes are succeeded in the novel by
another group of tragic stories which stir deeper waters. The first is a
record of the terrible oppression of the poor by an arrogant young
nobleman and how three fine young brothers who went to the defense of
the poor family lost their lives in a noble cause. Then follows a tragic
story of an amorous step-mother and her attempt to poison her
unresponsive step-son. And finally comes the awful narrative of five
murders committed by one sadistic woman. Book Ten concludes with the
plan to display Lucius the ass in obscene union with this condemned
criminal at a public exhibition. To avoid this horror, Lucius ran away
from Corinth to the sea-shore at Cenchreae and there found his
salvation.
For lying asleep on the sea-shore that night he had a vision in the
moonlight of the goddess Isis. In all her refulgent beauty she told him
of herself and gave him hope. For she assured him that at the spring
festival of the launching of her sacred vessel she would give him
certain aid. And indeed it was at that festival in the midst of all its
brilliant pageantry that the priest of Isis offered the ass a garland of
roses and munching them he became man again. No wonder that after that
Lucius had only one desire: to serve his savior.
Night after night he had new visions of the goddess and under the
direction of her priest he fulfilled all the arduous preparations for
the initiation into her rites. Finally one night left alone in her
temple he was vouchsafed that mystic experience which only the elect may
achieve, death, rebirth, revelation.
“I approached the borderland of death, trod the threshold of
Proserpina, was borne through all the elements and returned; at
midnight I saw the sun shining with a brilliant light; I approached
the gods of the nether and the upper world and adored them in person
near at hand. ”[367]
After such exaltation Lucius consecrated himself forever to the service
of Isis. Soon going to Rome he continued his worship at her temple there
and by her direction was twice initiated into the mysteries of the god
Osiris though the expense was great for “this poor man of Madaura. ”
Under the blessing of Osiris he prospered greatly as an advocate in the
Roman Forum and finally under the god’s direction he was allowed to
become one of the Pastophores or high-priests of the cult. So ends his
metamorphosis and the novel.
Let us now return to the beginning. In the first chapter Apuleius
announced that he is telling a Greek story. The main outline of his plot
is indeed identical with that of the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, which as we
have seen, is an epitome of the Greek _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian.
Apuleius’ novel is clearly later than Lucian’s because of rich and
notable additions to the plot of the epitome _Lucius or Ass_. These
additions are Milesian Tales, the Cupid and Psyche story and the great
eleventh book portraying the worship of Isis, who redeemed Lucius from
ass to human shape.
The change in the tone of telling the whole story is significant for
while the earthy character of the original folk-tale occasionally
appears and there are recurrent glimpses of Lucianic wit and satire,
Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ is neither a comic romance nor a satire as
Lucian’s clearly was. Apuleius wrote a serious novel, a sort of
Pilgrim’s Progress of the Ass-Man in his quest for knowledge of marvels.
Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleius
exalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for the
spiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in his
story, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception of
the relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom is
lifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally the
retransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wrought
out by the mystic worship of Isis.
The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced by
the fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author,
implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of author
to reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with “the
poor man of Madaura” so that the whole narrative becomes personal
experience. This fact involves another difference from the structure of
the Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahl
points out,[368] is a “closed” one: in the misfortunes which threaten
the lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to each
other and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of the
action is “closed,” for it is a great cycle in the life of the hero
which places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. The
action in Apuleius is “open,” for the hero is bound and pledged to
nothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does not
need to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to a
test or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but there
is no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual as
corporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And in
profound despair he must beg divine aid.
It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typical
pattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines as
Riefstahl does. [369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius’ main
plot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances in
being a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius’
novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances in
structure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in the
inset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young lovers
unhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greater
goddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of the
pair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus the
conventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author’s
philosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch of
Platonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche,
and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals may
such perfect happiness be won forever.
From this account of Apuleius’ _Metamorphoses_ it is already clear that
his great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Its
closest parallel is in the Greek _Lucius or Ass_, for the bare outline
of the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. But
all recent research tends to prove that Lucian’s original
_Metamorphoses_ was satiric in character, therefore very different in
tone from Apuleius’ serious work. So although they share the
characteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and of
robbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of the
two romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized by
Apuleius’ two longest and most startling additions to the plot, the
love-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis.
Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupid
and Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience and
the Milesian Tales added to the plot of _Lucius or Ass_ carry out this
Fotis-motif of sex and lechery. [370] The one long love-story of human
beings, Charite’s story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady and
her noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone and
ending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek love
romances.
The third great interest in the Greek Romances besides adventure and
love was religion. To this Apuleius gave a new emphasis and a new
importance. In the center of his novel in the inset story of Cupid and
Psyche he pictures the old familiar Olympian gods in their conventional
mythological characters, but as realistically and with as implicit a
satire as Lucian used in his “Dialogues of the Gods. ” Venus is a very
jealous and cruel step-mother. Jupiter is a lusty, amorous, irresistible
king. Cupid is at first undutiful, mischievous and wanton. The story of
Lucius and Isis is, however, a serious story of a great religious
experience. Through prayer, visions, priestly instruction, ceremonials,
initiation and communion Apuleius becomes one with the goddess to whom
he is to devote the rest of his life. The worship of Isis is pictured
spiritually from the depths of experience by Apuleius who according to
his own statements had actually been many times initiated in her
cult. [371]
Throughout these three parts of Apuleius’ novel with their successive
emphasis on adventure, love and religion, virtually all the conventional
devices of the Greek Romances are employed. In the stories of adventure
there are rapidly shifting scenes, though in a more limited spatial
area. The Greek love romances lie according to the time of their action
in the geography of the colonies of great Greece or within the
boundaries of the hellenistic-oriental world from Byzantium to Egypt,
from Sicily to Babylon. The action is carried out through long sea
voyages, varied with storms and shipwreck. The wide world, the spatial
separations are overcome only through the faithfulness of the lovers.
The Ass-story takes place in narrower compass, in old Greece between
Patrae, Hypata and Corinth. To Lucian’s geographical set Apuleius adds
Rome. In these two versions of the Ass-story all the life of mankind is
represented concretely and in close perspective. The action concerns
little people living in one locality or for purposes of trade taking
short journeys hither and thither on land. [372] Other conventional
devices in Apuleius’ stories of adventure are the introduction as
important characters of robbers and robber chieftains, narratives with
emphasis on external events, descriptions like that of the robbers’
cave.
In the love-story of Charite the interest centers in a lover and his
lass; both are persons in high life, both are faithful. A dream
furnishes an apparition of the dead husband. But the villainy of a
treacherous friend makes the story a tragedy involving murder and
suicide. The story of Cupid and Psyche, true to the type of the Greek
love romance, starts with a religious beginning, the worship of a mortal
girl Psyche as the goddess of love; is motivated by a Greek oracle;
describes at length the proving of the heroine in tasks imposed by the
will of an unfriendly deity; depicts Psyche’s apparent sleep of death;
and finally consummates a happy ending for the lovers through a saving
god, who is Cupid the hero himself. A pastoral note which affiliates the
story with _Daphnis and Chloe_ is introduced by the presence of the
friendly god Pan, who acts as a wise old adviser and comforter to Psyche
in her great despair. And the conventional use of _excursus_ creates a
new pictorial character in brilliant descriptions of Venus charioted
over the sea, of the Palace of Cupid, of Cupid asleep, of the wedding
banquet of the lovers.
In the story of Lucius and Isis in Book Eleven, many of the conventional
devices of the Greek Romances appear: dreams, epiphanies, religious
festivals, a _dea ex machina_. So in Chariton Aphrodite and Fortune
contend for the control of the lovers; in Xenophon of Ephesus Artemis
and Isis are the two saving goddesses; in Heliodorus Apollo and Isis are
prominent though the philosophies of the Gymnosophists and of the
Neo-Pythagoreans have a share in the plot; in Achilles Tatius Artemis
reigns supreme; in Longus Pan and the Nymphs guide the destinies of the
young lovers. The difference in Apuleius is that the whole quest of the
hero is for some meaning in life and when magic, adventure, mythology
and human amours can not supply it, he finds through conversion a union
with a mystic goddess who sublimates his emotion and absorbs his life
into her service.
The greater subjectivity of the Apuleius’ romance as compared to the
Greek Romances is attained by the aloneness of the hero, his quest and
its implicit meaning, his individual satisfaction. This subjectivity is
intensified by the complete adoption of the ego-narrative. Far more
attention is paid by Apuleius than by the Greek romancers to the
narrator and to his point of view in telling the whole romance. Achilles
Tatius was afterwards to attempt the use of this device of narration in
the first person, but he soon lost sight of the narrator in the
narrative and even at the end he never let him reappear. Lucian adopted
completely the _ich-roman_ form, but, as far as can be known, without
rich characterization of the teller. Apuleius uses to the full the
advantage of having a man-ass as narrator, for his composite hero has a
duplex view-point of man and animal and displays a double humor, of man
and beast. All this keeps the hero-narrator before our eyes and we
become ever more and more interested in the effect of the events
narrated on his inner life and on his final solution of life.
Riefstahl points out that in the Greek love romances there is some
striving after subjectivity in the presentation of external events. The
possibility of expression is not yet rich, but by soliloquies, by
descriptions of emotions, by reflections on events expressed in γνῶµαι
the romancers are working from objective to subjective presentation of
their material. The soul is treated as an individual entity separated
from the body and contrasted to it. On this foundation in the love
romances rests the inner structural arch of spatial separation and
spiritual fidelity. The relation of the objective and the subjective
creates somehow the scale on which all these romances take their place.
The love romances are at the objective end of the scale, the older ones
particularly, dynamic events holding writer and reader spell-bound. In
Longus a peaceful atmosphere is created because there are few exciting
events, little travel, only the study of the development of love in two
adolescents in a quiet pastoral setting, but the expression is not
adequate. Longus senses the dual conception of Eros, in man and in
nature, for the love of the two young shepherds is set in the teeming,
growing life of the outer world, but he does not develop fully this
subtle implication. Achilles Tatius inclines toward the subjective
direction through his attempted use of the ego-narrative. But the
fullest subjective treatment is found in Apuleius. In Achilles Tatius as
in Apuleius, the aim of the hero is a µυστήριον but with him it is the
µυστήριον of love; in Apuleius it is the _sacrorum arcana_. [373] The
powerful cosmic force of love appears only in Apuleius and there it is
embodied in the personality of Isis. The goddess describes herself to
Lucius as “the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of
all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers
divine, queen of all that are in hell, the principal of them that dwell
in heaven, manifested above and under one form of all the gods and
goddesses. ”[374]
The whole story of Apuleius pictures, according to Riefstahl, the
striving of the individual towards the All. The cosmic Eros has taken
the place of the ancient Greek Eros, who was a terrible power, often
identified with the blind, cruel Τύχη. To this cosmic Eros Apuleius has
given the name of Isis. [375] Riefstahl to be sure pushes too far his
theory of an underlying philosophical content in Apuleius, representing
the romance “as an artistic unit . . . and as an issue of the writer’s
intellectual interests and personality,” “ein künstlerisch gestaltetes
Anschauungsbild der existenziellen Lebensgrundlage des
Neuplatonismus. ”[376] Yet he does point out astutely the fundamental
difference in Apuleius which makes his _Metamorphoses_ another distinct
type of romance, the subjective philosophical.
A word now in retrospect. By the end of the second century A. D. , this
new genre of literature, the romance, had developed to full stature.
Already besides the author of the Ninus romance, Chariton, Lucian and
Apuleius had written their stories, and perhaps also Xenophon of
Ephesus. The different types of romance were already established: the
historical romance, the love romance with its secondary interests of
adventure and religion, satirical romance, the subjective philosophical
romance. The pastoral was soon to be added. That is, in the second
century of our era, a new type of literature was created, a type which
was to be the most popular in the modern world. [377]
It is strange to find that so distinguished and perceptive an historian
as Rostovtzeff in his histories of Rome does not recognize the
significance for the early empire of this new literary form. In
describing the second century, he writes:[378]
“Except for the troubled reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire
under the Antonines enjoyed profound peace, broken only by distant
wars on the frontier. Within the empire life appeared to be, as it had
been in the first century, a steady forward movement for the diffusion
and enrichment of civilization. The creative power of Rome seemed to
have reached its zenith. There was, however, one disquieting symptom:
after the brilliant age of the Flavians we note an almost complete
sterility in literature and art. After Tacitus, and after the artists
who worked for Trajan . . . the decades that followed failed to produce
a single great writer or a single notable monument of art. . . .
“Even before the time of war and pestilence in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, we mark in the whole of intellectual life not merely a pause
but even a backward movement. The only exception is a revival of Greek
rhetorical prose, perfect in form but monotonous in substance. Its
chief representative is the sophist and rhetorician, Aristides, and
his best work is his _Panegyric_ on Rome. The _Dialogues_ of Lucian
are witty and interesting; he was a sceptic and a humorist who mocked
all ideals both new and old. In the West there are only two names to
be quoted, that of the satirist Juvenal, a gloomy and bitter observer
of the dark side of human life, and that of Pliny the Younger, a
shallow orator and a brilliant representative of the epistolary style.
The rest both in Greece and in Italy are writers of handbooks,
text-books, and of miscellaneous collections of entertaining stories
for the amusement and instruction of the reader. ”
Rostovtzeff’s omission of all reference to the Greek Romances (even to
Lucian’s) and to Apuleius shows how completely they have been
disregarded. Yet for a picture of the social life of the second and the
third centuries and of the psychology of the men of the time the Greek
Romances and Apuleius are a revelation.
The Roman empire had checked both political activity and oratory, indeed
the orator had been succeeded by the rhetor in Greece and Rome. In the
unified Mediterranean world trade had developed greatly and travellers
had followed traders from one country to another, among them the
lecturing sophists. The new lands visited had their curiosities and
splendors so travellers’ tales multiplied with descriptions often worthy
of a natural history. Men, diverted from the aims of personal ambition
which military conquest or a democratic state had afforded, now sought
release and excitement in the personal relations. Women achieved a new
freedom and a new importance. The emotional life came to have a new
interest and this led to the development of the prose romance.
From the east came, with rich material resources, a wealth of new ideas,
a mingling of superstition, magic, religion and philosophy.
Just as
man’s emotions were turned inward so was his thought. The greatest new
adventure became the quest for a solution of life itself. The romances
of the early empire whatever their type reflect the age: its craving for
excitement, its desire for adventure, its dread of brigands, its
curiosity about the new, its interest in art, its wish for fulfillment
of emotion in romantic love, its awareness of unsolved mysteries in man
and the universe. With even the partial re-dating of the Greek Romances
all sorts of subjects open up for investigation such as the apparatus of
religion in the use of oracles, dreams, epiphanies; the interest in
works of art; the new position of women. At any time in the future new
fragments of romances may be discovered, or new dating of some of the
old ones may be made possible. But even now while archaeological
discoveries are suspended and publication of new editions is delayed, we
may read and re-read these amazing old stories and see what escape
literature was in the second and third centuries. The Greek Romances
have much to tell us of the psychology of their authors, their
characters, and their readers. They have a deep human value.
“Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
