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.
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. Whereas Lucian through satire degraded a simple folk-tale, Apuleius exalted it by making the journeyings of Lucius a search for the spiritual meaning of life. His hero walks alone. The love romance in his story, the Cupid and Psyche tale, starts with the Platonic conception of the relation of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, and therefrom is lifted to the realm of the Olympian gods. And finally the retransformation of Lucius is no chance event, but a salvation wrought out by the mystic worship of Isis.
The subjectivity infused in the plot by these additions is enhanced by the fact that the hero-narrator Lucius is identified with the author, implicitly at first in the Preface and in incidental comment of author to reader; in the last book by the identification of Lucius with “the poor man of Madaura” so that the whole narrative becomes personal experience. This fact involves another difference from the structure of the Greek love romances. The action of these love romances, as Riefstahl points out,[368] is a “closed” one: in the misfortunes which threaten the lovers through Fortune, they must always remain faithful to each other and stout-hearted in order to be re-united. So the circle of the action is “closed,” for it is a great cycle in the life of the hero which places him at the end just where he was in the beginning. The action in Apuleius is “open,” for the hero is bound and pledged to nothing. He goes through his adventures with a light heart. He does not need to prove his faith to any one. He does not need to stand up to a test or even to remain true to himself. He must needs wander, but there is no set purpose in his journeyings. His sufferings are as spiritual as corporeal. He is aware too of the misery of others in the world. And in profound despair he must beg divine aid.
It is absurd to compare the plot of the whole novel with the typical pattern of the Greek love romances and Fotis with their heroines as Riefstahl does.[369] The only great human love-story in Apuleius’ main plot, that of Charite, is a tragedy. It is like the Greek Romances in being a story of high life and in this too is unique among Apuleius’ novelle. But it is utterly different from the Greek love romances in structure and tone. The only parallel to them is to be found in the inset story of Cupid and Psyche. Here the tale is of two young lovers unhappily separated by the cruelty not of Fortune but of a greater goddess, Venus herself. And only after the hard testing of one of the pair, this time the lady, are the two lovers reunited. Thus the conventional happy ending of the plot is achieved. But for the author’s philosophical mind such a beautiful story must start with a touch of Platonic symbolism in the very names of the lovers, Cupid and Psyche, and must be concluded in high heaven, for only among the immortals may such perfect happiness be won forever.
From this account of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses it is already clear that his great novel is a synthesis of various types of Greek Romances. Its closest parallel is in the Greek Lucius or Ass, for the bare outline of the plot of the first ten books is like that of the Greek work. But all recent research tends to prove that Lucian’s original Metamorphoses was satiric in character, therefore very different in tone from Apuleius’ serious work. So although they share the characteristics of a romance of adventure, with stories of magic and of robbers forming principal episodes, the motivation and the aim of the two romances are utterly different. This difference is emphasized by Apuleius’ two longest and most startling additions to the plot, the love-story of Cupid and Psyche and the story of Lucius and Isis.
Apuleius writes a love romance like the Greek only in the story of Cupid and Psyche. For the episode with Fotis is a sex-story of convenience and the Milesian Tales added to the plot of Lucius or Ass carry out this Fotis-motif of sex and lechery.[370] The one long love-story of human beings, Charite’s story, is indeed a love romance of a noble lady and her noble lord, but it is a complete tragedy in episodes, tone and ending. Only the Cupid and Psyche story is the true type of Greek love romances.
The third great interest in the Greek Romances besides adventure and love was religion. To this Apuleius gave a new emphasis and a new importance. In the center of his novel in the inset story of Cupid and Psyche he pictures the old familiar Olympian gods in their conventional mythological characters, but as realistically and with as implicit a satire as Lucian used in his “Dialogues of the Gods.” Venus is a very jealous and cruel step-mother. Jupiter is a lusty, amorous, irresistible king. Cupid is at first undutiful, mischievous and wanton. The story of Lucius and Isis is, however, a serious story of a great religious experience. Through prayer, visions, priestly instruction, ceremonials, initiation and communion Apuleius becomes one with the goddess to whom he is to devote the rest of his life. The worship of Isis is pictured spiritually from the depths of experience by Apuleius who according to his own statements had actually been many times initiated in her cult.[371]
Throughout these three parts of Apuleius’ novel with their successive emphasis on adventure, love and religion, virtually all the conventional devices of the Greek Romances are employed. In the stories of adventure there are rapidly shifting scenes, though in a more limited spatial area. The Greek love romances lie according to the time of their action in the geography of the colonies of great Greece or within the boundaries of the hellenistic-oriental world from Byzantium to Egypt, from Sicily to Babylon. The action is carried out through long sea voyages, varied with storms and shipwreck. The wide world, the spatial separations are overcome only through the faithfulness of the lovers. The Ass-story takes place in narrower compass, in old Greece between Patrae, Hypata and Corinth. To Lucian’s geographical set Apuleius adds Rome. In these two versions of the Ass-story all the life of mankind is represented concretely and in close perspective. The action concerns little people living in one locality or for purposes of trade taking short journeys hither and thither on land.[372] Other conventional devices in Apuleius’ stories of adventure are the introduction as important characters of robbers and robber chieftains, narratives with emphasis on external events, descriptions like that of the robbers’ cave.
In the love-story of Charite the interest centers in a lover and his lass; both are persons in high life, both are faithful. A dream furnishes an apparition of the dead husband. But the villainy of a treacherous friend makes the story a tragedy involving murder and suicide. The story of Cupid and Psyche, true to the type of the Greek love romance, starts with a religious beginning, the worship of a mortal girl Psyche as the goddess of love; is motivated by a Greek oracle; describes at length the proving of the heroine in tasks imposed by the will of an unfriendly deity; depicts Psyche’s apparent sleep of death; and finally consummates a happy ending for the lovers through a saving god, who is Cupid the hero himself. A pastoral note which affiliates the story with Daphnis and Chloe is introduced by the presence of the friendly god Pan, who acts as a wise old adviser and comforter to Psyche in her great despair. And the conventional use of excursus creates a new pictorial character in brilliant descriptions of Venus charioted over the sea, of the Palace of Cupid, of Cupid asleep, of the wedding banquet of the lovers.
In the story of Lucius and Isis in Book Eleven, many of the conventional devices of the Greek Romances appear: dreams, epiphanies, religious festivals, a dea ex machina. So in Chariton Aphrodite and Fortune contend for the control of the lovers; in Xenophon of Ephesus Artemis and Isis are the two saving goddesses; in Heliodorus Apollo and Isis are prominent though the philosophies of the Gymnosophists and of the Neo-Pythagoreans have a share in the plot; in Achilles Tatius Artemis reigns supreme; in Longus Pan and the Nymphs guide the destinies of the young lovers. The difference in Apuleius is that the whole quest of the hero is for some meaning in life and when magic, adventure, mythology and human amours can not supply it, he finds through conversion a union with a mystic goddess who sublimates his emotion and absorbs his life into her service.