By
ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is
changed not into a bird, but into an ass.
ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is
changed not into a bird, but into an ass.
Elizabeth Haight - Essays on Greek Romances
In his introduction,
he states that his purpose in writing is to furnish to students some
reading that will give relaxation, but at the same time “a little food
for thought. ” The story is bound to charm, Lucian thinks, because of the
novelty of the subject, the humor of the plan, the plausible lying
involved and the comical parodies of such authors as Ctesias, Iambulus,
and Homer in his Odyssey. Lucian confesses to being a liar with the best
of them, but affirms that his lying is unique in being honest because he
admits it.
“Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have
neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others—which, in
fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist.
Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them. ”[322]
In spite of this confession, Lucian here and there in his story tries to
create an atmosphere of veracity by protestations of it. As he never saw
the Corn Sparrow forces or the Crane Knights, he does not venture to
relate the marvellous and incredible stories told about them. [323] When
he describes the magic mirror over a well in the Moon which furnished
him television of his family and country he says that disbelievers by
going there will find he tells the truth. [324] In the Island of the
Wicked, Lucian finds all liars, both those who had told lies on earth or
written them, among the latter Ctesias and Herodotus. “On seeing them,”
he says, “I had good hopes for the future, for I have never told a lie
that I know of. ”[325] The last sentence of the romance is: “What
happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding
books. ”[326] This, a Greek scholiast comments, is the greatest lie of
all!
Now after having seen what a wag Lucian is from his own words, we must
decide how we are going to take him. Are we to seek in him relaxation
and entertainment (the gift of all true romance) or are we going to
marshal our “little learning” to meet his and study all his sources, his
parodies of historians and philosophers, or search for allegories in his
fantastic worlds? The happy way will be along the path of the golden
mean. Gildersleeve put up a sign-board to it and inscribed directions
for future travellers.
“To enjoy the show properly, it is far better for the reader to give
himself up to this play of Lucian’s fancy than to endeavor to unriddle
whatever satire of contemporary literature may lie concealed in its
allegory. . . . There may be profound meaning in the war which breaks out
between the Sunburghers under Phaêthon, and the Moonburghers under
Endymion, which begins with the attempt of the Moonburghers to found a
colony on the desert planet of Lucifer, and which ends with the
victory of the Sunburghers, Lucifer being declared common property and
the vanquished compelled to pay an annual tribute of ten thousand
_amphoreis_ of dew. But so elastic are all such allegories that they
can be stretched to fit anything, and the war of these Heliotes and
Selenites would answer to describe the conflict between orthodoxy and
rationalism, and Lucifer would stand for the coming man. But how much
better to look with childish interest on the marshalling of
Horsevultures and Chickpeashooters and Garlickfighters and
Flea-archers and Wind-runners, and to watch the huge spiders spin
their web from the moon to Lucifer. ”[327]
So after realizing that we too may visit the Isles of the Blessed and
the Wicked, may soar up to Aristophanes’ Cloudcuckooland or dive under
the sea in the brother of Jonah’s whale, or see Sinbad’s roc, let us
begin at the beginning. Let the lights go out and the curtain go up. Let
us watch breathlessly an ancient Walt Disney fantasy rush across the
screen. The very names of countries and peoples add to the excitement as
the panorama unrolls. And so vivid are Lucian’s descriptions that as in
all good movies soon we find ourselves participating in his adventures.
Having set out from the Pillars of Hercules with fifty men on a good
ship, on the eightieth day we come to a wooded island. Here huge
footprints and an inscription reveal that Hercules and Dionysus were
here before us. And no wonder, for this is the Isle of Wines:
grape-vines produce springs of wine, springs feed rivers, rivers produce
fish that eaten make people drunk. And there is a species of vine that
is half grape and half lady like Daphne turning into a laurel and the
kiss of the Vine-woman brings intoxication and her embrace is a prison.
We lost two of our men to that captivity.
As we set sail, a whirlwind lifted the ship and she became a hydroplane,
sailing through the air for seven days and seven nights. The island
where then we landed proved to be the Moon. Endymion is the King so of
course he spoke Greek and we at once joined his forces for he had a war
on with the Men of the Sun, whose King is Phaethon. It was all about
which should colonize the Morning Star. Our fellow Moonites were as
strange as their names: Vulture Knights, Grass Plumes, Pea Shooters,
Garlic Warriors, Flea Bowmen, Wind Aviators, Corn Sparrows and Crane
Knights. And Phaethon’s Heliotes were as fantastic: Ant Knights,
Mosquito Aviators, Dance Aviators, Stalk Mushrooms, Dog-faced Knights,
Cloud Centaurs. A fierce battle we had and the Men of the Sun won
because they cut off light from the Moon so Endymion surrendered. We saw
strange marvels in our stay on the Moon: how men are the child-bearers;
how their clothing is made of glass or bronze; their eyes are removable;
they have a mirror over a well in which they can see what happens in far
distant lands.
As we voyaged onward, we came to many other countries: to the Morning
Star which was just being colonized, to Lamp Town where among the
inhabitants Lucian found his own Lamp which gave him news of home, to
Cloudcuckooland which Aristophanes described so truthfully. But after
such interesting scenes, disaster fell upon us. A monstrous whale bore
down upon us and in a trice swallowed us, ship and all.
When we recovered from our terror, we found that life inside a whale is
confined but not impossible. We discovered an island where we beached
our boat. The whale opened his mouth once an hour so we could mark time
and get the points of the compass. And we soon met other men there, a
Cypriote called Scintharus and his son. Scintharus told us about the
other inhabitants of the whale, who were savage barbarians, and always
ready to attack them. We thought best to join Scintharus in subduing
these enemies, but the fight was fierce for there were scores of these
Lobsters, Crabhands, Tunnyheads, Seagoats, Crawfish Coots and Solefish.
After our victory, we lived fairly well in the whale for a year and
eight months. In the ninth month, we saw through the teeth of our
monster the most terrifying battle, a sea-fight between men riding on
huge islands each of which carried about one hundred and twenty.
In spite of seeing such dangers outside, we decided finally that we must
escape from our prison. We used fire as a weapon, set the forest at the
tail-end aflame and after twelve days found that the whale was going to
die. Just in time we propped open his mouth with huge beams and the next
day when he expired, out we went on our good ship and felt once more the
wind in our sails. Fair weather did not last long. A terrible northern
gale descended and froze all the sea to a depth of six fathoms.
Scintharus, who was now our ship-master, saved us by directing us to
excavate a cave-home in the ice. In it we lived for thirty days,
building a fire and cooking the fish we cut out of the ice. When food
gave out, we dug out the boat and sailed over the ice as though it were
the sea until on the fifth day we came to open water. Now we kept coming
to various islands. We got water at one and at the next one milk, for
this island had grapes whose juice was milk, and its earth was cheese.
It was easy to subsist there! Next we passed the Isle of Cork where the
city is built on a cork foundation and the men have feet of cork so that
they can run over the waters as they will, buoyed up by their own
life-preservers!
Happiest of all our stays was that on the Island of the Blessed. Here it
is always spring. Every month the vines yield grapes and the trees
fruit. It is a land flowing with milk and wine. Glass trees furnish
goblets which fill automatically at the banquet. Baked loaves of bread
are plucked from trees. Beside the table are two springs, one of
laughter, one of joy, and with draughts from these the banqueters start
their revels. Famous men dwell there. I saw Socrates surrounded by fair
young men arguing with Nestor and Palamedes. Plato preferred to live in
his own Republic. The followers of Aristippus and Epicurus were
considered the best of companions, but Diogenes the Cynic had reformed,
married Lais and taken to dancing. The Stoics had not yet arrived for
they were still toiling up the steep hill of virtue. Conversation with
Homer was one of the greatest pleasures, especially as he settled the
matter of his birthplace by declaring himself a Babylonian and solved
the Homeric question by affirming that he had written all the lines
attributed to him. Beside literary talks, there were games for the Dead.
Even the Island of the Blessed could not be free from wars, for the
Wicked invaded it and had to be expelled by force. Homer wrote a new
epic on the fight of the dead heroes. The Island had its scandals too
all due again to Helen. For she bewitched Scintharus’ son and tried to
elope with him, but was caught. That episode caused our expulsion from
the Island of the Blessed. Before we left, Homer wrote a couplet for
Lucian which he had carved on a stele of beryl and Odysseus secretly
gave him a letter for Calypso.
We touched at the Isle of the Wicked and at the Isle of Dreams, where we
slept thirty days and next we put in at Ogygia. Lucian read Odysseus’
letter before he delivered it to Calypso and found he had always
regretted leaving her! For Odysseus’ sake, Calypso entertained us
royally.
Next we fell into danger from the Pumpkin Pirates and the Hardshell
Pirates and the Dolphin-Riders, but we escaped them all. One night we
ran aground on the marvellous and mighty nest of a king-fisher. And a
little further on in the sea we came to a forest of rootless trees which
we could not penetrate. There was nothing to do but haul the ship up to
their tops and take “a forest cruise” across. More marvellous still we
had to cross a water-chasm on a water bridge, a river-way between two
water precipices. After that we came to the Isle of the Bellowing
Bullheads, men like Minotaurs, and had some skirmishes with them. And
then we came to an Island of Fair Ladies who wished to take us to bed
with them, but Lucian discovered that they all had ass-legs and that
they ate strangers when they had cozened them to sleep. So we departed
in haste. At dawn we saw the land which is on the other side of the
world from ours and there we were shipwrecked. What happened there will
be another story.
This review of the two books of Lucian’s _True History_ reveals at once
its startling differences from the other Greek romances of the early
Empire. Romantic love does not figure in it. Religion has little or no
place in it. Adventures are its bones and sinews. These adventures
though described realistically are all figments of the imagination,
explorations of the Wonderful Things beyond Thule as much as those of
Antonius Diogenes must have been. The coloring of the pictures is an
amazing mixture of realism and fantasy. The veracity of sense
impressions almost converts doubting Thomases. Lucian comes to seem no
mean rival of Herodotus, the Father of Lies. Only occasionally some
satiric laughter betrays him.
It is perhaps easier for twentieth century readers to accept his wonders
than it was for his contemporaries of the second century. Science has
developed so many of his imaginative forecasts. The monstrous footprints
of Hercules and Dionysus might be rock-prints of dinosaurs. The plunging
whale is a submarine. His ship lifting from the ocean to sail through
the air has become the hydroplane. His island galleys bearing one
hundred and twenty men each are our battleships. The Cloud Centaurs who
fight in the air are our aviators. Arctic explorers have lived in huts
made of ice-blocks. Ice-sailing is a recognized winter sport. Clothing
is made not of glass or bronze, but of cellulose and steel. Removable
eyes suggest spectacles, contact lenses and field-glasses. The
Cork-footed Men must have resembled surf riders. And the magic mirror
over the well anticipated the perforated sphere of television.
But his contemporaries had the advantage of us in recognizing Lucian’s
sources and parodies more readily than we can. For us, Antonius
Diogenes, Ctesias and Iambulus are lost. Yet Photius records that the
romance of Antonius Diogenes, _The Wonders beyond Thule_, was the chief
source of Lucian’s _True History_. So many, however, are the sources
which Lucian used to forward his avowed purpose of furnishing relaxation
accompanied by some learning, that scholars have busied themselves for
years tracing parallels with Greek and Latin authors. [328] Allinson
remarks wisely: “In general, it seems safe to conclude that Lucian
regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open
quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out
material to imbed, with an artist’s skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic
of his satire. ”[329]
Some idea of Lucian’s parody of his sources may be gained, even though
Antonius Diogenes is lost, from his incidental flings at great Greeks
and from his constant references to Homer which are a mixture of
admiration and irony. So when he saw Cloudcuckooland he remembered
Aristophanes the poet, “a wise and truthful man whose writings are
distrusted without reason. ”[330] On the Island of the Blessed he did not
find Plato for he preferred to live in the city of his imagination under
his own constitution and laws. Yet he might well have been in Elysium
for the inhabitants are most Platonic in sharing their wives. [331] The
solemn treaty which ended the wars between the Men of the Sun and the
Men of the Moon has a comical resemblance to the treaty between Athens
and Sparta which Thucydides records though it is signed by Fireman,
Hotman, and Burner, by Nightman, Moonman and Allbright. [332]
Herodotus comes in for more imitation, for he furnishes stories of ants
bigger than foxes,[333] of dog-headed men,[334] of men who feed on
odors,[335] of a feast of lanterns in Egypt,[336] of a floating
island,[337] of the sea freezing,[338] of a breeze that bears the
perfume of Arabia. [339] But when Lucian solemnly imitates these
exaggerations, we feel he has his tongue in his cheek and our suspicion
is confirmed when he consigns Ctesias and Herodotus to the limbo of
Liars in the Island of the Wicked. [340]
Lucian’s treatment of Homer shows his most genial irony. In his preface
he makes Homer’s Odysseus the guide and teacher of all historians of
imaginary travels, Odysseus “who tells Alcinous and his court about
winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about
animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought
with drugs,” and with such marvels “humbugged the illiterate
Phaeacians. ”[341] But in the Island of the Blessed, Homer is the shade
in whose talk Lucian most delights. Homer indeed is most affable in
discussing all the literary problems of his epics, especially since he
had just won a lawsuit in which Thersites accused him of libel, through
the aid of his lawyer Odysseus. [342] Homer as a shade is still writing
for when there was war in heaven, he produced a new epic about the
battle of the shades of the heroes,[343] which Lucian unfortunately lost
on the way home, and on Lucian’s departure Homer composed a
commemorative epigram which described him as dear to the blessed
gods. [344]
Lucian introduces Homer’s characters into his scenes. Achilles is one of
the most honored heroes on the Island of the Blessed, serving as joint
judge with Theseus at the Games of the Dead. [345] Helen is the leading
lady in the court-room scene where Rhadamanthus had to decide whose wife
she should be in Elysium. She has forgiven Stesichorus for saying she
caused the Trojan War. [346] But she creates a new scandal by trying to
desert Menelaus again in an elopement with Scintharus’ son. [347] Calypso
on receiving Odysseus’ letter from Lucian’s hand weeps as she reads that
he always regretted giving up his life with her, and then with true
feminine curiosity asks how Penelope is looking now and whether she is
as wise as Odysseus used to boast. Lucian made such replies as he
thought would gratify her! [348]
Minor episodes are reminiscent of the Odyssey. Rhadamanthus gives Lucian
a talisman of mallow as Hermes gave Odysseus the moly. [349] To the Land
of Dreams Lucian must erect four gates in place of Homer’s two, one of
horn, one of ivory. [350] And the Singing Sirens that tried to beguile
Odysseus have been metamorphosed into fair young ladies in long chitons
which conceal the legs of she-asses. [351] But whatever changes are made
in the source-material taken from the Odyssey, Lucian’s gentle raillery
does not hide his admiration of great Homer. He gives the lie to the
myth that Homer was blind. [352] And in the contest of the poets at the
Games of the Dead in the Island of the Blessed, he ironically makes
Hesiod the victor though he affirms that in truth Homer was by far the
best of poets.
Lucian’s style in his _True History_ illustrates many of his own
criteria for writing history. The short preface is in proportion to the
short two-book _True History_. The narrative is concise, rapid, lucid
and shows consistent progress, one event following naturally and quickly
upon another without extravagant use of details. The few speeches are
short, lively and suited to the character of the speaker. The
descriptions are realistic and pointed. Extraordinary stories are told
simply with an appearance of veracity.
A few typical elements of the Greek Romances appear in the _True
History_. There is a suggestion of a court-room scene where Rhadamanthus
judges Helen’s accomplices in escape. One letter is inserted, Odysseus’
to Calypso, for the purpose of ironic satire of Homeric characters. An
inscription on bronze is discovered and a laudatory couplet in hexameter
is composed and inscribed on stone. But love and religion, the commonest
themes of the Greek Romances, are eliminated from this tale of
marvellous adventures.
Satire though this story is, it ranks easily first among imaginary
voyagings both in fantasy and style. In his narration Lucian pours all
his spirit, his liveliness of observation, his brilliant imagination,
his vivacious wit. His own enjoyment in his facile, marvellous
inventions is contagious. As he rushes his breathless readers over the
earth, through the air, under the sea, as he introduces us to
innumerable natural phenomena and monstrous beings, he convinces us that
this world of fantasy is a real world. He has made many others wish to
record similar travels, for the _True History_ is the model of all those
imaginary voyages with which Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift,
Voltaire and others amused their contemporaries. No work of Lucian found
so many imitators as this. [353]
The readers of Lucian’s _True History_ on finishing it feel that they
have drunk with him more from his eternal springs of joy and laughter
than from his irony, in fact that his irony gives only a few drops of
angostura bitters to the heady cocktails of his wit. And at the end the
readers of this romance are ready today to salute the shade of Lucian as
Andrew Lang did:[354]
“In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are
you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty,
and the brave? . . .
“There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more
excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds
bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed
come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in
a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon,
where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth
does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned
the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth. ”
It may seem anti-climax to turn from the _True History_ to Lucian’s
other romance, the _Metamorphoses_, for the second exists only in an
epitome by another hand. Since however this epitome is included in all
the best manuscripts and has been proved conclusively by B. E. Perry to
be a condensation of an original _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian on the basis
of spirit, vocabulary, syntax and phraseology, we must try to form some
idea of this other romance. [355]
As the _True History_ is a satire of travellers’ tales, this epitome,
_Lucius or Ass_, is primarily a satire of magic and magic rites. Just as
in the _True History_ not only epic poets and historians were parodied,
but philosophers came in for their share of ironic comment, so in
_Lucius or Ass_ satire is directed not merely against magicians, but
also against corrupt priests and frail women. The satire is of the
earth, earthy, very near the folk-story from which it may have
originated. _Lucius or Ass_ is Everyman in his credulity, gullibility
and bestiality. The only heroines in his murky world are a witch-woman
and a corrupt maid. This epitome has two great values: it gives us some
idea of Lucian’s lost _Metamorphoses_, and hence affords a basis for
comparison with Apuleius’ great Latin novel _Metamorphoses_. It will
prove convenient I hope, to have a rather full outline presented here in
English for purposes of discussion and comparison. This Greek _Lucius or
Ass_ like the _True History_ is written in the first person, but Lucius
of Patrae, the hero, not the author, is the narrator. In my brief
résumé, I have found it clearer to write Lucius’ account in the third
person.
Once upon a time on a journey to Thessaly Lucius inquires of some fellow
travellers whereabouts in the city of Hypata a man named Hipparchus
lives, for he is carrying a letter of introduction to him. On his
arrival he stays at Hipparchus’ house. Only his wife and a maid
Palaestra lived with him. On his host’s inquiring the object of his
travels, Lucius says he is on his way to Larissa. He conceals the fact
that he is searching for women who deal in magic. While walking around
the city, he meets an old friend of his mother named Abroea, who warns
him against the wife of Hipparchus because she is a witch. Lucius,
delighted with this news, returns to Hipparchus’ house and in the
absence of his host and hostess makes love to Palaestra with the purpose
of persuading the maid to acquaint him with her mistress’ magic powers.
At the close of a night of revel, Lucius persuades Palaestra to show him
her mistress at her magic rites.
A few nights later Palaestra fulfills her promise by leading Lucius at
dead of night to the door of her lady’s bedroom where through a crack he
can watch her proceedings. She mutters to her lamp. She strips. She rubs
her naked body with ointment from a little box. Gradually she is
transformed into an owl and flies away to her lover. Lucius then
prevails upon Palaestra to let him attempt the same transformation.
By
ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is
changed not into a bird, but into an ass. Palaestra soothingly assures
him that the antidote is simple, just a meal of roses, and if her
dearest will pass the night quietly in the stable, in the morning she
will gather the flowers and recover her Lucius.
But this simple plan gangs a-gley, for in the night robbers raid the
house, secure much booty and to carry it steal also the horse and the
real ass of Hipparchus and Lucius. So the man-ass, heavily burdened, is
driven to the robbers’ home. One old woman is their care-taker. Several
days later the robbers return from one of their forays bringing in as
booty a young woman whom they have kidnapped. Later on in the absence of
the brigands the girl tries to escape riding on the ass, but both are
captured by the robbers. On their return, they find that the old woman
in terror has hanged herself.
The robbers plan a dreadful punishment for the culprits: to kill the
ass, disembowel him and sew the girl up alive in his paunch to die by
slow torture. But before they achieve this horror, a company of soldiers
arrives, captures the whole band and carries them off to a magistrate.
They had been conducted to the robbers’ den by the fiancé of the girl.
He now escorts her home on the honored ass Lucius.
After the wedding of the happy pair, the bride persuades her father to
reward the ass her benefactor so he is to be turned out into pasture
with the she-asses. But the servant to whom the care of the ass is
intrusted wickedly takes him home and makes him labor first in a mill,
then carrying fagots on a steep mountain, where a cruel driver mistreats
him. In the midst of his sufferings, news comes that the bride and groom
have been drowned on the seashore. So since their new masters are dead,
the servants all flee, taking the ass with them. They sell him in a city
of Macedonia to a eunuch priest of a Syrian goddess. In his life with
the priests, Lucius is so horrified by their impure practices that he
brays loudly in protest. The noise brings up some passing peasants who
go off to tell the village the obscenities they have witnessed. The
priests have to flee for their lives, but first they nearly kill the ass
by beating him for his braying.
Lucius is in danger of his life again at the house of a rich man where
they stop. For the servants who have lost the meat of a wild ass which
was to be the dinner (the dogs stole it), plot to kill Lucius and serve
up his flesh. He saves himself only by running away from the cook. The
priests are now arrested because they are found in possession of a
golden phiale which they stole from a temple, and the ass is sold to a
baker. In the mill Lucius is so worn down by the hard work that he is
sold as worthless to an old gardener. On the way to town, this gardener
has a quarrel with a soldier and nearly kills him so the gardener and
the ass have to go into hiding. Stupid Lucius betrays their hiding place
by putting his head out of an upper window to see what is going on.
Captured he is given to the soldier, but he soon sells him to a cook.
Now Lucius fattens on good food by surreptitious filching of choice
portions which the cook and his brother had reserved for themselves. By
a little detective work the brothers discover that the thief is the ass.
They show him eating men’s food to their master, who promptly buys the
ass, has a servant train him to act like a man (easy lessons for
Lucius! ) and exhibits him for admission fees. A woman buys a night with
him and has intercourse with him.
Then his master purposes to exhibit him couched with a woman (a
condemned criminal) at a public festival. The scene is all set when some
one comes up to Lucius and the woman at the banquet table bearing, among
other flowers, roses. At last the ass has his meal of restorative
flowers and becomes once more Lucius. He appeals to the magistrate for
protection against those who cry he is a magician and must be killed. He
informs the governor that his name is Lucius, he has a brother Gaius,
both have the same two other names; that he himself is a writer of
stories and his brother is an elegiac poet and a good prophet. The
magistrate believing his story gives him hospitality. Lucius’ brother
comes to take him home, but first Lucius thought it fitting to call on
the woman who had given him her love when he was an ass. He is chagrined
to find that as a man he has no charm for her! He sails with his brother
to Patrae and there sacrifices to the gods who have saved him.
No other work attributed to Lucian has aroused greater controversy than
_Lucius or Ass_. All the literature about it is reviewed in Ben Edwin
Perry’s epoch-making book _The Metamorphoses Ascribed to Lucius of
Patrae_, which conclusively proves that _Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome of
Lucian’s _Metamorphoses_, made by another writer. Perry analyzes
Photius’ description of the lost Greek _Metamorphoses_ with its theory
of the three versions of the ass-story,[356] and proves that Photius’
one mistake was in thinking that the name Lucius of Patrae referred to
an author of a third _Metamorphoses_, which was probably the original of
Lucian’s and Apuleius’ stories: Lucius of Patrae in _Lucius or Ass_ is
the hero-narrator, not the author. Perry then with convincing logic
reconstructs the probable content of the _Metamorphoses_ of which
_Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome and with the same irrefutable reasoning
discusses the nature of this original Greek novel. The basis of it was a
folk-lore story of a transformation. The style was plain, the narrative
rapid, the tone ironic. The narrator keeps the character of the hero of
the adventures and never identifies himself with the author. The
character of the hero is that of “an unique clown” with an absorbing and
credulous interest in strange phenomena especially transformations. The
final proof that the _Metamorphoses_ was satirical is “the simple fact
that the _Eselmensch_ is a litterateur and an investigator of marvels. ”
“The generic title shows that the author regarded his story as a kind of
commentary on the subject of metamorphoses, and writers who interested
themselves in such things. ”[357]
This author, “second century Atticist, humorist, and satirist,” can be
none other than Lucian himself, for the Greek _Metamorphoses_ is
Lucianic in type, is a relaxation from serious work as is the _True
History_; it shows the same satire of credulity that other works of
Lucian (for example the _Alexander_) did; and it is colored by the same
ironic humor. The epitome contains a striking Lucianic element although
this is overlaid by philological errors. Perry also analyzes
resemblances and differences between the reconstructed _Metamorphoses_
of Lucian and Apuleius’ novel, but this discussion I shall reserve for
the next chapter.
_Lucius or Ass_ is valuable in proving that Lucian wrote not one but two
romances; that in both he developed a new type of romance, the satiric;
that in each he maintained the same great qualities which mark his other
writings: the quest for truth, intolerance of fraud and credulity; keen
observation and realistic description; condensation, rapidity, clarity;
dramatic irony. The two romances also show more than any other of
Lucian’s writings his brilliant imaginative powers.
A postscript to this discussion of Lucian’s satiric romances may well
include an account of a novel in miniature which appears in one of his
dialogues. Writing in the second century he was of course thoroughly
familiar with the conventional type of the Greek romance. Though this
statement might be accepted _a priori_, certain evidence of it is
furnished by his insertion in his _Toxaris_ of an epitome of a Scythian
romance of love and adventure. The _Toxaris_ is a Platonic dialogue
written probably about A. D. 165, in Lucian’s period of transition from
purely rhetorical writings to those of moral or religious satire. [358]
In it a Greek Mnesippus and a Scythian Toxaris discuss friendship each
giving five illustrations of famous instances in his own country. The
longest one related is a Scythian romance told by Toxaris. [359]
Rostovtzeff has shown that Lucian probably had in his hands a Greek
romance with a Scythian background, for papyri fragments furnish
incontrovertible evidence of a similar Scythian romance in Greek dating
from the second century A. D. [360]
The story as told by Lucian is melodramatic. It relates the devotion of
three Scythians, Macentes, Lonchates and Arsacomas, who had pledged to
each other friendship for life and death in the old Scythian way of
shedding some of their blood into a cup and quaffing it together. Now
Arsacomas, who had gone on a mission to Leucanor, king of Bosporus,
there fell madly in love at first sight with his daughter Mazaea. At a
banquet when suitors were bidding for the hand of the princess with
proud lists of their possessions, all Arsacomas could boast of was his
two fair, brave friends. The Bosporans laughed him to scorn and the girl
was awarded to Adyrmachus, who the next day was to convey his bride to
the land of the Machlyans.
The outraged Arsacomas rushing home told his friends how he and their
friendship had been ridiculed and the three as one man planned immediate
vengeance. Lonchates promised to bring Arsacomas the head of Leucanor.
Macentes was to kidnap the bride. Arsacomas was to stay at home and
raise an army on the ox-hide for the war that would surely follow. All
proceeded according to schedule. Arsacomas slew an ox, cut up and cooked
the meat, spread the hide on the ground and sat on it with his hands
held behind him. This is the greatest appeal for aid possible for a man
who desires to secure help for vengeance. His friends and kinsmen coming
accepted each a portion of the meat, set right foot on the hide and
pledged as much aid as he could. So a goodly army was raised.
Lonchates went to Bosporus, pretending he had come as a friend to offer
aid against Arsacomas’ planned invasion. King Leucanor alarmed by the
news of an imminent Scythian attack was lured alone into the temple of
Ares to take a secret oath of friendship with Lonchates. There Lonchates
murdered him, cut off his head and escaped with it under his cloak
before the guards outside knew what had happened.
Macentes too used subterfuge, for hurrying to the Machlyans he reported
King Leucanor’s death, said falsely that the Bosporans called Adyrmachus
as his son-in-law to be their king, and offered while Adyrmachus rode at
full speed to them, to escort after him his bride Mazaea in the
wagon-train, for she, he claimed, was a relative of his own. This plan
worked so smoothly that Macentes, when night came on, took Mazaea from
her carriage, put her on his horse with himself and galloped off with
her to Arsacomas. The horse dropped dead at the end but the kidnapped
bride was delivered. Then all three friends united in the battle against
Adyrmachus, slew him on the field, and by nightfall had won a victory.
The next day peace was negotiated. Such are the deeds of daring which
Scythians perform for their friends.
In the papyrus fragments a lady in distress is weeping and lamenting in
the tent of a general Eubiotus. He clears his tent because of her woe,
hears her declare that she wishes she had never seen Eraseinus
(apparently her lover) and prevents her attempted suicide by wresting
her sword from her. She then tells Eubiotus that she is not the Amazon
Themisto though she is so disguised, but a Greek girl Calligone. Here
the fragments end. The only points in common with Lucian’s story are the
geographical background and the name Eubiotus (in Lucian the
illegitimate brother of Leucanor and an aspirant to his throne),[361]
but both stories as Rostovtzeff points out look to history for
characters and setting as the Ninus Romance did.
In the _Toxaris_ the coloring is only quasi-historical through the
mention of names of kings and their lineage: the story is not history,
but an historical novel. And the connection of the Scythians with the
Sarmatians, the Alans, the Maeotians and the Bosporans corresponds only
in part with their actual relations at the time. The Sauromatians are a
relic of the past; the Alans represent actual conditions in the time of
the author. The geographical coloring is likewise only partly
historical. The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to
idealization represents the people fairly. They are nomadic, poor, with
a free democratic political organization without kings, and they are
warriors. Their gods are the sword and the wind. Their customs are
primitive. They make war on their neighbors and have special relations
with the Greek states on the Bosporus and Olbia and visit those on the
south side of the Black Sea.
Lucian in composing his _Toxaris_ probably had in hand a Greek romance
with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and
ethnographical material. This he worked over making his story represent
what his public then knew or could know of the Scythians and their
neighbors. The discovery of the papyrus fragments of the Calligone novel
confirms this thesis. [362] The type of the _Toxaris_ story and the
papyrus story is the same. Both were love romances, though in each the
erotic motif is subordinated to adventure. The interest of the age in
the unfamiliar, the strange is manifested in the selection of Scythia
for the background.
Lucian’s narrative is intensely exciting as well as picturesque and
although it is only a miniature story it gives us an idea of another
love romance of a wild type with a king’s head cut off for vengeance, a
bride kidnapped on horseback and an army raised on the ox-hide. The
whole _Toxaris_ indeed, as Croiset remarked,[363] with its ten anecdotes
furnishes rich examples of Lucian’s art of narration.
VIII
_A COMPARISON OF THE GREEK ROMANCES AND APULEIUS’_ METAMORPHOSES
Apuleius, the author of the greatest ancient novel extant, might, if he
had chosen, written his book in Greek instead of Latin. Though he was
born in North Africa (at Madaura) he was educated in Athens as well as
Roman Carthage and Rome, indeed was completely bi-lingual. The letter
from his wife produced as evidence in his trial for having won her
affections by magic was in Greek. And private correspondence
demonstrates fluency in the language even more than does the fact of his
translation of a work by Plato and his Latin style richly colored by
Greek syntax and vocabulary.
Some reader may now ask as Apuleius anticipated: “Who is this man? ”[364]
So I must refer all to my other writings about him and briefly
characterize him here for the uninformed. [365] Apuleius was born about
A. D. 125 in the Roman colony of Madaura where his father was a leading
citizen and official. He was educated at Carthage, Athens and Rome, was
certainly bi-lingual and probably tri-lingual as he must have known
Punic as well as Latin and Greek. Returning to Africa, he practiced
successfully the art of a sophist, giving public discourses, many of
them impromptu. Specimens of these are extant in a collection of
extracts from his speeches called the _Florida_. He married a wealthy
widow, mother of a university friend at Athens, and was promptly sued by
his in-laws for having gained her hand by magic practices. The brilliant
speech in which he defended himself at Sabrata against their charges,
the _Apologia_, is extant and constitutes his autobiography. 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.
he states that his purpose in writing is to furnish to students some
reading that will give relaxation, but at the same time “a little food
for thought. ” The story is bound to charm, Lucian thinks, because of the
novelty of the subject, the humor of the plan, the plausible lying
involved and the comical parodies of such authors as Ctesias, Iambulus,
and Homer in his Odyssey. Lucian confesses to being a liar with the best
of them, but affirms that his lying is unique in being honest because he
admits it.
“Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have
neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others—which, in
fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist.
Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them. ”[322]
In spite of this confession, Lucian here and there in his story tries to
create an atmosphere of veracity by protestations of it. As he never saw
the Corn Sparrow forces or the Crane Knights, he does not venture to
relate the marvellous and incredible stories told about them. [323] When
he describes the magic mirror over a well in the Moon which furnished
him television of his family and country he says that disbelievers by
going there will find he tells the truth. [324] In the Island of the
Wicked, Lucian finds all liars, both those who had told lies on earth or
written them, among the latter Ctesias and Herodotus. “On seeing them,”
he says, “I had good hopes for the future, for I have never told a lie
that I know of. ”[325] The last sentence of the romance is: “What
happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding
books. ”[326] This, a Greek scholiast comments, is the greatest lie of
all!
Now after having seen what a wag Lucian is from his own words, we must
decide how we are going to take him. Are we to seek in him relaxation
and entertainment (the gift of all true romance) or are we going to
marshal our “little learning” to meet his and study all his sources, his
parodies of historians and philosophers, or search for allegories in his
fantastic worlds? The happy way will be along the path of the golden
mean. Gildersleeve put up a sign-board to it and inscribed directions
for future travellers.
“To enjoy the show properly, it is far better for the reader to give
himself up to this play of Lucian’s fancy than to endeavor to unriddle
whatever satire of contemporary literature may lie concealed in its
allegory. . . . There may be profound meaning in the war which breaks out
between the Sunburghers under Phaêthon, and the Moonburghers under
Endymion, which begins with the attempt of the Moonburghers to found a
colony on the desert planet of Lucifer, and which ends with the
victory of the Sunburghers, Lucifer being declared common property and
the vanquished compelled to pay an annual tribute of ten thousand
_amphoreis_ of dew. But so elastic are all such allegories that they
can be stretched to fit anything, and the war of these Heliotes and
Selenites would answer to describe the conflict between orthodoxy and
rationalism, and Lucifer would stand for the coming man. But how much
better to look with childish interest on the marshalling of
Horsevultures and Chickpeashooters and Garlickfighters and
Flea-archers and Wind-runners, and to watch the huge spiders spin
their web from the moon to Lucifer. ”[327]
So after realizing that we too may visit the Isles of the Blessed and
the Wicked, may soar up to Aristophanes’ Cloudcuckooland or dive under
the sea in the brother of Jonah’s whale, or see Sinbad’s roc, let us
begin at the beginning. Let the lights go out and the curtain go up. Let
us watch breathlessly an ancient Walt Disney fantasy rush across the
screen. The very names of countries and peoples add to the excitement as
the panorama unrolls. And so vivid are Lucian’s descriptions that as in
all good movies soon we find ourselves participating in his adventures.
Having set out from the Pillars of Hercules with fifty men on a good
ship, on the eightieth day we come to a wooded island. Here huge
footprints and an inscription reveal that Hercules and Dionysus were
here before us. And no wonder, for this is the Isle of Wines:
grape-vines produce springs of wine, springs feed rivers, rivers produce
fish that eaten make people drunk. And there is a species of vine that
is half grape and half lady like Daphne turning into a laurel and the
kiss of the Vine-woman brings intoxication and her embrace is a prison.
We lost two of our men to that captivity.
As we set sail, a whirlwind lifted the ship and she became a hydroplane,
sailing through the air for seven days and seven nights. The island
where then we landed proved to be the Moon. Endymion is the King so of
course he spoke Greek and we at once joined his forces for he had a war
on with the Men of the Sun, whose King is Phaethon. It was all about
which should colonize the Morning Star. Our fellow Moonites were as
strange as their names: Vulture Knights, Grass Plumes, Pea Shooters,
Garlic Warriors, Flea Bowmen, Wind Aviators, Corn Sparrows and Crane
Knights. And Phaethon’s Heliotes were as fantastic: Ant Knights,
Mosquito Aviators, Dance Aviators, Stalk Mushrooms, Dog-faced Knights,
Cloud Centaurs. A fierce battle we had and the Men of the Sun won
because they cut off light from the Moon so Endymion surrendered. We saw
strange marvels in our stay on the Moon: how men are the child-bearers;
how their clothing is made of glass or bronze; their eyes are removable;
they have a mirror over a well in which they can see what happens in far
distant lands.
As we voyaged onward, we came to many other countries: to the Morning
Star which was just being colonized, to Lamp Town where among the
inhabitants Lucian found his own Lamp which gave him news of home, to
Cloudcuckooland which Aristophanes described so truthfully. But after
such interesting scenes, disaster fell upon us. A monstrous whale bore
down upon us and in a trice swallowed us, ship and all.
When we recovered from our terror, we found that life inside a whale is
confined but not impossible. We discovered an island where we beached
our boat. The whale opened his mouth once an hour so we could mark time
and get the points of the compass. And we soon met other men there, a
Cypriote called Scintharus and his son. Scintharus told us about the
other inhabitants of the whale, who were savage barbarians, and always
ready to attack them. We thought best to join Scintharus in subduing
these enemies, but the fight was fierce for there were scores of these
Lobsters, Crabhands, Tunnyheads, Seagoats, Crawfish Coots and Solefish.
After our victory, we lived fairly well in the whale for a year and
eight months. In the ninth month, we saw through the teeth of our
monster the most terrifying battle, a sea-fight between men riding on
huge islands each of which carried about one hundred and twenty.
In spite of seeing such dangers outside, we decided finally that we must
escape from our prison. We used fire as a weapon, set the forest at the
tail-end aflame and after twelve days found that the whale was going to
die. Just in time we propped open his mouth with huge beams and the next
day when he expired, out we went on our good ship and felt once more the
wind in our sails. Fair weather did not last long. A terrible northern
gale descended and froze all the sea to a depth of six fathoms.
Scintharus, who was now our ship-master, saved us by directing us to
excavate a cave-home in the ice. In it we lived for thirty days,
building a fire and cooking the fish we cut out of the ice. When food
gave out, we dug out the boat and sailed over the ice as though it were
the sea until on the fifth day we came to open water. Now we kept coming
to various islands. We got water at one and at the next one milk, for
this island had grapes whose juice was milk, and its earth was cheese.
It was easy to subsist there! Next we passed the Isle of Cork where the
city is built on a cork foundation and the men have feet of cork so that
they can run over the waters as they will, buoyed up by their own
life-preservers!
Happiest of all our stays was that on the Island of the Blessed. Here it
is always spring. Every month the vines yield grapes and the trees
fruit. It is a land flowing with milk and wine. Glass trees furnish
goblets which fill automatically at the banquet. Baked loaves of bread
are plucked from trees. Beside the table are two springs, one of
laughter, one of joy, and with draughts from these the banqueters start
their revels. Famous men dwell there. I saw Socrates surrounded by fair
young men arguing with Nestor and Palamedes. Plato preferred to live in
his own Republic. The followers of Aristippus and Epicurus were
considered the best of companions, but Diogenes the Cynic had reformed,
married Lais and taken to dancing. The Stoics had not yet arrived for
they were still toiling up the steep hill of virtue. Conversation with
Homer was one of the greatest pleasures, especially as he settled the
matter of his birthplace by declaring himself a Babylonian and solved
the Homeric question by affirming that he had written all the lines
attributed to him. Beside literary talks, there were games for the Dead.
Even the Island of the Blessed could not be free from wars, for the
Wicked invaded it and had to be expelled by force. Homer wrote a new
epic on the fight of the dead heroes. The Island had its scandals too
all due again to Helen. For she bewitched Scintharus’ son and tried to
elope with him, but was caught. That episode caused our expulsion from
the Island of the Blessed. Before we left, Homer wrote a couplet for
Lucian which he had carved on a stele of beryl and Odysseus secretly
gave him a letter for Calypso.
We touched at the Isle of the Wicked and at the Isle of Dreams, where we
slept thirty days and next we put in at Ogygia. Lucian read Odysseus’
letter before he delivered it to Calypso and found he had always
regretted leaving her! For Odysseus’ sake, Calypso entertained us
royally.
Next we fell into danger from the Pumpkin Pirates and the Hardshell
Pirates and the Dolphin-Riders, but we escaped them all. One night we
ran aground on the marvellous and mighty nest of a king-fisher. And a
little further on in the sea we came to a forest of rootless trees which
we could not penetrate. There was nothing to do but haul the ship up to
their tops and take “a forest cruise” across. More marvellous still we
had to cross a water-chasm on a water bridge, a river-way between two
water precipices. After that we came to the Isle of the Bellowing
Bullheads, men like Minotaurs, and had some skirmishes with them. And
then we came to an Island of Fair Ladies who wished to take us to bed
with them, but Lucian discovered that they all had ass-legs and that
they ate strangers when they had cozened them to sleep. So we departed
in haste. At dawn we saw the land which is on the other side of the
world from ours and there we were shipwrecked. What happened there will
be another story.
This review of the two books of Lucian’s _True History_ reveals at once
its startling differences from the other Greek romances of the early
Empire. Romantic love does not figure in it. Religion has little or no
place in it. Adventures are its bones and sinews. These adventures
though described realistically are all figments of the imagination,
explorations of the Wonderful Things beyond Thule as much as those of
Antonius Diogenes must have been. The coloring of the pictures is an
amazing mixture of realism and fantasy. The veracity of sense
impressions almost converts doubting Thomases. Lucian comes to seem no
mean rival of Herodotus, the Father of Lies. Only occasionally some
satiric laughter betrays him.
It is perhaps easier for twentieth century readers to accept his wonders
than it was for his contemporaries of the second century. Science has
developed so many of his imaginative forecasts. The monstrous footprints
of Hercules and Dionysus might be rock-prints of dinosaurs. The plunging
whale is a submarine. His ship lifting from the ocean to sail through
the air has become the hydroplane. His island galleys bearing one
hundred and twenty men each are our battleships. The Cloud Centaurs who
fight in the air are our aviators. Arctic explorers have lived in huts
made of ice-blocks. Ice-sailing is a recognized winter sport. Clothing
is made not of glass or bronze, but of cellulose and steel. Removable
eyes suggest spectacles, contact lenses and field-glasses. The
Cork-footed Men must have resembled surf riders. And the magic mirror
over the well anticipated the perforated sphere of television.
But his contemporaries had the advantage of us in recognizing Lucian’s
sources and parodies more readily than we can. For us, Antonius
Diogenes, Ctesias and Iambulus are lost. Yet Photius records that the
romance of Antonius Diogenes, _The Wonders beyond Thule_, was the chief
source of Lucian’s _True History_. So many, however, are the sources
which Lucian used to forward his avowed purpose of furnishing relaxation
accompanied by some learning, that scholars have busied themselves for
years tracing parallels with Greek and Latin authors. [328] Allinson
remarks wisely: “In general, it seems safe to conclude that Lucian
regarded the writings of predecessors and contemporaries as an open
quarry from which he first built up his own style and then picked out
material to imbed, with an artist’s skill, in the parti-coloured mosaic
of his satire. ”[329]
Some idea of Lucian’s parody of his sources may be gained, even though
Antonius Diogenes is lost, from his incidental flings at great Greeks
and from his constant references to Homer which are a mixture of
admiration and irony. So when he saw Cloudcuckooland he remembered
Aristophanes the poet, “a wise and truthful man whose writings are
distrusted without reason. ”[330] On the Island of the Blessed he did not
find Plato for he preferred to live in the city of his imagination under
his own constitution and laws. Yet he might well have been in Elysium
for the inhabitants are most Platonic in sharing their wives. [331] The
solemn treaty which ended the wars between the Men of the Sun and the
Men of the Moon has a comical resemblance to the treaty between Athens
and Sparta which Thucydides records though it is signed by Fireman,
Hotman, and Burner, by Nightman, Moonman and Allbright. [332]
Herodotus comes in for more imitation, for he furnishes stories of ants
bigger than foxes,[333] of dog-headed men,[334] of men who feed on
odors,[335] of a feast of lanterns in Egypt,[336] of a floating
island,[337] of the sea freezing,[338] of a breeze that bears the
perfume of Arabia. [339] But when Lucian solemnly imitates these
exaggerations, we feel he has his tongue in his cheek and our suspicion
is confirmed when he consigns Ctesias and Herodotus to the limbo of
Liars in the Island of the Wicked. [340]
Lucian’s treatment of Homer shows his most genial irony. In his preface
he makes Homer’s Odysseus the guide and teacher of all historians of
imaginary travels, Odysseus “who tells Alcinous and his court about
winds in bondage, one-eyed men, cannibals and savages; also about
animals with many heads, and transformations of his comrades wrought
with drugs,” and with such marvels “humbugged the illiterate
Phaeacians. ”[341] But in the Island of the Blessed, Homer is the shade
in whose talk Lucian most delights. Homer indeed is most affable in
discussing all the literary problems of his epics, especially since he
had just won a lawsuit in which Thersites accused him of libel, through
the aid of his lawyer Odysseus. [342] Homer as a shade is still writing
for when there was war in heaven, he produced a new epic about the
battle of the shades of the heroes,[343] which Lucian unfortunately lost
on the way home, and on Lucian’s departure Homer composed a
commemorative epigram which described him as dear to the blessed
gods. [344]
Lucian introduces Homer’s characters into his scenes. Achilles is one of
the most honored heroes on the Island of the Blessed, serving as joint
judge with Theseus at the Games of the Dead. [345] Helen is the leading
lady in the court-room scene where Rhadamanthus had to decide whose wife
she should be in Elysium. She has forgiven Stesichorus for saying she
caused the Trojan War. [346] But she creates a new scandal by trying to
desert Menelaus again in an elopement with Scintharus’ son. [347] Calypso
on receiving Odysseus’ letter from Lucian’s hand weeps as she reads that
he always regretted giving up his life with her, and then with true
feminine curiosity asks how Penelope is looking now and whether she is
as wise as Odysseus used to boast. Lucian made such replies as he
thought would gratify her! [348]
Minor episodes are reminiscent of the Odyssey. Rhadamanthus gives Lucian
a talisman of mallow as Hermes gave Odysseus the moly. [349] To the Land
of Dreams Lucian must erect four gates in place of Homer’s two, one of
horn, one of ivory. [350] And the Singing Sirens that tried to beguile
Odysseus have been metamorphosed into fair young ladies in long chitons
which conceal the legs of she-asses. [351] But whatever changes are made
in the source-material taken from the Odyssey, Lucian’s gentle raillery
does not hide his admiration of great Homer. He gives the lie to the
myth that Homer was blind. [352] And in the contest of the poets at the
Games of the Dead in the Island of the Blessed, he ironically makes
Hesiod the victor though he affirms that in truth Homer was by far the
best of poets.
Lucian’s style in his _True History_ illustrates many of his own
criteria for writing history. The short preface is in proportion to the
short two-book _True History_. The narrative is concise, rapid, lucid
and shows consistent progress, one event following naturally and quickly
upon another without extravagant use of details. The few speeches are
short, lively and suited to the character of the speaker. The
descriptions are realistic and pointed. Extraordinary stories are told
simply with an appearance of veracity.
A few typical elements of the Greek Romances appear in the _True
History_. There is a suggestion of a court-room scene where Rhadamanthus
judges Helen’s accomplices in escape. One letter is inserted, Odysseus’
to Calypso, for the purpose of ironic satire of Homeric characters. An
inscription on bronze is discovered and a laudatory couplet in hexameter
is composed and inscribed on stone. But love and religion, the commonest
themes of the Greek Romances, are eliminated from this tale of
marvellous adventures.
Satire though this story is, it ranks easily first among imaginary
voyagings both in fantasy and style. In his narration Lucian pours all
his spirit, his liveliness of observation, his brilliant imagination,
his vivacious wit. His own enjoyment in his facile, marvellous
inventions is contagious. As he rushes his breathless readers over the
earth, through the air, under the sea, as he introduces us to
innumerable natural phenomena and monstrous beings, he convinces us that
this world of fantasy is a real world. He has made many others wish to
record similar travels, for the _True History_ is the model of all those
imaginary voyages with which Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Swift,
Voltaire and others amused their contemporaries. No work of Lucian found
so many imitators as this. [353]
The readers of Lucian’s _True History_ on finishing it feel that they
have drunk with him more from his eternal springs of joy and laughter
than from his irony, in fact that his irony gives only a few drops of
angostura bitters to the heady cocktails of his wit. And at the end the
readers of this romance are ready today to salute the shade of Lucian as
Andrew Lang did:[354]
“In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are
you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty,
and the brave? . . .
“There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more
excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds
bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed
come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in
a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon,
where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth
does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned
the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth. ”
It may seem anti-climax to turn from the _True History_ to Lucian’s
other romance, the _Metamorphoses_, for the second exists only in an
epitome by another hand. Since however this epitome is included in all
the best manuscripts and has been proved conclusively by B. E. Perry to
be a condensation of an original _Metamorphoses_ by Lucian on the basis
of spirit, vocabulary, syntax and phraseology, we must try to form some
idea of this other romance. [355]
As the _True History_ is a satire of travellers’ tales, this epitome,
_Lucius or Ass_, is primarily a satire of magic and magic rites. Just as
in the _True History_ not only epic poets and historians were parodied,
but philosophers came in for their share of ironic comment, so in
_Lucius or Ass_ satire is directed not merely against magicians, but
also against corrupt priests and frail women. The satire is of the
earth, earthy, very near the folk-story from which it may have
originated. _Lucius or Ass_ is Everyman in his credulity, gullibility
and bestiality. The only heroines in his murky world are a witch-woman
and a corrupt maid. This epitome has two great values: it gives us some
idea of Lucian’s lost _Metamorphoses_, and hence affords a basis for
comparison with Apuleius’ great Latin novel _Metamorphoses_. It will
prove convenient I hope, to have a rather full outline presented here in
English for purposes of discussion and comparison. This Greek _Lucius or
Ass_ like the _True History_ is written in the first person, but Lucius
of Patrae, the hero, not the author, is the narrator. In my brief
résumé, I have found it clearer to write Lucius’ account in the third
person.
Once upon a time on a journey to Thessaly Lucius inquires of some fellow
travellers whereabouts in the city of Hypata a man named Hipparchus
lives, for he is carrying a letter of introduction to him. On his
arrival he stays at Hipparchus’ house. Only his wife and a maid
Palaestra lived with him. On his host’s inquiring the object of his
travels, Lucius says he is on his way to Larissa. He conceals the fact
that he is searching for women who deal in magic. While walking around
the city, he meets an old friend of his mother named Abroea, who warns
him against the wife of Hipparchus because she is a witch. Lucius,
delighted with this news, returns to Hipparchus’ house and in the
absence of his host and hostess makes love to Palaestra with the purpose
of persuading the maid to acquaint him with her mistress’ magic powers.
At the close of a night of revel, Lucius persuades Palaestra to show him
her mistress at her magic rites.
A few nights later Palaestra fulfills her promise by leading Lucius at
dead of night to the door of her lady’s bedroom where through a crack he
can watch her proceedings. She mutters to her lamp. She strips. She rubs
her naked body with ointment from a little box. Gradually she is
transformed into an owl and flies away to her lover. Lucius then
prevails upon Palaestra to let him attempt the same transformation.
By
ill luck the maid brings him the wrong box of ointment so that he is
changed not into a bird, but into an ass. Palaestra soothingly assures
him that the antidote is simple, just a meal of roses, and if her
dearest will pass the night quietly in the stable, in the morning she
will gather the flowers and recover her Lucius.
But this simple plan gangs a-gley, for in the night robbers raid the
house, secure much booty and to carry it steal also the horse and the
real ass of Hipparchus and Lucius. So the man-ass, heavily burdened, is
driven to the robbers’ home. One old woman is their care-taker. Several
days later the robbers return from one of their forays bringing in as
booty a young woman whom they have kidnapped. Later on in the absence of
the brigands the girl tries to escape riding on the ass, but both are
captured by the robbers. On their return, they find that the old woman
in terror has hanged herself.
The robbers plan a dreadful punishment for the culprits: to kill the
ass, disembowel him and sew the girl up alive in his paunch to die by
slow torture. But before they achieve this horror, a company of soldiers
arrives, captures the whole band and carries them off to a magistrate.
They had been conducted to the robbers’ den by the fiancé of the girl.
He now escorts her home on the honored ass Lucius.
After the wedding of the happy pair, the bride persuades her father to
reward the ass her benefactor so he is to be turned out into pasture
with the she-asses. But the servant to whom the care of the ass is
intrusted wickedly takes him home and makes him labor first in a mill,
then carrying fagots on a steep mountain, where a cruel driver mistreats
him. In the midst of his sufferings, news comes that the bride and groom
have been drowned on the seashore. So since their new masters are dead,
the servants all flee, taking the ass with them. They sell him in a city
of Macedonia to a eunuch priest of a Syrian goddess. In his life with
the priests, Lucius is so horrified by their impure practices that he
brays loudly in protest. The noise brings up some passing peasants who
go off to tell the village the obscenities they have witnessed. The
priests have to flee for their lives, but first they nearly kill the ass
by beating him for his braying.
Lucius is in danger of his life again at the house of a rich man where
they stop. For the servants who have lost the meat of a wild ass which
was to be the dinner (the dogs stole it), plot to kill Lucius and serve
up his flesh. He saves himself only by running away from the cook. The
priests are now arrested because they are found in possession of a
golden phiale which they stole from a temple, and the ass is sold to a
baker. In the mill Lucius is so worn down by the hard work that he is
sold as worthless to an old gardener. On the way to town, this gardener
has a quarrel with a soldier and nearly kills him so the gardener and
the ass have to go into hiding. Stupid Lucius betrays their hiding place
by putting his head out of an upper window to see what is going on.
Captured he is given to the soldier, but he soon sells him to a cook.
Now Lucius fattens on good food by surreptitious filching of choice
portions which the cook and his brother had reserved for themselves. By
a little detective work the brothers discover that the thief is the ass.
They show him eating men’s food to their master, who promptly buys the
ass, has a servant train him to act like a man (easy lessons for
Lucius! ) and exhibits him for admission fees. A woman buys a night with
him and has intercourse with him.
Then his master purposes to exhibit him couched with a woman (a
condemned criminal) at a public festival. The scene is all set when some
one comes up to Lucius and the woman at the banquet table bearing, among
other flowers, roses. At last the ass has his meal of restorative
flowers and becomes once more Lucius. He appeals to the magistrate for
protection against those who cry he is a magician and must be killed. He
informs the governor that his name is Lucius, he has a brother Gaius,
both have the same two other names; that he himself is a writer of
stories and his brother is an elegiac poet and a good prophet. The
magistrate believing his story gives him hospitality. Lucius’ brother
comes to take him home, but first Lucius thought it fitting to call on
the woman who had given him her love when he was an ass. He is chagrined
to find that as a man he has no charm for her! He sails with his brother
to Patrae and there sacrifices to the gods who have saved him.
No other work attributed to Lucian has aroused greater controversy than
_Lucius or Ass_. All the literature about it is reviewed in Ben Edwin
Perry’s epoch-making book _The Metamorphoses Ascribed to Lucius of
Patrae_, which conclusively proves that _Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome of
Lucian’s _Metamorphoses_, made by another writer. Perry analyzes
Photius’ description of the lost Greek _Metamorphoses_ with its theory
of the three versions of the ass-story,[356] and proves that Photius’
one mistake was in thinking that the name Lucius of Patrae referred to
an author of a third _Metamorphoses_, which was probably the original of
Lucian’s and Apuleius’ stories: Lucius of Patrae in _Lucius or Ass_ is
the hero-narrator, not the author. Perry then with convincing logic
reconstructs the probable content of the _Metamorphoses_ of which
_Lucius or Ass_ is an epitome and with the same irrefutable reasoning
discusses the nature of this original Greek novel. The basis of it was a
folk-lore story of a transformation. The style was plain, the narrative
rapid, the tone ironic. The narrator keeps the character of the hero of
the adventures and never identifies himself with the author. The
character of the hero is that of “an unique clown” with an absorbing and
credulous interest in strange phenomena especially transformations. The
final proof that the _Metamorphoses_ was satirical is “the simple fact
that the _Eselmensch_ is a litterateur and an investigator of marvels. ”
“The generic title shows that the author regarded his story as a kind of
commentary on the subject of metamorphoses, and writers who interested
themselves in such things. ”[357]
This author, “second century Atticist, humorist, and satirist,” can be
none other than Lucian himself, for the Greek _Metamorphoses_ is
Lucianic in type, is a relaxation from serious work as is the _True
History_; it shows the same satire of credulity that other works of
Lucian (for example the _Alexander_) did; and it is colored by the same
ironic humor. The epitome contains a striking Lucianic element although
this is overlaid by philological errors. Perry also analyzes
resemblances and differences between the reconstructed _Metamorphoses_
of Lucian and Apuleius’ novel, but this discussion I shall reserve for
the next chapter.
_Lucius or Ass_ is valuable in proving that Lucian wrote not one but two
romances; that in both he developed a new type of romance, the satiric;
that in each he maintained the same great qualities which mark his other
writings: the quest for truth, intolerance of fraud and credulity; keen
observation and realistic description; condensation, rapidity, clarity;
dramatic irony. The two romances also show more than any other of
Lucian’s writings his brilliant imaginative powers.
A postscript to this discussion of Lucian’s satiric romances may well
include an account of a novel in miniature which appears in one of his
dialogues. Writing in the second century he was of course thoroughly
familiar with the conventional type of the Greek romance. Though this
statement might be accepted _a priori_, certain evidence of it is
furnished by his insertion in his _Toxaris_ of an epitome of a Scythian
romance of love and adventure. The _Toxaris_ is a Platonic dialogue
written probably about A. D. 165, in Lucian’s period of transition from
purely rhetorical writings to those of moral or religious satire. [358]
In it a Greek Mnesippus and a Scythian Toxaris discuss friendship each
giving five illustrations of famous instances in his own country. The
longest one related is a Scythian romance told by Toxaris. [359]
Rostovtzeff has shown that Lucian probably had in his hands a Greek
romance with a Scythian background, for papyri fragments furnish
incontrovertible evidence of a similar Scythian romance in Greek dating
from the second century A. D. [360]
The story as told by Lucian is melodramatic. It relates the devotion of
three Scythians, Macentes, Lonchates and Arsacomas, who had pledged to
each other friendship for life and death in the old Scythian way of
shedding some of their blood into a cup and quaffing it together. Now
Arsacomas, who had gone on a mission to Leucanor, king of Bosporus,
there fell madly in love at first sight with his daughter Mazaea. At a
banquet when suitors were bidding for the hand of the princess with
proud lists of their possessions, all Arsacomas could boast of was his
two fair, brave friends. The Bosporans laughed him to scorn and the girl
was awarded to Adyrmachus, who the next day was to convey his bride to
the land of the Machlyans.
The outraged Arsacomas rushing home told his friends how he and their
friendship had been ridiculed and the three as one man planned immediate
vengeance. Lonchates promised to bring Arsacomas the head of Leucanor.
Macentes was to kidnap the bride. Arsacomas was to stay at home and
raise an army on the ox-hide for the war that would surely follow. All
proceeded according to schedule. Arsacomas slew an ox, cut up and cooked
the meat, spread the hide on the ground and sat on it with his hands
held behind him. This is the greatest appeal for aid possible for a man
who desires to secure help for vengeance. His friends and kinsmen coming
accepted each a portion of the meat, set right foot on the hide and
pledged as much aid as he could. So a goodly army was raised.
Lonchates went to Bosporus, pretending he had come as a friend to offer
aid against Arsacomas’ planned invasion. King Leucanor alarmed by the
news of an imminent Scythian attack was lured alone into the temple of
Ares to take a secret oath of friendship with Lonchates. There Lonchates
murdered him, cut off his head and escaped with it under his cloak
before the guards outside knew what had happened.
Macentes too used subterfuge, for hurrying to the Machlyans he reported
King Leucanor’s death, said falsely that the Bosporans called Adyrmachus
as his son-in-law to be their king, and offered while Adyrmachus rode at
full speed to them, to escort after him his bride Mazaea in the
wagon-train, for she, he claimed, was a relative of his own. This plan
worked so smoothly that Macentes, when night came on, took Mazaea from
her carriage, put her on his horse with himself and galloped off with
her to Arsacomas. The horse dropped dead at the end but the kidnapped
bride was delivered. Then all three friends united in the battle against
Adyrmachus, slew him on the field, and by nightfall had won a victory.
The next day peace was negotiated. Such are the deeds of daring which
Scythians perform for their friends.
In the papyrus fragments a lady in distress is weeping and lamenting in
the tent of a general Eubiotus. He clears his tent because of her woe,
hears her declare that she wishes she had never seen Eraseinus
(apparently her lover) and prevents her attempted suicide by wresting
her sword from her. She then tells Eubiotus that she is not the Amazon
Themisto though she is so disguised, but a Greek girl Calligone. Here
the fragments end. The only points in common with Lucian’s story are the
geographical background and the name Eubiotus (in Lucian the
illegitimate brother of Leucanor and an aspirant to his throne),[361]
but both stories as Rostovtzeff points out look to history for
characters and setting as the Ninus Romance did.
In the _Toxaris_ the coloring is only quasi-historical through the
mention of names of kings and their lineage: the story is not history,
but an historical novel. And the connection of the Scythians with the
Sarmatians, the Alans, the Maeotians and the Bosporans corresponds only
in part with their actual relations at the time. The Sauromatians are a
relic of the past; the Alans represent actual conditions in the time of
the author. The geographical coloring is likewise only partly
historical. The picture of the Scythians even with its tendency to
idealization represents the people fairly. They are nomadic, poor, with
a free democratic political organization without kings, and they are
warriors. Their gods are the sword and the wind. Their customs are
primitive. They make war on their neighbors and have special relations
with the Greek states on the Bosporus and Olbia and visit those on the
south side of the Black Sea.
Lucian in composing his _Toxaris_ probably had in hand a Greek romance
with a Scythian background, containing certain historical and
ethnographical material. This he worked over making his story represent
what his public then knew or could know of the Scythians and their
neighbors. The discovery of the papyrus fragments of the Calligone novel
confirms this thesis. [362] The type of the _Toxaris_ story and the
papyrus story is the same. Both were love romances, though in each the
erotic motif is subordinated to adventure. The interest of the age in
the unfamiliar, the strange is manifested in the selection of Scythia
for the background.
Lucian’s narrative is intensely exciting as well as picturesque and
although it is only a miniature story it gives us an idea of another
love romance of a wild type with a king’s head cut off for vengeance, a
bride kidnapped on horseback and an army raised on the ox-hide. The
whole _Toxaris_ indeed, as Croiset remarked,[363] with its ten anecdotes
furnishes rich examples of Lucian’s art of narration.
VIII
_A COMPARISON OF THE GREEK ROMANCES AND APULEIUS’_ METAMORPHOSES
Apuleius, the author of the greatest ancient novel extant, might, if he
had chosen, written his book in Greek instead of Latin. Though he was
born in North Africa (at Madaura) he was educated in Athens as well as
Roman Carthage and Rome, indeed was completely bi-lingual. The letter
from his wife produced as evidence in his trial for having won her
affections by magic was in Greek. And private correspondence
demonstrates fluency in the language even more than does the fact of his
translation of a work by Plato and his Latin style richly colored by
Greek syntax and vocabulary.
Some reader may now ask as Apuleius anticipated: “Who is this man? ”[364]
So I must refer all to my other writings about him and briefly
characterize him here for the uninformed. [365] Apuleius was born about
A. D. 125 in the Roman colony of Madaura where his father was a leading
citizen and official. He was educated at Carthage, Athens and Rome, was
certainly bi-lingual and probably tri-lingual as he must have known
Punic as well as Latin and Greek. Returning to Africa, he practiced
successfully the art of a sophist, giving public discourses, many of
them impromptu. Specimens of these are extant in a collection of
extracts from his speeches called the _Florida_. He married a wealthy
widow, mother of a university friend at Athens, and was promptly sued by
his in-laws for having gained her hand by magic practices. The brilliant
speech in which he defended himself at Sabrata against their charges,
the _Apologia_, is extant and constitutes his autobiography. 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.
